🛰️ What This Paper Does

This paper develops a new typology of revisionism and then uses it to explain why Russia's foreign policy claims escalated from regional to global scope. The typology rests on three core dimensions—what revisionist powers want, how they pursue it, and where they seek change—and is applied to Russia's military interventions in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria to identify the type of revisionism at work in each case.

🧭 A New Classification Based on Aims, Means, and Scale

• Revisionist aims considered: territorial, normative, and hierarchy-of-prestige claims.
• Means considered: peaceful versus violent methods.
• Level considered: regional versus global claims.
• These dimensions are combined into a new six-type classification of revisionism that maps the variety of claims and strategies available to revisionist states.

⚔️ What Happened in Georgia and Ukraine

• The second part examines Russian interventions inside the post‑Soviet neighborhood (Georgia and Ukraine).
• Focus is placed on the aims motivating intervention, the methods employed, and the level of claims pursued in each case.
• The typology is applied to each intervention to identify the specific form of revisionism involved.

🌍 Syria and the Leap to Global Claims

• The third part analyzes Russia's intervention in Syria as an instance of escalation from regional activity to global engagement.
• Syrian intervention is assessed through the same aims/means/level framework to show how Russia’s claims and practices shifted beyond the post‑Soviet space.

🔍 Key Findings

• A compact, three‑dimensional typology yields six analytically distinct types of revisionism.
• Applying this typology to Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria clarifies how similar tools and rhetoric can mask different revisionist goals and trajectories.
• The framework explains Russia’s movement from regionally focused interventions to actions with global implications by tracing changes in aims, means, and the level of claims.

📌 Why It Matters

• Offers a clearer vocabulary for distinguishing forms of revisionism in contemporary international politics.
• Provides a structured way to compare interventions that occur inside and outside a great power’s immediate neighborhood, improving analysis of escalation and strategic intent.