Today is the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for peace, established by a UN General Assembly resolution on December 12, 2018 at the initiative of Venezuela as a chair of Non-Aligned Movement. It reminds us of the necessity to abandon Cold War and zero-sum mentality for a brighter future for all of humanity and therefore is relevant today as never before.
The world nowadays faces a broad variety of challenges in security, economic and humanitarian domains, which all result from one common cause – the unwillingness of the USA and the EU to abandon their neocolonial practices and join new, just, open, democratic multilateral world order, which is emerging on our eyes.
Russia is at the forefront of this process, being a current chair of BRICS – a 10-member strong grouping that unites major emerging economies of the globe. Its share in global economy is already more than the one of G-7 – the stronghold of unipolar Pax Americana and “rules-based order”– and is still raising. We are a strong advocate of collective solutions to the global crises and therefore promote a dialogue between BRICS, SCO, CSTO, CIS, EAEU and other multilateral diplomacy platform in Eurasia under the broader vision of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. ASEAN is invited to make a valuable contribution to this concept.
Russia is committed to its obligations under international law and is a strong supporter of the UN Charter, being a member of an influential group of friends in its defense (by the way, another Venezuelan initiative). Notwithstanding the propaganda rhetoric on Ukraine issue from the West (and, unfortunately, even some countries from Asia and the Pacific, including Singapore), that blames our Special Military Operation (SMO) as a violation of the UN Charter, we managed to prove our position in international legal bodies, for example in ICJ.
In particular ICJ agreed with our justification of SMO under Article 51 of the UN Charter (Ukraine attacked DPR and LPR, that at the moment were recognized by Russia as independent states and its close allies. So the self-defense rule is applicable). Therefore, all the wording of “unjustified and unprovoked aggression” that is promoted by the US and its allies proved to be a complete mess. As well as absurd allegations on Russia in terrorism financing. International law unsurprisingly prevailed over the “rules-based order”.
Now the “rules-based order” will be tested in FATF and ICAO. If these bodies respect international law, embodied in ICJ decisions, Russia should be reinstalled as FATF full-member and striped of all allegations with regard to MH-17 downing. There is no single legal argument not to do this.
But the “rules-based order” and its adepts are not going to surrender so easy. What is in their magazine? Expansion of NATO to Asia and the Pacific through Indo-Pacific concept, where the claim of military presence is not even tried to be camouflaged by any economic prospects (just look at IPEF). Countries of the region are forced to choose sides contrary to their own interests. The vivid example is Europe, which undermined its livelihood and prosperity for the sake of the so-called “Atlantic solidarity”, that is nothing but a tool for the US to get rid of economic competitor and ensure that the EU will not be able to play a significant and independent role in foreign policy in foreseeable future. Same future the US is preparing for Asia.
The “rules-based order” also aims to substitute the UN system and normal negotiation process with a new forms of domination, like promoting the concept of “effective multilateralism” (“effective” in this case means suitable for Western interests. If something goes wrong in the UN for the US, it is “not effective”). Here in the region it results in establishing closed-door (restricted), minilateral groupings like Quad, AUKUS, AT4, including the emerging trilateral alliance between the US, Japan and the Philippines, that pose a significant threat to ASEAN centrality (for which Russia is a strong advocate).
Another vivid example is so-called Peace Conference on Ukraine, to be held in Switzerland in June. The aim is to impose Zelensky peace formula (that runs counter to the reality on the ground and completely ignores Russian interests and security concerns) on Russia without our consent, involving the countries from the Global South in its support by a trick. Simultaneously they continue pumping Ukraine with arms and ammunition in a futile attempt to strategically defeat Russia. It is not a diplomacy for peace. It is a coercion into war hysteria through fraud. In Ukraine the USA and its supporters from other parts of the world stand not for international law (as claimed), but for their own selfish interests, paid by blood and lives.
If the West were able to do diplomacy for peace, there will be no conflicts in Ukraine or Middle East. They could have been avoided through respectful dialogue between parties concerned on the basis of common grounds and mutually acceptable solutions. We with the support of our likeminded friends from BRICS are ready for this conversation. That is what true, not “effective” multilateralism is about.
The author of the article is H.E. Nikolay Kudashev, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Singapore.
