Authors

Discussion

The notion of Western ‘double standards’ as a defining characteristic of the international system has been an increasingly central feature of Moscow’s foreign policy discourse in the 21st century. In the West, not least due to Russia’s own actions at home and abroad, such Russian accusations have been largely dismissed as inconsequential propaganda. Yet, as the discourse around the Gaza war testifies, concern about Western ‘double standards’ is by no means limited to Russian rhetoric. In a situation where Western countries attempt to rally support for Ukraine (often as part of championing a ‘rules-based international order’), an acute question is how receptive other audiences, in particular in the non-Western world, are to Russia’s messages. Aiming at a dispassionate analysis of a highly contested issue, this paper proposes a comparative design to address this question. In particular, it argues that the reception of Russia’s messages needs to be seen in the light of the reception of Western messages. To this end, the paper will, based on a mixed methods analysis of a corpus of official speeches and statements compiled from US and Russian governmental webpages, as well as those of select G20 countries, ask what such discourse can tell us about the global standing of Russia, the West, and the ‘rules-based international order’.