The Russian Federation has annexed Crimea following its full-scale military occupation of the peninsula. Ukrainian soldiers are exiting and pro-Russian soldiers have assumed control over the last ships and bases once controlled by Ukraine's military. Russia is now massing thousands of forces just across the Ukraine border, posing a clear and present threat to the eastern portion of Ukraine, at the very least.
Despite empty promises that he has no intention of seizing additional parts of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid down the pretext for just such an action in his speech last week to the Russian Parliament announcing his decision to annex Crimea. Commenting on the devastating effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin said “Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.” It’s the same rationale he used in justifying the occupation of parts of Georgia in 2008, and would be the same rationale to justify occupation of eastern Ukraine and areas of the Baltic States such as Estonia.
The United Nations today, at its highest levels, is showing timidity in confronting head-on Russia’s violation of the United Nations Charter, specifically Article II (Clause 4) which states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The Security Council is paralyzed by Russia’s exercise of its veto power to defeat a resolution that would have affirmed the UN Charter principles and declared the Crimean referendum held under the watchful eyes of armed Russian soldiers to be invalid. Even so, the Secretary General of the United Nations has the moral authority to speak out and bring truth to power when he sees the shredding of the UN Charter in front of his eyes. Sadly, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has refrained from declaring Russia’s actions illegal, preferring instead to speak more obliquely about the need for each member state to abide by all of the principles of the UN Charter including respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and unity of all member states.
By contrast, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saw no problem in denouncing the entry of military forces from the United States and its coalition partners into Iraq in 2003 as “illegal.” The military action “was not in conformity with the UN Charter from our point of view,” Kofi Annan said during a 2004 interview with BBC.
Why can’t Secretary General Ban Ki-moon make as clear and direct a statement about another Security Council Permanent Member’s actions, which involved both the threat and the actual use of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of a sovereign nation? In reply to repeated questions by UN correspondents asking for clarification of the Secretary General’s position on whether Russia’s actions conformed with the UN Charter, the response from the Office of the Spokesperson of the Secretary General has consisted of ambiguous generalities, such as the following: “both SGs, dealing with different situations and different circumstances, made clear the importance of resolving disputes in accordance with the principles of the UN Charter. That is what Kofi Annan was indicating when he talked about
how the actions in Iraq were not taken in conformity with the Charter, and that is what Ban Ki-moon has been emphasizing when he pushes for the current crisis to be resolved in conformity with the Charter's principles.”
That answer sounds as if Russia had not already acted, ignoring Ban Ki-moon’s entreaties. But Putin has swallowed Crimea and is maneuvering for more territory at Ukraine’s expense.
Russia and its defenders argue that the United States is hypocritical when it raises international law concerns. How, they argue, can the U.S. square its self-proclaimed adherence to international law with its actions in Kosovo and Iraq?
As to Kosovo, NATO intervention in Kosovo followed extensive attempts over a decade to persuade Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to reverse his decision to sharply reduce the autonomy that Kosovo had enjoyed since 1974 and cease his gross human rights violations. Although Russia opposed NATO’s military intervention, it actually helped in the final resolution of the conflict. President Boris Yeltsin’s chief Balkans envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, along with Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari presented NATO’s demands to Milosevic in Belgrade on June 3, 1999. When the war was over, Kosovo was not absorbed into any NATO country. It was not occupied by U.S. soldiers by virtue of a unilateral decision of the U.S. government.
Although its status as an independent country or as an autonomous part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia remains disputed, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1244, placing Kosovo under transitional UN administration and authorizing a NATO-led peacekeeping force. Russia supported this resolution.
Putin’s Russia, on the other hand, occupied and then absorbed Crimea on the basis of a local referendum that was neither permitted under the Ukraine constitution nor was conducted in a free, transparent manner without the presence of Russian occupying soldiers. There were no systematic violations by the new Ukrainian government of the human rights of Russian speaking citizens in Crimea. Moreover, the new Ukrainian government had not changed Crimea’s autonomous status.
As to Iraq, the first question isn’t why self-interested countries, whether the United States or any other member state, could be accused of violating international law when it was in their national interest to do so. The question, from the standpoint of the UN Charter, is why one Secretary General provided his opinion as to the legality of what the United States did in Iraq in forthright terms, while the current Secretary General is effectively giving Russia a free ‘get out of jail’ card with regard to its actions in Ukraine. This is all the more disturbing since Iraq today is a free country while Crimea is now in the belly of the Russian bear. The U.S. and its coalition partners at least tried to work through the United Nations Security Council and believed they had the legal authority under international law to act pursuant to a succession of Security Council resolutions culminating in Security Council Resolution 1441.
Resolution 1441 found Saddam Hussein’s regime to be in material breach of all its obligations under the many previous Security Council resolutions and gave Hussein a final opportunity to comply or face “serious consequences.” In this context, since the resolution was brought under Chapter VII of the UN Charter which allows for the use of military force to enforce compliance with Security Council resolutions, “serious consequences” could only mean military force, since all other means including sanctions had already failed to pressure Saddam Hussein into full compliance.
Russia, on the other hand, had no basis for its actions in any previous Security Council resolutions. Indeed, it stood alone in voting no to veto a proposed Security Council resolution that opposed what Russia was planning to do in Crimea. Russia also violated its own agreements with Ukraine, including the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 under which Ukraine agreed to give up nuclear weapons on its territory in return for guarantees of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Russia, along with the United Kingdom and the United States, agreed to the following:
- The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine;
- The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."
Russia has violated just about every pertinent clause of the Budapest Memorandum. Moreover, the basing agreement between Ukraine and Russia in Crimea, which Putin has cited as a rationale for Russian military forces being in Crimea in the first place, limited the deployment of Russian forces outside their base except for specified areas and under the Ukrainian military supervision. Russia blatantly violated this agreement by moving its troops around Crimea at will and using them to interfere in Ukrainian domestic affairs.
When Ban Ki-moon visited Moscow last week in an effort to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine, he praised Putin effusively: “President Putin has been and is one of the most important partners to the United Nations and he has been an international leader. He has repeatedly called for international disputes to be solved within the framework of the United Nations Charter.”
This is music to Putin’s ears as he contemplates further expansionist moves in blatant violation of the UN Charter.
