Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November/December 2022, pp. 34-35
Special Report
By Ian Williams
THE TENSE RUN UP run up to the U.N. vote against Putin’s annexation of tracts of Ukraine was, in the end, as unequivocal as most votes against Israeli occupation, although you will rarely see the comparison in the U.S. or UK press. Those who voted outright to support Putin’s folly—North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria and Belarus—were as unprincipled and dependent on Russia as the handful of atolls, who support Israel, are on U.S. handouts.
There were competing forces. Those, like Syria and North Korea who would vote for Russia if Moscow declared the moon was made of green cheese; those who would vote for basic U.N. principles; and the 35 abstainers who, if they had convictions, did not have the courage to express them. It was perhaps one of the few U.N. decisions that had a peacemaking effect—both India and Pakistan, at loggerheads for 70 years, chickened out in tandem. It was an axis of authoritarianism if you look at the regimes that ducked taking a position.
Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait attracted near universal condemnation at the U.N.—even from Russia and Syria. Some basic principles are inconveniently universal, not “ad nationem,” principles. That is why the voting statistics at the U.N. are so interesting. Moscow’s actual supporters are few—and notoriously not nice. The common factor they share with most of the abstainers, is that anyone taking part in any kind of protest in their countries would be in for an uncomfortable experience. The abstentions however do not mean support for the invasion but rather, in the amoral words of Secretary of State James Baker over the Balkans, “we don’t have a dog in this fight.”
So, we must also consider the “Good Samaritan” effect—or the absence of it. Unlike the character in the parable, most people, and most countries, would deplore the crime but would not intervene to prevent or help. There is a certain sordid self-interested sense to this. Why on earth would any but the most highly principled developing country harm its economy by applying sanctions on Russia, while Europe and the U.S. continue to strengthen Putin’s sinews of war by gorging him on petrodollars?
As a result, this 2022 U.N. General Assembly re-raised the fundamental question about the organization. What is it for? The bedrock injunction in the U.N. Charter says it is “To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” backed by an affirmation of the principle of non-aggression and outlawing the acquisition of territory by force. It was, after all, the attempts to redraw the boundaries of Europe and Asia by force that led to World War II, whose lessons the U.N. Charter was intended to incorporate. It did not mean that borders are fixed forever, but they are not to be altered by force or threats of force.
The injunction has remained amazingly durable. Even Israel, the most notorious offender, usually wriggles in a kabalistic way, wallowing in the small print of the law to argue that the territories it has seized are “disputed” rather than occupied since they were not taken from a recognized state. Jordan’s claim to the West Bank was dubious and only based on tacit Western and Israeli connivance in the Hashemite landgrab, and Egypt never claimed Gaza, which lends a tiny sliver of credence to Israeli claims that these territories are not “occupied”—but they were certainly acquired by force. Ironically, of course, they have no such excuses for the Golan Heights which were unequivocally recognized as part of Syria until the U.S. accepted their annexation. But that was the U.S., under Trump, not the U.N. so it has all the legal force of a passer-by telling a car thief, “you stole it fair and square.”
Put bluntly, the annexation of portions of Ukraine and Georgia, like the annexation of Western Sahara (and earlier East Timor) is as wrong as the annexation and occupation of Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights. Citing U.S. hypocrisy as reasons to ignore the principle is an invitation to a world even more anarchic and Hobbesian than it is now. Often boundaries should be adjusted but the question is “How?” Countries can and do adjust borders—by mutual negotiations and arbitration. The International Court of Justice has successfully and peacefully ruled on many such re-drawings, often on the basis of the self-determination of the inhabitants. Morocco has consistently refused such an exercise despite the U.N.’s efforts. It wants to conduct such an assessment by itself with a handpicked electoral roll.
But countries often try to camouflage their naked self-interest in a web of pseudo principles, and Moscow and its intellectual allies have been busily weaving the material for them. Stage conjurors use “patter,” a relentless torrent of chatter to distract the audience from what the performer’s hands are doing. Russia’s state conjurors, its diplomats and propagandists, rattle through similar streams of memes to cover what their armed forces are doing. They have their task made easier by long in-depth preparation, sensitizing entire constituencies so they react reflexively to clichéd memes.
So just as Israel has an arsenal of tropes to throw at critics—Arab/Islamic terrorism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, “poor little Israel, one tiny Jewish state marooned in a sea of Arab enemies,” Russia has a similarly self-contradictory barrage of clichés. Russia defeated Hitler, anti-colonial Russia fights Western hegemony, Azov Brigade, Nazis, and even for some deluded Leftists, that Russia still represents an anti-capitalist alternative. It was always a stretch to present Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a Nazi-anti-Semite, but no more ironic than Israeli temporizing between Moscow and Kyiv depending on Israel’s expedient state interests.
At least on this issue, Secretary General António Guterres, hitherto missing in action, finally stated unequivocally what many in the U.N. feel he should have said at the beginning, about the invasion, “It stands against everything the international community is meant to stand for. It flouts the purposes and principles of the United Nations. It is a dangerous escalation. It has no place in the modern world. It must not be accepted.” It has taken a long time to get him to be so outspoken on Ukraine. It will be even longer before he is anywhere near as authoritative on Palestine.
Sadly, it is true, on this as on Palestine, too many U.N. members let colleagues assume positions in the organization when their behavior should disqualify them. The Human Rights Council is one such branch that was going to vote Russia off until Moscow withdrew. It has previously voted the U.S. off, so there is some justice in the U.N.
So, what can be done about the parlous state of the U.N. and Moscow’s undeserved state as a permanent member? There are no simple answers, but room for inventive legal thinking. As we pointed out at the beginning, the U.N. Charter has the Soviet Union as the permanent member. Russia slid in on diplomatic Astroglide provided by Britain and America. Like the new British conservative prime minister, it has never been put to an open vote. The question is, as LBJ memorably said, whether it is better to have Russia in the Security Council micturating out than outside micturating in.
The alternative legal quibble is to accept that Russia, like Yugoslavia and Apartheid South Africa, are member states that cannot be expelled—but refuse to accept the credentials of the delegation. The problem with this is that it would require the U.S. practicing diplomacy rather than diktat, and for many years Washington has been very bad at that. You cannot pick and choose which parts of the U.N. Charter are applicable or which aspects of international law suit you, or rather, you can but do not expect other members to go the extra nine meters for you.
Which brings us to discuss the undiscussable. The U.S. cannot provide a “get out of the dock free” card to Israel and then complain when people shout, “whatabout?”
While we can, and should, condemn Russia for its egregious breach of the U.N. Charter and erosion of the international order, we would be remiss to not point out which power has done the most for the “whatabout” infection of international ethics. Washington has consistently covered for Israeli and Moroccan aggression and under Trump explicitly recognized the acquisition of territories by war.
If Russian annexation and barbaric behavior in the occupied territories is wrong, then what’s bad in the Donbas is just as bad in Gaza and Hebron. The many disgruntled supporters of Palestine should be asking for the same rules to be applied as for Ukraine. Hell, it could be cheap. The Palestinians are not asking for billions of dollars of weaponry—just for the U.S. to stop supplying them to Israel.
In fact, to be creative and ethical, supporters of Palestine should call for weapons deliveries to be diverted from Israel to Ukraine!
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: the Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
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