As the costs in blood and treasure of Vladimir Putin’s illegal aggression against Ukraine have mounted and the systemic motives for that aggression have been clarified, Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, has emerged as an eloquent defender of human rights and democratic values. In this latest piece for Policy, Rae examines the current crisis and its place in history, geopolitics and international law.

Bob Rae

Vladimir Putin’s disastrous decision to launch what he has called a “special military operation” against Ukraine on the night of February 24, 2022 has generated death and mayhem throughout Ukraine and yet-to-be-fully-understood damage to the world’s economy. It has also raised basic questions about the nature of the modern world and its institutions, including the United Nations. 

We live history in real time, and it is difficult to assess the complete impact of events as they unfold around us. But this has all the makings of a turning point, and forces us to assess the full impact of Putin’s war.   

Together with many allies, Canada’s response has been clear: Russia’s arguments and justifications for the conflict have been dismissed as the dangerous nonsense they so clearly are. While Russia invoked both self-defence and allegations of genocide against Ukraine for its treatment of Russian speakers in that country, these excuses were firmly rejected by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as plausible justification of its invasion.  

On April 11th Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed that Russia’s motive in attacking Ukraine was to catalyze “an end to the US quest for world domination” — an outburst that takes us back to the propaganda of the Cold War.

Putin himself made a different case for invasion in a long article published in the summer of 2021; one that cited the past, not the future, as a rationale. Ukraine and Russia are essentially one people, he wrote; their common history, culture, and “spiritual space” dates back thousands of years, and attempts to fuel a “false narrative” of a separate Ukrainian nationalism and identity have always been illegitimate, whether supported by Bolsheviks, Nazis, or NATO. “Friendly relations” are the only path forward, he wrote. That is why both “demilitarization” and “denazification” are such essential features of the Putin dogma and ruthless action in the war. Centres of Ukrainian art, language and culture are, for Putin, essential targets for looting and destroying.  

Putin clearly hoped that a massive show of strength at the outset would lead to a quick capture of major cities, including Kyiv, and “shock and awe” would work its magic, killing thousands in their path and leading to the collapse and surrender of the Zelenskyi government. It would all be over in a matter of days.  

Death and destruction have certainly resulted, but not the collapse, and not the surrender. Ever since Henri Durant, the Swiss architect of the Red Cross, witnessed the slaughter at the Battle of Solferino in the middle of the 19th century, activists, and then governments, have attempted to create a code of conduct for war. Even in the heat of conflict, belligerent governments are supposed to obey basic rules of humanity and decency, codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Additions to the body of international humanitarian law (IHL) were set out as humanity processed its potential for organized evil, including: at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after the Second World War; in the Charter of the United Nations; in the establishment of the ICJ; in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in the conventions on torture and genocide; and later in the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and codified crimes against humanity that could be investigated and could lead to charges, trials, and punishment.

The design and structure of this complex world of accountability is far from perfect. The main flaw is that for all their ambition, these are essentially agreements among nation states that are stronger in aspiration than they are in execution. Speaking at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, Winston Churchill, in his famous “Iron Curtain speech”, reminded his listeners that courts and judges need a good constabulary. A failure to enforce the law will lead to abuse and disrespect. That had been the fate of the League of Nations, and the same thing would happen again unless the world corrected the flaw.  

A further assumption of the postwar architecture was that the so-called P5 — the permanent, veto-holding members of the United Nations Security Council — would work together to police the world. They would be the core of the constabulary, the enforcers of the global security system.  

Ukraine is an example of what happens when a policeman turns to crime, an enforcer goes rotten, a standard bearer of the global system becomes a thug. Critics are correct that this is not the first time since 1945 that world powers have decided to take matters into their own hands. The examples are legion — the UK and France in Suez in 1956, the United States in Vietnam, the USSR in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the coalition led by the US and the UK, to name just a few. All were based on the assumption that power and perceived national interest justified invasion. But there was also the sense that they would undertake intervention because they could, formulating a casus belli simply as a means to an end.

All were seen in their time as existential events for both the United Nations and the rule of law, missing the point that the UN was never supposed to be a world government, that national sovereignty is recognized as a pillar of its charter, and that the hope that somehow the permanent members would rise above their own self-interest to provide global security was always a pipe dream.

But it is important not to join the Russians and their crew of allies in this descent into relativism and “whataboutism”. Russia has invaded Ukraine. The bodies with their hands tied behind their backs and bullets in their heads found in Bucha are not fake news. The ongoing destruction of Mariupol and many other cities is not a fiction. They are real, and they are crimes. As the attacks proceed and the bombs fall, Ukraine continues to resist, with remarkable military success, and Russia continues its brutal assault by air, land, and sea.

Canada has joined others in a five-part approach: military assistance to Ukraine that will allow for effective defence; financial and humanitarian help to Ukraine and international agencies to deal with the refugee crisis and the devastating economic and social impact of the Russian invasion (now at over 11 million people displaced from their homes); sanctions against Russia that are co-ordinated and targeted on an unprecedented scale; pursuing accountability at the ICJ, the ICC, and other means to hold criminals to account; and providing whatever assistance we can to a negotiating process and mediation efforts that have been proceeding quietly for several weeks.

We have also been engaged in a campaign of public diplomacy to call out the aggression for what it is, to name it and shame it as much as possible, to counter the lies and propaganda that have been a hallmark of Russian policy for many decades (you can take the boy out of the KGB but you can’t take the KGB out of the boy), and to explain the links among the five points in that strategy.  

The critical additional point is that none of the measures taken are an end in themselves. This is not an exercise in ticking boxes. It is about effectiveness in achieving our goals: to protect human life; to advance the freedom, wellbeing and prosperity of Ukraine and other sovereign states; to maintain global stability; and to enhance the rule of law and the pursuit of justice and accountability. If the means chosen so far are inadequate to achieve these goals, then other steps must be taken.  

Article 51 of the UN Charter allows countries to defend themselves from aggression, and allows others to join in that defence. We should never lose sight of that principle. Nor should we forget the need for the General Assembly to act when the Security Council is frozen or deadlocked. Ceasefires will need policing. Aggression is a crime. So are forcible deportation, the disproportionate use of force, torture, and attempts to destroy a nation and a people. Allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of aggression and genocide must all be investigated thoroughly and cannot be wished away by the Kremlin. 

Vladimir Putin thought his military operation would be special, speedy and quickly done. He was wrong. He is not the first tyrant to make a terrible miscalculation, nor will he be the last. But our resolve must be clear: he cannot succeed in this exercise of cruelty and criminality. Nor can he avoid responsibility for what he started and how the troops under his command have committed such carnage. As Churchill so aptly said “when you are walking through hell, keep going”. That is what we must do now.  

We also have to deal with the broader impacts of the invasion on the global economy. The sanctions on Russia, the destruction of ports, infrastructure, land, agriculture, the refugee displacement, all these have meant chaos in local economies and global markets. Sixty countries have now been identified as facing debt crises. Food shortages and even famine are expected in many countries. Social and political unrest always follow inflation in food and energy prices. Putin thought his “local problem” could be quickly solved. How wrong he is. As another Conservative survivor, Talleyrand, once said: “It is worse than immoral. It is a blunder.”    

Bob Rae is Canada’s permanent representative to the United Nations.