The author is a researcher at the Center for International Studies and Research of the University of Montreal (CERIUM). He was political adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2016-2017. He recently published Canada in search of an international identity.
Ukraine won a major diplomatic victory on Wednesday night when 141 UN member states adopted a particularly harsh resolution against Russia, condemning the invasion and calling on it to withdraw all its troops. This solidarity was all the more welcome as the Ukrainian cause had been losing ground at the UN for several years.
However, a diplomatic victory does not make peace. Moreover, 52 countries — 5 voted against the resolution, 35 abstained and 12 were absent — did not see fit to condemn what constitutes THE crime of crimes in the international system, an attack on sovereignty and territorial integrity of a state. This highlights the phenomenon of contestation of the Western international order and is not without raising a deep unease about the trivialization of violence in international relations.
Resolutions
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 triggered the adoption by the United Nations of several resolutions condemning this illegal act. The Security Council, despite being responsible for maintaining international peace and security, was paralyzed from the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict by Moscow’s veto.
The debate moved to the General Assembly where the resolutions do not have the same political and legal weight. The document put to the vote in March 2014 does not mention Russia, does not condemn the annexation, but calls for respect for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Despite the act of illegal annexation, in this case Crimea, being a violation of international law, 100 out of 193 countries voted for the resolution, and 11 against.
The most interesting is the vote of the 58 abstentionists, where we find large countries such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. Even more interesting are the 24 countries absent from the vote, including Israel, no doubt embarrassed by the fact that it itself illegally annexed the Syrian Golan.
The resolution has been presented every year, but with diminishing results. Last December, despite a text including the issue of human rights violations in Crimea and specifically calling on Russia to evacuate this territory, it obtained only 65 votes for, 25 against, 85 abstentions, and 18 countries were absent. This score has something amazing when you know that the resolutions on the Palestinian question regularly collect up to 180 votes.
Last week, the Ukrainian question came back to the fore with the invasion of the country by the Russians. The Security Council debated a resolution aimed at condemning Russia. However, the 15 members of the Council were so divided on the wording of the text that the sponsors softened the project to “secure” the abstention of three countries – China, India and the United Arab Emirates – and to allow two more to vote yes: Vietnam and Mexico.
Thus, the proposed text no longer included the term “condemn”, replaced by “deplore”. A reference to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which includes the use of force, was also deleted. Eventually, Russia prevented its adoption by using its veto.
On Wednesday, a stronger resolution presented to the General Assembly, where the veto cannot be exercised, received significant support, but what is striking is that a quarter of the countries did not vote yes. Russia may not have the influence of the United States in the UN, but we are no longer in the era of the USSR when the Soviet bloc had little support and was isolated.
The globalization of the economy, the dependence of dozens of countries on Russian gas, oil and arms, the emergence of powers such as China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, concerned to act independently on the international scene, limit the influence of Westerners on the rest of the world.
Normalization of violence
The behavior of dozens of countries towards the Ukrainian question before the invasion could also be explained by a generalized indifference towards violence. At least that’s what Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former deputy secretary general of the UN, thinks in an interview published last Saturday by the daily Release. In his latest book, The Prime XXIand century. From globalization to the fragmentation of the world, the author emphasizes how, in recent years, “one asserts one’s strength in an increasingly brutal way” in international relations. Today, he says, “we embark on operations taking fewer and fewer gloves”.
From the illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, without the American leaders being sanctioned, to that of Ukraine, including the assassination of journalist Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, There is a continuum of violence that “somehow accustoms you to war, which can thus become an almost normal state”. It’s very dangerous “because all civilization consists of building taboos, especially with regard to war,” he says.
The rules of the international order were written after the Second World War by Westerners. In recent decades, they have been violated by these same Westerners and others, and are increasingly being challenged in the Western camp (the Trump Presidency) as well as by emerging powers who want to have their say. in their rewrite. We live the tremors of this shock.