Le défi de la paix
In this book, Anne-Cécile Robert, deputy director of the Monde diplomatique and lecturer at the French International and Strategic Relations Institute (IRIS), takes readers back over the history of the international organisations, with particular focus on the United Nations, stressing the importance of breathing new life into them in order to maintain dialogue between States and preserve world peace, before it is too late to do so. Here are a few extracts (our own translation throughout).
“The martyrdom of the people of Gaza throws the international order into sharp relief and threatens its very survival. It was by a vote of the UN General Assembly in 1947 that Israel was created, as part of a sharing plan, which initially also made provision for a State of Palestine, although that part was never applied. The symbolic scope of this conflict for peace in general and for the credibility of the multilateral system is almost impossible to measure, but it exists, particularly as the United States, the founders of the UN, have demonstrated themselves to be outrageously biased at the outskirts of international law”, author writes in her introduction. Yet “according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, armed conflicts have tripled in the last 20 years, whilst diplomacy is coming up against walls of misunderstanding, as has been confirmed by the very many tense, cacophonic emergency meetings of the UN Security Council that have been held. The entire ambition, born from the still smoking embers of the Second World War, of building a world framed by international organisations and regulated by the rule of law, is under threat”, Robert stresses. She goes on to add that “from Ukraine to the Middle East via Sudan or Central Asia […], it appears that war is once again becoming almost a standard tool of foreign policy […]. New types of conflict are developing, based on the large-scale use of artificial intelligence, disinformation and technical espionage. New players, such as international terrorist organisations, are muddying the rules of international law established decades ago”.
As the International Criminal Court (ICC) has just launched proceedings against the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, who joins Vladimir Putin on the list of leaders with an international arrest warrant out for them, Robert makes the point that “very few people have been found guilty to date and all of them are African”. “In spite of everything, the credibility of the ICC seems to be increasing. In 2024, Lebanon announced its intention to join the ICC to participate in proceedings concerning the consequences of the illegal bombardment of its territory by Israel. Furthermore, the virulence of the Israeli reactions and measures taken against the court by Washington (in May 2024, the chamber of Representatives adopted a bill sanctioning the court) and Tel Aviv confirm the dominance of this court, symbolically if nothing else”, the author observes.
The international order is increasingly coming under fire from countries who see it as a system put in place by the West and which is still too broadly dominated by it. “China is publicly challenging the moral claims of the West. The Chinese trend of historicism, born in the 1960s, calls universalism into question. But historicism believes precisely that in the backdrop of history, there are no objective rules, transcendent will or universal human nature, and that history exists only individually, as the State is then a concentrated incarnation of individualisation”, notes historian Jilin Xu. “In this world, there is no value that is universally valid or any universal order that transcends cultural history”, the author explains, adding that “China, which has a very considerable presence at the UN, is methodically building a counter-model to exploit within the international system without causing it to explode. It is producing a discourse that is symmetrically opposed to that of the United States and the West in general. ‘By way of syllogism with the geopolitics of the 19th century, Beijing is speculating on the collapse of the West in parallel to its rise in power, explains geographer Emmanuel Véron. For the party-State regime, these reconfigurations would constitute the alternative to a post-Second World War international order dominated by Western democracies. The conceptual and semantic space of the UN is central to the influence efforts, in the framework of the ‘central interests’ of the regime first, strategic priorities second (war materials, model of governance)”.
Other challenges have been levelled over the last several years at various treaties, such as the Treaty of Lausanne, which repeatedly comes under fire from the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or the Treaty of Trianon, which has been denounced by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán. “Although these discourses are most likely about election propaganda, they bring with them a feeling of resentment and an unhealthy spirit of revenge”, the author stresses, pointing out that “with the exception of Serbia, all countries that are home to Hungarian minorities are members of the European Union, or the Schengen agreement, which cancels out some of the negative energy generated by Mr Orbán, as the individuals in question benefit from common rights and the freedom of movement”.
“For 20 years, the strength of appearances and habits have overstated the echoes of Western domination that is becoming delegitimised in the eyes of the rest of the world. Economic wealth, the colossal military budgets, the institutional privileges (control of the international financial institutions and the dollar) and the Pavlovian support of the European countries to the order controlled by Washington have masked the rise of competing powers such as China, the gut resentment of Russia and the growing exasperation of the countries of the South. Then suddenly, events start accelerating. The debacle of the United States in Afghanistan in August 2021 is followed by a series of mini-shocks (diplomatic incidents between Greece and Turkey, a flood of coups d’état in the Sahel, several incursions into Taiwanese airspace, etc.). Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine in February 2022 is the point of no return. The West, still dominant, can nonetheless see the world moving on without them. The devastating attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023, Tel Aviv’s response, as blind as it was brutal, the malaise of most of the Arab chancelleries towards their pro-Palestinian public opinion and the reaction, in disparate order, of Western diplomacy confirmed the precarious nature of the international balances and the uncertainty over their futures. The uncontrolled internationalisation of the interminable civil war in Syria illustrates the confusion that exists: the regional powers (Turkey, Iran) are moving their pawns forward, while four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom and France – are indirectly clashing, thereby helping to undermine the global security architecture”, the author argues.
“Europeans and Americans make the most use of sanctions, as tools in the trade war, but also as an instrument of foreign policy. They will impose this kind of measure for political or even moral reasons, related to human rights or failure to respect international law, as we have seen in the case of Russia. But the decisions made by the governments open them up to accusations of double standards: if individual sanctions were adopted against the colonies of the West Bank, none have been adopted against Israel for repeated violations of the rules of war or humanitarian laws in Gaza”, Robert stresses, pointing out that the “European Union is participating in or is behind 27 arrests of sanctions [and] since 2014, it has adopted 12 against Russia for the annexation of Crimea and the attack on Ukraine of February 2022”.
“Although the UN […] has been carrying out its remit of international rapprochement and cooperation for 80 years, it is not a federal or supranational institution. It is based on sovereign states whose behaviour it brings into line so as to preserve peace and deepen global cooperation. From this point of view, it is no more a global government than it is an ‘international community’ in the true meaning of word. This expression is misleading, feeds into misunderstandings and, most importantly, masks the fundamental responsibility of the states in making changes to the world”, the author quite rightly observes. A little further on, she goes on to point out that “the expression ‘international community’ is never used when Washington or its allies are concerned by measures or resolutions. For instance, when, on 2 November 2023, the General Assembly voted almost unanimously (187 countries out of 193) for the end of the American embargo against Cuba – as it does every year – nobody said that the ‘international community’ was condemning the United States. But even so, from a mathematical point of view, and given the billions of human beings represented by the votes in favour, they would have had every reason to do so. The same applies to the resolution of 10 May 2024, which states that Palestine should be admitted as a full member of the UN, which was voted through very convincingly by 143 votes (nine against and 25 abstentions). The texts issued by the ‘G77 and China’, half of the UN states and most of the countries with the highest populations are never presented as expressing a general desire. At the very least, therefore, we should put inverted commas around ‘international community’”.
“In practice, certain structures with a universal influence escape the authority of the UN and threaten to rival it, depriving it of its legitimacy. Created informally by the most industrialised countries, the ‘Gs’ act as de facto boards of directors formed by the great Western powers, even though all of them are signatories of the San Francisco Charter”, the author goes on to point out. She adds that “whether consciously or subconsciously, the states are calling into question the basic principles of international society”. “What used to be occasional is becoming systematic. Every time, they invoke what they believe are, or claim to believe are, good reasons. Russia invoked the most far-fetched pretexts to attack Ukraine, the most egregious of which is the claimed Nazification of the country and its threat to the Russian-speaking minorities. A few years previously, the United States had lied outrageously before the UN Security Council, stating that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In 2018, Paris, London and Washington bombed Syrian chemicals factories without a mandate and in the absence of any grounds for self-defence. In late 2023, Venezuela and Guyana were on the verge of war over the ownership and control of the river Essequibo and the oil fields surrounding it. The examples of the marginalisation of use and customs are multiplying”, she writes. She goes on to observe that declarations of war no longer seem to be made.
“Diplomats are becoming increasingly marginalised, in favour of military advisers and communicators. The development of French policy in the Sahel, right up to its failure with the coup d’état in Niger at the end of July 2023, provides an incomplete illustration. A parliamentary report criticised the move and its dangers as it gives primacy to security concerns from political analysis and superficial declarations and in-depth work on the ground. Diplomatic expertise is being under-used and is becoming a thing of the past. While are struggles are becoming brutal, this marginalisation profoundly symbolises the expression of a crisis of politics, in other words the ability to carry out dialogue with concepts that can be generalised, making it possible to build balances of interests”, Robert observes.
“The Western states that breach international law have not understood – or do not want to understand – that they now have to prove their worth and give guarantees. Their word is no longer enough and everybody knows that they are no longer necessarily in a position to be able to impose their will everywhere, as they once could. If they are sincere in their protestation of commitment to multilateralism and the UN, they will have to prove this by paying the price, in other words by taking a risk. Basically, they need to risk losing some of their powers and opening international institutions, including financial institutions. It is now time to universalise UN properly and to put the whole world in its place”, the author argues, adding that “the West is no longer the only captain on board, even if its economic and military resources are still considerable. Its moral authority, on the other hand, has diminished from one incident of abuse of power to the next. Universalisation is also an intelligent way to deal with the most brutal powers, in other words those with a taste for violence. The vast majority of the planet undoubtedly aspires to honest and fair, and probably peaceful, international cooperation. Therefore, the vital first stage of treatment is that our Alcoholics Anonymous – the United States and Russia in particular, but also China, with its threats in the direction of Taiwan – acknowledge that they have started drinking again and that the other members of the club admit that they allow them to do so. There are too many empty bottles taking up too much space on the planet”.
Robert concludes her book by putting forward three scenarios. The first is the collapse of the UN system: “the powers ruthlessly abandon the rules of the [United Nations] charter and ostensibly refuse to play the multilateral game. They abandon all previous agreements and unravel the international order”. “War becomes once again a normal tool to adjust balances of power and delimit zones of influence”. “The European Union fragments under the effects of the centrifugal forces on its borders. The risk is of an incident triggering global conflict”. The second scenario is that of its decomposition: “having become marginalised, the UN is no longer a humanitarian super-agency [and] no longer has any influence on the regulation of the world […]. The small states colonise the international organisations and use them to organise solidarity between themselves to deal with the consequences of global disorder. However, minimal overlaps between the Russians, the Europeans and the Americans develop, maintaining a precarious balance, principally regulated by fears of uncontrollable chaos leading to the use of nuclear weapons”. This second scenario could develop more or less favourably depending on whether the major emerging countries rally began a single power or decide to navigate from one to the next. As for the European Union, it “remains united and is responsible for the organisation of the Old Continent, but cannot pretend that it holds any power of influence in service of peace and the rule of law”, because its member states prefer a solo role on the international stage. The final scenario, and the one that is the most unlikely at the moment, is that of renewal: “member states prove themselves capable of getting themselves organised and structuring a new multi-polarity around effective and solid multilateralism, embodied by a well-respected and profoundly reformed UN”. Well, we can always hope! (Olivier Jehin)
Anne-Cécile Robert. Le défi de la paix – Remodeler les organisations internationales (available in French only). Armand Colin. ISBN: 978-2-2006-3994-5. 286 pages. €20,90