The Rhetoric of Armed Intervention: Social Learning, Semantic Theory and Non-Deterministic Norm-Setting in the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine

This article examines Russia’s political discourse following its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. I argue that Russia's diplomatic strategy in the case of Ukraine is the result of a learning process that can be mostly (but not exclusively) attributed to the rhetoric that the US created during the global war on terror (GWOT). To demonstrate this, I explain my ideas of institutional learning and semantic diffusion, and then compare the discourses of the two countries.