Perhaps not since Nikita Khrushchev’s angry outbursts at the General Assembly in 1960, and the sharp words over the Cuban Missile Crisis two years later, has the United Nations seen such heated rhetoric between East and West.
The failure of international diplomacy in the Syrian crisis after Russian and Chinese vetoes in the Security Council last week has highlighted an inherent weakness of the UN common in the Cold War that has today thrown the body’s future role in Syria in doubt.
The East-West diplomatic clash flared at about the same time as street battles in Damascus did. But the vetoes made clear the conflict would be decided in neighbourhoods of the Syrian capital rather than in the corridors of the UN.
The Cold War was marked by conflict and paralysis in the Security Council as both sides vetoed each other on a variety of issues. In another revival of the Cold War, South Africa took a classical non-aligned position by abstaining on the resolution that would have threatened sanctions on the Syrian leadership, satisfying neither Russia nor the West.
“We allowed narrow interests to destroy our unity of purpose,” said South Africa’s deputy ambassador, Doctor Mashabane, in his speech to the council explaining Pretoria’s vote.
“The text, in an unbalanced manner, threatened sanctions on the government without realistically being able to take any action against the opposition, which would be permitted to defy the (Annan) six-point (peace) plan without consequences.”
Scolding the Russians, Chinese and the West, Mashabane said: “We should have shown utmost maturity in strategically executing this crucial task taking into account the realities of the situation on the ground.”
The Cold War’s UN paralysis lasted until the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union, and ushered in an era of co-operation at the body which then frayed over the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has now reverted to open confrontation over Syria.
Cold War
“Those who believed that we were somehow passed those days (of the Cold War) were living in a world that didn’t actually exist,” said George Lopez, a political scientist at Notre Dame University in the US.
“The Arab Spring is clearly the dividing line for the Russians, since (Russian President Vladimir) Putin facing 10 000 people lined up in his own central squares questioning his legitimacy hits home a lot clearer than whether Russia should pass sanctions on somewhere like Ivory Coast.”
While Africa is no longer in contention the way it was during the Cold War, Syria still lies at the crux of a geopolitical battle between the West, with its Gulf Arab partners, and Russia.
Moscow blames its adversaries for using militant Islam-ists to encroach on its traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as to remove its allies from power, analysts said.
Russia’s UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, did not pound his fists on a table as Khrushchev did during a speech by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan 50 years ago. But he did blast the West for having “fanned the flames of extremists and terrorist groups” in pursuit of “their own geopolitical designs that have nothing to do with the Syrian people”.
He called the West “hypocritical” for engaging in “biased rhetoric without saying anything about their real interests in Syria,” which he said were “all about Iran”.
Moscow, he said, could “not accept the pressure of sanctions... (or) external military involvement in Syrian affairs”.
Russia had launched diplomatic action, Churkin said, but for the West “would a Tomahawk cruise missile on the presidential palace in Damascus constitute action?”
Chinese Ambassador Li Baodong called the West “rigid and arrogant” for backing an “uneven” resolution singling out the Syrian government that would “derail… a political settlement” and “aggravate the turmoil”.
The core weakness of the UN is the competing interests of 192 member nations that generally results in agreements that are often so compromised that they appear spineless and bring ridicule upon the UN. In the Security Council it takes only one of the five permanent members with veto power to stop any agreement at all, even against a broad consensus.
It was the third time Russia and China have vetoed Security Council resolutions that aimed to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.
The latest would have threatened financial and travel sanctions against Syrian leaders if they did not withdraw their troops and heavy weapons from populated areas within 10 days.
The latest Security Council paralysis puts a UN role in Syria into question.
The Kofi Annan peace plan appears dead, and without East-West consensus, fresh multilateral initiatives or UN activity in a post-Assad Syria is uncertain.
The Security Council has extended its 300-man unarmed observer mission for a final 30 days unless the fighting ends before that. The observers could then become the embryo of a post-conflict UN mission, if East and West can agree.
“Although Annan has made the best out of a weak hand that he was played, and he’s really stayed in the game longer than many thought, events have so far outstripped now what the Security Council can do,” said Lopez.
Mashabane had a stern warning for the rough road ahead as a result of the revived Cold War division.
“In similar situations where the international community, including the Security Council, has preferred one side over the other, such bias has resulted in polarisation of the conflict,” he said.
“This is especially true for fractious societies, such as in Syria,” he said, taking perhaps the most principled stance in the council. – Independent Foreign Service