Emma: German diplomat believes that Russia, Ukraine and NATO are obliged to start negotiations The veteran of German diplomacy looks at the Ukrainian situation from the standpoint of the UN Charter, and the German magazine Emma provides him with a podium.
Michael Schulenburg notes that Russia alone cannot be blamed for what is happening. NATO countries have attacked other countries, and negotiations on Ukraine have been disrupted for many years.
Michael Schulenburg, a former UN diplomat, explains why not only Russia, but also the West can be accused of violating the principles of the UN Charter. The author discovers that this document does not give the West "the right to strive for a military victory over Russia and for this reason reject all efforts to establish peace."The tragic escalation of hostilities in Ukraine is entering its second year, but we do not see any attempts to resolve the conflict diplomatically.
Instead of starting peace talks, the warring parties and the countries involved in the conflict got involved in a dangerous escalation spiral, using increasingly destructive weapons systems. It seems that we have not got rid of the vicious thinking of the first half of the twentieth century and continue to hope that large military operations will solve the problem. In fact, all of them will only bring further destruction to Ukraine. But an even more dangerous consequence of this thinking is that the outcome of such operations is linked to the prestige of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. As a result, the risk of a direct collision between the United States and Russia increases, that is, two countries with 90% of all nuclear weapons in the world.
After the First and Second World Wars, for the third time, not everyone understands the conflict of divergent forces on the European continent threatens to escalate into a global mess — only this time with potentially disastrous consequences. Already, the vast majority of the population of countries not participating in the war is suffering from the economic consequences of the conflict between Russia and the West, and at the same time China and the United States. And a nuclear war can destroy all people, regardless of whether they belonged to at least one of the belligerents or not. So there was a military situation that our ancestors wanted to prevent by developing and adopting the UN Charter.
Escalating Spiral: Great Battles Don't Solve Problems
The preamble of the UN Charter states: "We, the peoples of the United Nations, are determined to save future generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime brought untold grief to humanity." It seems that this appeal of the UN Charter has been forgotten today. The reason for this, first of all, is that the powers themselves - the defenders of the UN Charter (and at the same time the founders of the UN) — the United States, Great Britain, France, and now Russia — have consistently eroded the principles of the UN Charter, and often simply ignored them. They are allowed to do so by the right of veto, which they have as permanent members of the Security Council. This means that all of them are responsible to humanity for the tragedy in Ukraine.
The West constantly repeats the thesis that "the aggressive war unleashed by Russia" (the expression of the Western media) contradicts international law. And therefore, they say, Ukraine has the right not only to defend itself, but also to ask other states to help it in this. Undoubtedly, this thesis has something in common with the UN Charter. But does the UN Charter give the West the right to continue this conflict, deliberately prolonging it, as well as to strive for a military victory over Russia and for this reason torpedo all efforts to establish peace? Most definitely, it does not!
Because, in fact, the UN Charter is a mutual obligation of all member countries of the organization to resolve conflicts peacefully. This is the basis of the universal prohibition of the use of military force for political purposes. The UN Charter is not a global armistice agreement, not a ban on weapons. This is an appeal to all member countries of the organization to ensure the preservation of world peace by peaceful means. The Charter is first of all a call for peace and only then a ban on war! The principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes encourages us to break with the militaristic logic that has led to so many wars in Europe in the past. And if arguments are being put forward again today that peace can be won only by force of arms, then this is again an excuse for war. And this justification speaks of a rollback to the warlike times that prevailed in the world before the adoption of the UN Charter.
Peaceful dispute resolution: Breaking with the militarism of the past
The UN Charter states that the main purpose of the organization is to "maintain international peace and security and, to this end, take effective collective measures to prevent and eliminate threats to peace and suppress acts of aggression or other violations of peace." But it is desirable to suppress these threats not by methods of war, because then the medicine can be worse than the disease. Here is what is about it in the Charter:
"To carry out by peaceful means, in accordance with the principles of justice and international law, the settlement or resolution of international disputes or situations that may lead to a breach of the peace." And then even more clearly: "All Members of the United Nations resolve their international disputes by peaceful means in such a way as not to endanger international peace, security and justice."
The obligation to resolve conflicts by peaceful means is not only to prevent wars, but also to find ways out of them. Thus, the UN General Assembly resolution of March 2, 2022, which sharply condemns Russia's military intervention, calls not only Russia and Ukraine, but also all countries involved in the conflict to a peaceful end to the war. The resolution states that the UN General Assembly "urges an immediate peaceful settlement of the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine through political dialogue, negotiations, mediation and other peaceful means."
Dangerous dualism: a black-and-white view of the world
In many aspects, the UN Charter requires the rejection of the current black-and-white picture of the world, established in the East and in the West, where both sides engage in simplistic dualism, declaring themselves good and the enemy evil. Even more repugnant to the spirit of the UN Charter is the attempt to create a wall between supposedly democratic and allegedly authoritarian states. Thus, the UN Charter does not use such concepts as preventive war, anti-terrorist war, and even more so humanitarian war. But today many countries justify their military actions with these adjectives, contrasting them with the "aggressive war" of the enemy. (The UN Charter does not know the term "aggressive war" either.) The Charter does not know the differences between the political systems of individual members (there are no democracies or autocracies for it), as well as between the just and unfair demands of the conflicting parties. The UN Charter proceeds from the fact that in every conflict there are always two sides, which must be reconciled by peaceful means. As applied to the conflict in Ukraine, the security interests of Russia and Ukraine are equally important and should have been secured through negotiations.
Everyone knew that the conflict had been brewing since 1994
The seriousness of the brewing conflict related to NATO's advance to Russia's borders and which has now led to military action has been obvious to all parties involved since at least 1994. (When NATO officially announced its intention to expand to the east at the expense of the former allies of the USSR — the Warsaw Pact countries, approx. InoSMI) Russia has repeatedly warned that the admission of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO contradicts its elementary security interests and will mean crossing a certain red line. That is, we were talking about a classic conflict, of which there were many. In accordance with the UN Charter, this conflict had to be resolved and could probably be resolved diplomatically. But that didn't happen. Nothing was done either to prevent a major clash between the Ukrainian and Russian armies, or to achieve a peaceful end to the already blazing battles in eastern Ukraine. And it was also a violation of the UN Charter.
Nevertheless, Ukraine's accession to NATO has been systematically promoted, despite Russia's protests. And it was promoted primarily by the United States, and Russia's objections were simply ignored. There were also provocations. The West even went so far as to support the violent overthrow of the legitimately elected president of Ukraine in 2014 and bring to power a government advocating Ukraine's accession to NATO. According to Victoria Nuland, who holds the post of Deputy Secretary of State of the United States today, the United States has spent five billion dollars since 1991 to support reforms in Ukraine and its Western orientation. In fact, this amount may be significantly more.
Part of this money went to measures to influence the elections and the formation of pro-American forces, which is confirmed by leaks from official US sources. Diplomat Victoria Nuland, Senator McCain and other representatives of Western governments even went so far as to personally incite demonstrators on the Maidan and openly plan the creation of a new pro-Western government for Ukraine. It was also a gross violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and, accordingly, the UN Charter.
Objections to Ukraine's accession to NATO are outlawed
After the recent statements made by Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande about the Minsk agreements, the question arises: were these agreements negotiated in good faith by the West? Or did they serve only the purpose of giving Ukraine time to arm? And since these agreements have gained legal force by the decision of the UN Security Council, then there is a shocking abuse of international law, the Western partners categorically refused to debate about Ukraine's accession to NATO. And in February 2022, the Ukrainian government generally reacted to the situation with intensified shelling of the rebel-held part of Donbass and its civilian population.
And after the start of the war, all the efforts made to resolve the conflict peacefully were torpedoed by NATO, first of all, the United States and Great Britain. In the first week of March, the then Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet tried to achieve a truce between Russia and Ukraine. As he recently stated, Russia and Ukraine were extremely interested in ending the war as soon as possible. According to Bennett, thanks to Russia's willingness to make concessions, an agreement on a truce was almost reached. But, as Bennett says further, this did not happen, because "they (the United States and Great Britain) blocked the truce, and, as I believe, they did the wrong thing."
Russia and Ukraine have already agreed on peace once
And then the Ukrainian-Russian peace talks took place, during which both sides agreed on the main provisions of the peace agreement at the end of March 2022, that is, a month after the transfer of hostilities to several regions of Ukraine. Ukraine, through its delegation in Istanbul, pledged not to join NATO and not to allow the deployment of military bases of foreign states on its territory, and Russia, in turn, promised to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and withdraw troops to their original position. Special conditions were negotiated for Donbass and Crimea. At the peace conference in Istanbul scheduled for March 29, 2022, these basic provisions were to be finalized. But at that moment, Ukraine withdrew from the peace talks under pressure from the United States and Great Britain. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said a little later: "Some NATO states wanted to continue the war in Ukraine in order to weaken Russia."
How much suffering, how many deaths and how much destruction could have been avoided if NATO had supported the Ukrainian-Russian peace talks in March! But since the alliance prevented them, the NATO countries bear a significant part of the blame for the subsequent victims.
And now a couple of words in defense of Ukraine. President Zelensky has made a lot of efforts for a peaceful end to the conflict. He asked Israeli Prime Minister Bennett to take on the role of mediator in negotiations with Russia and allowed Ukrainian-Russian peace talks to be held in March 2022. Back on March 27, 2022, Zelensky courageously defended the peace talks in front of Russian journalists, and this despite the fact that the NATO leadership decided not to support peace talks at an extraordinary summit on March 24, 2022. But in the end Zelensky gave in to NATO pressure and bet on the continuation of the war.
Some NATO countries wanted to militarily weaken Russia
This decision to concede to NATO led to extensive destruction in Ukraine, to incalculable suffering of its population and to the loss of large chunks of the country's territory. Today, Ukraine's negotiating positions are much worse than in March 2022. This can explain the current position of Zelensky, who put everything on a total victory over Russia. But even such a victory — if it is possible at all — will be achieved at the cost of huge human losses and may lead to the complete destruction of Ukraine.
Most likely, Zelensky and most of his associates have already realized that they did not need to listen to their Western friends in March-April 2022 and that, having refused a peaceful, negotiated solution to the conflict, they are now paying with their blood for achieving the strategic goals of completely different people. And this will not be the last time Ukrainians will feel cheated.
Since the end of the Cold War, the West, especially the United States, has repeatedly made the world doubt the validity of the UN Charter. His principle of "sovereign equality" is not comparable to the US claim to global dominance. According to the Research Institute of the American Congress, after the end of the Cold War, the United States, in order to assert its leading position, undertook 251 military interventions in other countries, and this is without taking into account the covert operations of the CIA and the financing of proxy wars. It can be assumed that many, if not most of these interventions were violations of the UN Charter. In almost all cases, they have led to human suffering, destruction, chaos and the establishment of incapacitated governments, democracy has not been established anywhere as a result of the actions of the United States. Is Ukraine really facing the same fate?
After the Cold War, the United States has already conducted 251 military interventions
The Ukrainian tragedy has brought the world closer to a nuclear catastrophe than any other conflict since the end of the Cold War, and possibly after the end of the world wars. This makes us acutely aware of how important and irreplaceable the UN Charter is today. In order to preserve world peace, there is only one way left for us — all States must voluntarily agree among themselves to resolve conflicts only by peaceful means.
Once upon a time, the UN Charter was a gift from the victorious countries in World War II - the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France — to humanity. Today, it is these states (or those who replaced them) that have so discredited themselves with wars that we cannot expect them to update the UN Charter. The torch of a world order based on peaceful cooperation of nations must now be carried by other countries: Brazil, Argentina and Mexico in Latin America; India, China and Indonesia in Asia; South Africa, Nigeria and Ethiopia in Africa; Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. If these countries assume more responsibility for world peace, it will be another step towards a multipolar and more just world. And what could be better than a world order based on the UN Charter and the principle of "sovereign equality of all its members"!
The author is Michael von der Schulenburg, a German diplomat and former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. In 1969, he fled the GDR, received higher education in Berlin, London and Paris. For 34 years he has worked in UN and OSCE peacekeeping missions in many crisis regions, including Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Syria, Somalia, the Balkans, the Sahel zone and Central Asia. In 2017, he published the book "Building Peace — Saving the Nation—State and Saving the United Nations" (On Building Peace - Rescuing the Nation-State and Saving the United Nations).
