Who Gets to Exist? State Recognition as Strategic Legitimacy in Kosovo and Chechnya

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines why the United States recognised Kosovo’s independence in 2008 while consistently refusing to support Chechen self-determination across two wars and more than a decade of conflict. Both cases involved secessionist movements, significant civilian suffering, and comparable normative claims, yet produced opposite recognition outcomes. This divergence constitutes a central puzzle for international relations theory. The study develops a Strategic Recognition Framework integrating three explanatory variables: security framing, power asymmetry, and economic interdependence, to explain this variation. Drawing on securitization theory, organised hypocrisy and liberal institutionalism, the framework argues that recognition functions as an instrument of strategic statecraft rather than a neutral legal determination. Through a structured comparative case study and qualitative content analysis of US official discourse, the thesis finds that all three variables converged to enable recognition in Kosovo and to preclude it in Chechnya, and the findings suggest that humanitarian norms and legal vocabularies are selectively mobilised to legitimise strategically predetermined outcomes. The study contributes a replicable analytical framework for studying recognition decisions beyond these two cases.