Johannesburg - In a week in which the Ukraine war clocked one full year, the European Council was scrambling for whatever the left-overs in their sanctions basket, and could not agree on what more there still is to throw at Russia.
The first anniversary had been planned to coincide with the announcement by the EU of the tenth batch of economic sanctions to cripple Russia. However, having unleashed a barrage of the top-end list of punitive sanctions against Moscow over the past year, the headache for the EU appears to be “what more?”.
They have imposed every possible major sanction against Russia, and yet week in and week out, the Kremlin seems to continue undisturbed with their “special military operation” in Ukraine. And the Russian economy is stronger today than it was before the war.
In an interview with the Belgian newspaper LeSoir, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, indicated that after a highly active year of unleashing one batch of sanctions after another - aimed at bringing the Russian economy to its knees - the bloc was left with “not many things” in its arsenal.
He said: “The main thing has already been done because we imposed sanctions on fossil fuel…Once you’ve taken the major steps, there aren’t many additional things you can do.”
The Europeans no longer know which weapon to sharpen and use against the resilient Russians. To paraphrase Michel, they are scraping the barrel. Among the international highlights of this week was - in a prominent show of force – the US President Joe Biden landing in Kyiv unannounced to ramp up support for the Ukraine military and other fighters, and to boost the spirit of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his cabinet in tow.
But back home President Biden had left an outcry and a backlash over his apparent indifference to the catastrophe in the state of Ohio, where a train derailed at the beginning of this month and the sitting President was yet to visit the horror scene.
The train derailment – on February 3rd – triggered the mass evacuation of the town of East Palestine and left an environmental disaster in its wake.
A Norfolk Southern freight train travelling from Illinois to Pennsylvania sparked a massive fire and triggered evacuations of thousands of residents after it had derailed.
There is still fear of a toxic gas release and/or explosion. The fire chief’s immediate appeal to a few hundred residents who are reluctant to pack up and go, is straightforward: “Leave now.” Biden and the ruling Democratic Party stand accused of ignoring the plight of the Ohio citizens.
Ohio is reeling in soil, air and water pollution with no immediate announcement of rescue plans whilst at the same time President Biden was in Kyiv announcing a further $500 000 in new military aid to Ukraine.
The mayor of East Palestine, Trent Conaway, described President Biden’s Ukraine trip amidst their disaster as “the biggest slap in the face”. In an interview with Fox News, mayor Conaway said about President Biden: “He doesn’t care about us.”
He added that President Biden “can send every agency he wants to but I found out this morning in one of the briefings that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there, not to us and I’m furious”.
Mayor Conaway can be rest assured that he’s not alone in anger and disappointment. The cost of living in the US is constantly rising – as is the case with the rest of the global community – adversely affected by the food and goods price hike sparked by the conflict.
But then again, the Biden administration is obsessed with making America great again – overseas – at the expense of pressing domestic matters that include Asian attacks and racist police killings of black people, particularly African-American males.
By all accounts, the legacy that President Biden seems determined to build is crystal clear: To reconfigure NATO into no longer a defensive alliance, but an offensive one that will expand eastward to the doorsteps of both Russia and China.
The US-led NATO, with the blind support of the EU, is determined to redraw the terms of geopolitical engagement along their clearly defined lines of “a rules-based world order”.
No wonder that a full year since the Ukraine war broke out, the US would rather lead the way for the wealthy nations of the global north to continue pumping funds into Ukraine’s bottomless pit in a sly endeavour to tire the Russians, who themselves are prepared to stay in the battlefield until their security concerns are addressed by the West.
None in the Western capitals talks of a possible truce, no matter how distant that truce might be, at least to give peace a chance. Instead, they play a blame game, pontificating at the Kremlin all the time without placing on the table their ideas or plans of how the war can be ended.
I’ve argued before, and I reiterate that the war would be prolonged through Western funding of what has become their proxy war against Russia as long as none of the Western nationals returns home from the battlefield in body bags.
Right now, the cost of living is glaringly unbearable in the capitals that have become havens for war-mongering. In London, and, across the UK, supermarkets have begun to ration vegetables such as tomatoes, onions and potatoes to strictly three only per customer.
The health sector is struggling to cope, and NHI personnel including nurses have opted to embark on tools-down for the first time in their history. Yet Rishi Sunak, the uninspiring first non-white British Prime Minister, would rather emulate the American foreign policy dictates in a clear case of monkey see, monkey do approach (to) modern diplomacy.
It is a frightening scenario that the world is faced with. Multilateralism is surely dying, if not technically dead already. How else does one come to terms with the ill-timed utterances of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on marking the first anniversary of the Ukraine war? Instead of pressing the reset button, and redoubling the UN’s efforts to end the war, he went on and on with exactly the same speech that he gave last year when the war first broke out.
He lambasted “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, calling it a contravention of international law. But Moscow would not stop its “special military operations” based on such divisive remarks? Guteress should be investing his time and resources in investigating how best to bring all the warring sides to the negotiating table, lead them to iron out their differences and where impossible – get them to agree to disagree and coexist peacefully in the global village.
It is vitally important that the head of the UN should be seen to take no sides in the conflict and to provide leadership that builds, instead of sectarian destruction.
The global north, led by the US-led NATO, has all but captured the UN and its authority. How can anyone explain why the unilateral imposition of sanctions by the US against its adversaries binds all of the international community? Will the same apply, if say, Russia imposes sanctions against an enemy state? Or China imposes sanctions against its enemies – will they be binding on all member-states of the UN as they do when the US unleashes sanctions?
This anarchic nature of international relations breeds resentment instead of harmony. It makes a mockery of the world’s uppermost important institution, the UN, which should always be beyond reproach.
Inevitably, the Ukraine war will end in negotiations, as do all wars. At that point, the international community led by the global south must insist on rebooting global diplomatic relations. All states, regardless of their geographic location or the size of the economy, are equal before international law. Their sovereignty is the same, and ought to be treated as such.
No amount of wealthy countries should be allowed to form gangs and attack one in a mob-psychology pact such as what the world witnesses currently. The majority of the international community is not at war, yet they are constantly dragged into discomforting situations where they are forced to toe the line of the powerful, wealthier states or else face the dire repercussions for exercising their independence of thought. This must end with the looming reconfiguration of geopolitics, precipitated by the bullying tendencies of the powerful states.