Dispatches See, 1) José Naranjo (Dakar), “Etiopía, la guerra más mortal del siglo: 600.000 civiles muertos en dos años; Las estimaciones de las instituciones europeas…
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Developing Because so much is being written about the Ukraine Crisis, we are providing links to the most important news dispatches and analyses, in particular…
The U.S. has called for an “open” meeting of the U.N. Security Council for Monday, January 31, the last possible day before Russia takes over the rotating Presidency of the Council for the month of February. It is not clear if this call was for an “Emergency Meeting” of the Security Council. If it wasn’t, it should have been.
The call for a meeting on Monday and not Friday reveals the total lack of urgency which seems to animate the Biden Administration’s actions.
Having not heard any serious international law arguments criticizing Russia’s actions and threats against Ukraine, one must assume that the call for a Security Council meeting is just a perfunctory gesture. Someone must have woken up and realized that the Russians were assuming the Presidency of the Council on Tuesday, which could make convening a meeting more difficult.
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John F. Kennedy read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman in 1962. We should all be reading it now. And another of her books which which is highly relevant, The March of Folly (1984).
The Guns of August, which was published only months before the Cuban Missile crisis, appears to have had a deep impact on John F. Kennedy and his approach to decision-making during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Given how dicey that U.S.-Soviet nuclear confrontation was, it could be that one reason we are all here is that he read that book.
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If you see international lawyers and diplomats on television talking about international law, there may be some hope for diplomacy.
If you see generals talking about military capabilities and deployments, we may be headed toward a major ground war in Europe, and the attendant risks of escalation to a limited nuclear conflict or to an all-out nuclear war.
In 1938, Adolf Hitler, with German troops massed to invade Czechoslovakia, challenged the world.
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The capitulation at Munich turned out to be the first step in the final collapse of the international legal order….
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Putin’s threat may be parochially perceived by some in Europe as a threat to the “European Security Order”, but in fact it is much more than that. It is a frontal attack on the international legal norms and institutions which safeguard the security from military attack of every country in the world, and every territory with an established international demarcation line, such as Taiwan.
The U.S., NATO members, and other countries in the region have not risen to effectively meet the threat, or are only belatedly beginning to do so.
If the threat is as great as that outlined above, how could it be sufficient to simply threaten economic sanctions and other non-military measures in the event Russia invades Ukraine?
If these deterrent threats do not appear to be working, as preparations for a Russian invasion continue while diplomatic negotiations show no promise, is not more required?
Once the evil of war is loosed upon the world, no one can predict what course it may take. One should recall the rosy predictions in August, 1914 of those who launched WWI, expecting six weeks of hostilities. It didn’t work out as that way.
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Germany should state clearly, immediately, and unequivocally, that it will support expulsion of Russia from the SWIFT international payments system if Russia invades Ukraine. Germany’s ambivalence on this point has greatly diluted the deterrent force of threats to adopt this measure.
Germany should also state unequivocally, and immediately, that if Putin invades Ukraine, it will kill the Nordstream II gas pipeline project and will never authorize it to operate in its territory.
Germany, which was responsible for the collapse of the international legal order beginning in 1938, owes the world at least these two measures.
Politically and financially, these steps will not be easy to take. Germany now stands at the center of the world stage, with a potentially decisive voice in Putin’s calculations. International law and international order require sacrifices. These, however, are minimal when compared to the sacrifices of war.
Politically and financially, these steps will not be easy to take. Germany now stands at the center of the world stage, with a potentially decisive voice in Putin’s calculations. International law and international order require sacrifices. These, however, are minimal when compared to the sacrifices of war.
Cuesta and Gómez quote Zbigniev Rau, the new President of the OSCE (and Polish foreign minister), as saying after the OSCE meeting in Vienna on Thursday, January 13, “The risk of war is the region in now greater than at any other moment in the last 30 years.”
Developments appear to confirm previous analyses that Putin is merely going through the motions of attempted diplomacy to bolster his case that he tried everything and had no alternative other than to invade Ukraine.
It now appears that he is doubling down on his threat and plans to invade Ukraine, in what may be in his mind a giant game of “chicken” with Joe Biden and the U.S.
In 1945, under the original scheme of the United Nations Charter, a country did not have to be a member of a collective self-defense or…
As far back as December 19, David Ignatius reported on a telltale fatal flaw in U.S. thinking about how it and NATO would respond to a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He reported that American military advisors and policy makers were discussing how to provide assistance to Ukrainian “insurgents” or a Ukrainian “insurgency”. Ignatius on January 6 and David E. Sanger and Eric Schmittt on January 8 report that policymakers are still using the same terminology.
In doing so they have framed the question in a way which naively fails to take international law into account, much less to use it actively to achieve American deterrence goals, while employing a conceptual framework that assumes Ukrainian defeat. They are talking in terms of providing military assistance to “insurgents” after Russia has taken over Ukraine.
The conceptual framework assumes defeat, while completely ignoring international law and the U.N. Charter.
Story also availabe on Medium / James Rowles
See https://jamesrowles.medium.com/
January 7, 2022 See, 1) AFP, “Russia’s ‘mini-Nato’ intervenes in Kazakhstan Clashes reported in Almaty as govt buildings cleared of protesters,” 24newshd.tv January 7, 2022(7:43…
With the Americans and the Europeans firmly set in their demands that the Taliban provide guarantees for the respect of human rights before assets can be freed or aid can flow, the Afghan economy appears on the verge of collapse.
As winter is fast approaching, a humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions becomes more likely very day.
It is difficult to see either side yielding, while diplomacy is awkward and takes a lot of time.
In these circumstances, it seems likely that millions of Afghans will starve to death before the assistance they so desperately need reaches them.
Draft See, 1) Ted Regencia, “ICC to open full investigation into Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ The Hague-based court says ‘specific legal element of the crime…
The key point is that the international community should not deny to the people of Afghanistan–the individual life-and-blood human beings–the aid they need to survive, on the theory that withholding aid will make the Taliban respect human rights. For examples of the challenges of survival these human beings face, see Espinosa and Follorou, above.
See, 1) Khudai Noor Nasar (Islamabad), “Afghanistan: Taliban leaders in bust-up at presidential palace, sources say,” BBC, September, 2021 2:30 p.m.(?) EST). 2) Nirmeeti Patole,…
