Putin’s Threat to World Democracy
In the aftermath of World War Two, the UN, its Security Council and the UN General Assembly were created to preserve peace and to resolve disputes between nations by peaceful means. Under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter a UN member state cannot threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. Under Article 51, UN member states individually and collectively have a right of self defense against invasions. https://legal.un.org/repertory/art51.shtml The US, USSR, China, Great Britain and France were charter members with permanent seats and veto powers on the UN Security Council.
Ukraine is a sovereign state and a next-door neighbor of Russia. It has been independent since the breakup of the old Soviet Union in 1991. The US, Great Britain and Russia agreed to be guarantors of Ukrainian independence when Ukraine agreed in return to give up its nuclear arsenal in 1994. https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-is-the-budapest-memorandum-and-why-has-russias-invasion-torn-it-up-178184
In February 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time in the last twenty years. In the 2014 invasion, he attacked the Crimean, Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In the 2022 invasion, he sought to conquer Ukraine and install a friendly government; he expected to encounter scant resistance and to take Kiev in about a week. Nearly a year later, he’s encountered steep resistance, huge losses of manpower and materiel, and earned the world’s obloquy for invading a smaller, peaceful neighbor.
In February 2022, the vote in the UN Security Council, where Russia is a permanent member with veto power, was 11-1 to condemn the Russian invasion. https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-vetoes-un-security-action-ukraine-china-abstains-2022-02-25/ The vote in the UN General Assembly, where Russia has no veto power, was equally lopsided -- 141-5. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/02/1083872077/u-n-set-to-hold-vote-that-would-demand-russia-end-war-in-ukraine Under the UN Charter, the 5 permanent Security Council members with veto powers can act with impunity as the US did in Iraq and as Russia has in Ukraine.
In October 2022, Russia sought to annex the four regions (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhe and Kherson) it has invaded. This was rejected overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129492
Putin has tried a series of military incursions to break the Ukrainian government. First, he tried a quick blitzkrieg directed at the two biggest cities, Kiev and Kharkiv in the northern part of Ukraine closest to the Russian border. This failed, and he was repelled with major losses in men and materiel. He tried to take the South Coast of Ukraine as far as Odessa and cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea for its grain exports. This was initially successful in Mariupol and Kherson, and then many of Putin’s gains were stopped and reversed as Ukraine has now recovered Kherson.
Putin tried to block Ukraine’s grain exports to the rest of the world. In July, he relented in the face of universal condemnation from developing nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/russia-agreed-lift-blockade-ukraine-grain-due-growing-global-condemnat-rcna37624
He tried to break European support for the Ukrainians with a disruption of oil and gas deliveries for heating and energy during the winter of 2022-23, and the EU sought to use economic sanctions on Russian energy suppliers to stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Europeans have now turned to other sources for their oil and gas, while Russia too has turned to other markets, selling its oil and gas at a sharp discount to India and China instead. https://www.bbc.com/news/58888451
Putin is now engaged in a terror bombing campaign of Ukrainian cities, targeting the infrastructure that provides heat, light and water to Ukrainians living in the cities. These are war crimes. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml We can hope and must work towards war crimes tribunals where he and others will be tried and held accountable for their atrocities towards the Ukrainian civilian population.
This is not an isolated dispute between Putin and the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians who want closer ties to Europe to improve their nation’s economic development and military security. It is part and parcel of Putin’s military expansionism in Georgia, Moldova, and other near neighbors. This is already costing him with his allies in Central Asia. https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88698
There are legitimate disagreements as to whether Putin seeks to recapture and restore Russian control over the lands held by the old 19th Century Russian Empire or to check NATO’s encirclement of his country. https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-warnings-that-nato-expansion-into-eastern-europe-could-provoke-russia-177999 Are we dealing with the first stages of a new Hitler arising within the spires of the Kremlin, or was this a tragic miscalculation on the respective responses of the Ukrainian people and the NATO powers and the hubris of a sclerotic leader unable to acknowledge and step back from a terrible mistake?
What is not in dispute is that he has no right to invade Ukraine and wage terrible war on unarmed civilians in order to create a Russian vassal state to his liking. As a result and whatever the causes, we are now in the midst of the greatest European crisis since the end of the Second World War with attendant dangers of nuclear war and a return to a more dangerously polarized world and an ever widening war. It now appears that only a battlefield victory for the Ukrainians will force Putin to reconsider his penchant for military invasions of his near neighbors since the UN serves as no deterrent to his armed adventures, and NATO is unwilling to risk nuclear war by intervening. The UN Charter needs updating and amendment to remove the veto powers of the Great Powers sitting on the Security Council if we are to make the UN a useful instrument to maintain and expand peaceful resolution of nation’s disputes.