UN vote has increased risk of nuclear war

UNGA move promotes danger rather than maintaining peace and security

By Lauren Michaels

IN A precarious situation which could at any moment lead to to nuclear confrontation, the UN General Assembly [UNGA] last week voted by a large majority to condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The UNGA is the policy-making arm of the UN, which describes itself as “the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity”.

So does the UNGA vote against Russia do anything towards the UN’s stated purpose of maintaining international peace and security? Might it end the dangerous and costly conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine? The simple answer is “no”. On the contrary, it points towards further escalation.

The UN vote was hailed in the West, not as a means of securing a peaceful solution, but as proof of Russia’s international isolation. The West valued the vote as a successful manoeuvre in its conflict with Russia over Ukraine, not as a stage in a peace process.

Meanwhile, Russia viewed the resolution, which is not legally binding, as a confrontational gesture, a misuse of the UN, signalling that the West aimed to attain its own geopolitical goals in opposition to Moscow, preserving a Western monopoly in global affairs, sowing discord in the UNGA and drawing out the Ukraine conflict.

For centuries, Ukraine and Russia have shared a border, close ethnic, historical, cultural, trade and linguistic ties, while the involvement of the West in Ukraine’s affairs has been intensifying in recent decades, in particular, since the West-backed overthrowal of Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s pro-Russian government in 2014 and its replacement with an anti-Russian administration.

In 1990, Western countries gave assurances to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to the east, if the USSR disbanded its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. 

Nonetheless, NATO enlarged to encompass the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020).

What’s more, NATO countries, disregarding the UN, attacked Russia’s ally Serbia in 1999, then in the 2000s, Iraq, Libya and Syria. In 2008, the US announced that NATO intended to include Ukraine and Georgia.

This was a step too far for Russia, threatening its naval access to the Black Sea, Mediterranean and Middle East. If Ukraine and Georgia joined NATO, Russia would be surrounded by five NATO countries in the Black Sea: Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Romania.

Believing its fundamental security interests and very existence as a state to be under threat, with NATO’s military infrastructure moving right up to its border, Russia will no doubt do whatever is necessary to protect itself against further NATO expansion east.

Andrey Kortunov (above), Director General of the think tank RIAC, warns: “The nuclear risks are growing literally every day.

“If the Russian leadership faces a prospect of a strategic defeat on the battlefield, it is likely to utilise all the means it has at its disposal to change the negative dynamics, including tactical nuclear weapons.”

The West, meanwhile, is warning that it will do whatever is required to support Kiev’s victory over Russia.

US economist and adviser to the UN, Jeffrey Sachs (above), told Bloomberg TV: “The US insists it will do anything to support Ukraine’s defeat of Russia. Russia views this as a proxy war with the US. Whatever one thinks about this, this is the path of extraordinary, dangerous escalation.

“A lot of the world is watching these events in horror and a lot of the world doesn’t like this NATO expansion, which they interpret as at the core of this. They want to see a compromise between the US and Russia.”

This situation calls for help from peace-oriented platforms such as the UN but the latest UNGA statement falls short of what is required.

The world is closer to the brink of the nuclear precipice than it has been in the 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis, augmented by geopolitical and economic instability. A measured, responsible approach by all parties might avert the danger.

Kortunov advises that the restoration of bilateral US-Russian governmental communications is crucial, in particular between the US and Russian diplomatic services, ministries of defence and security councils.

If the US objects to this on the grounds that it could be seen as indirect recognition or acceptance of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or discussing Ukraine without the participation of Ukrainian authorities or representatives, Kortunov suggests separating, so far as possible, the nuclear issue from the rest of the “Ukrainian portfolio” and presenting the former as a technical rather than a political problem.

“To cut it short, we need to avoid a nuclear war, even if we cannot stop the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in the nearest future,” he says.