A theater of the absurd unfolded Tuesday evening, Feb. 23-Wednesday morning, Feb. 24.
In New York an emergency session was being held at the UN, with head of state after head of state calling for peace —for Russia not to invade sovereign Ukraine.
In Moscow, it was 6 a.m., Feb. 24, when Vladimir Putin went on Russian state television to announce the invasion of Ukraine.
Civilians around the world were glued to social media, watching the war unfold, as heads of state at the UN continued pleading Putin not to invade.
It was surreal.
What made it the ultimate farce was that the chair of this emergency session was none other than Russia itself!
So much for the integrity of the UN.
At some point the heads of state were informed what was happening outside their hallowed halls; many took to speaking again, forcibly condemning Russia. In a moment of utter absurdity, the Ukraine representative confronted the Russia representative, who denied there was any invasion, as the Ukraine representative waved his mobile phone, daring the Russia representative to watch live video of the invasion.
This split screen theater evinced, in a visceral way, that the UN is simply without use. How can the invading nation be the chair of the emergency meeting about its invasion? “Bizarre” doesn’t even come close. “Immoral” is more accurate.
Further: Russia holds a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and used it on Feb. 28 to continue to propagate its falsehoods about a “Ukrainian-led genocide” against Russian people in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. Meantime, as the Russian representative was delivering his remarks, his country was bombing a sovereign nation, killing civilians and attempting to assassinate a head of state.
Russia continues to hold this seat on the Human Rights Council! So much for the integrity of the UN.
Still further: As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is also sitting at the table in Vienna, negotiating the Iran deal!
This multi-pronged travesty is tragic, as the international system should be the best way to avoid war, but alas, time and time again, the actions — and inactions — of the UN show that it is not only unable to prevent war, it is unable to keep the peace. This is long known to any casual observer, but the flagrant ineptitude this time around proves that it is only bilateral and multilateral relations among smaller groups of nation-states that can prevent war, keep the peace, or fight the aggressors. Ironically, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has proven the necessity of NATO.
To give them their due, on March 1, as Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov took to the Human Rights Council floor, claiming “an unwavering respect for the Ukrainian people,” many delegates left the chamber. On March 2, in another emergency session at the UN, 141 of 193 member states condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But all this is simply another act in the charade, as Russia wages war while allowed to hold its seat in the UN bodies and play a role in the negotiations with Iran.
Due to the status of the Soviet Union in 1945, it was assigned a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The dissolution of the USSR saw Russia inherit that seat, but aside from holding nuclear weapons, how is Russia a “great power?” The largest country in the world doesn’t even have one of the globe’s top ten economies, and about a third of its economy relies on oil and gas. Much like the Afghanistan War belied Soviet strength — and ultimately contributed to the fall of the USSR — Putin’s foray into Ukraine is revealing Russia’s structural weakness.
To remove Russia from the UN Security Council is probably a pipe dream, even though its succession of the Soviet Union has been questioned by international law experts. A better place to start, as proposed by the NGO UN Watch, is for Russia to be removed from the Human Rights Council. Its rules allows for suspending “the rights and privileges of any Council member that it decides has persistently committed gross and systematic violations of human rights during its term of membership.”
If the international system continues to allow Russia to play its role on the global stage — if it’s business as usual — then trust in the international system will erode still further. No longer will it be only the critics of the UN’s anti-Israel bias that will question the usefulness of the UN.
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