The war in Ukraine, Europe and Latin America

The war is now a year old and going through a phase of equilibrium. Ukraine has carried out major counter-offensives, but has failed to recover all the territories that belong to it, including those occupied since 2014, Donbass and Crimea. Russia, for its part, unable to advance territorially, has limited itself to maintaining its positions and pursuing war crimes, destroying electrical infrastructure and hydraulic dams in recent months.

Therefore, the end of the war may not be as close as it was thought during the last autumn of the northern hemisphere. It is precisely for this reason that the balance in question highlights the importance of the multiple arenas in which this conflict, the first systemic European war since 1945, is taking place. As such, it will have far-reaching effects over time and in space.

A year later, this “systemic” war, precisely, presupposes a strategic vision; that is, a geopolitical conception for the future; a financial project, because no war is free; a communicational confrontation, that is to say winning the narrative battle while cultivating empathy; and, since last January, also an international legal dispute.

Let’s go in parts. Convenient for Russia, status quo is not an option for Ukraine. Invaded without provocation, stripped of territories internationally recognized as its own, and with a decimated economy, Ukraine is forced to force a shift in the current military balance firmly in its favor. Although Putin’s idea of ​​occupying the country has failed, let alone the pipe dream of annexing it, the current stalemate nonetheless makes a free, democratic Ukraine firmly aligned with the West impossible.

In this sense, it is a good omen that – finally – Germany has approved the sending of Leopard tanks and the United States of Abrams; and that neutral Switzerland agreed to supply ammunition. The European powers’ delays are justified on the basis of Putin’s threats to respond with nuclear weapons to any escalation or direct NATO intervention in the conflict.

Paradoxically, giving in to such threats is not conducive to the very peace and stability of the international system and contradicts the new European reality. If Putin deduces that his nuclear threats are enough to emasculating Ukraine into an amputated geography and with its fragmented sovereignty, tolerating it would only serve to naturalize any future invasion. It has already happened in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. And add Syria outside Europe.

On the other side, supporting NATO non-intervention ad infinitum is a flimsy argument, requires several discursive acrobatics. On the one hand, because the space of European neutrality has been reduced by half. Indeed, with the accession of Finland and Sweden, Russia’s border with NATO has been doubled, the work of Putin himself. And, precisely, on the occasion of the appointment of these Nordic nations in May 2022, Putin had also threatened very serious reprisals which never took place. Europe and the world cannot live hostage to Russian imperial megalomania; the maps of NATO and the Union are converging in the sense of becoming one.

This is why this war represents a transcendental strategic challenge: rebuilding the international order, consolidating a united Europe, in democracy and with a revitalized NATO. Ukraine’s victory is a necessary condition for reformulating the international system, reviving the post-Cold War project interrupted in 1994. It was in this “Budapest Memorandum” that Russia’s conditions were accepted under which Ukraine handed over its nuclear arsenal and its candidacy for NATO and the European Union was postponed. That is, when Ukraine was left alone.

Today’s Ukraine has won the battle for narrative. Still in his olive green outfit, the charismatic Volodymyr Zelensky has become a symbol, uniting Europe behind his cause as has rarely happened in history. But that is not enough, he repeats it himself at each meeting with the press and with foreign leaders. Its attorney general, Andriy Kostin, did the same during his visit to Washington and New York at the end of January. Tanks are welcome, he said, but Ukraine’s victory needs more money, fighter jets and Western support in the arena of international law.

Ukraine needs more weapons, but it also needs allies for its legal initiatives. Kostin traveled to seek support for plans to create a “special court” to try Russian leaders for the “crime of aggression”. Introduced at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945 by Aron Trainin, paradoxically a Soviet jurist, the crime of aggression is one of the four established international crimes, along with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Kostin District Prosecutor’s Office reports documenting 67,000 war crimes, including 155 cases of sexual violence. She also estimates that 15,000 children were kidnapped and deported to Russia; forced population transfer is a crime against humanity. And he works hard to document crime of genocide“deliberate intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

There is evidence of all three types of crimes, but the threshold of proof is very high, their documentation is laborious and the identification of those responsible is not always clear. On the contrary, the proof of the crime of aggression is accelerated, since it defines the responsibilities in terms of political decisions, thus attributing specifically the political leaders. Thus, it is defined as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any way inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations”.

In other words, it is unequivocally the crime of aggression occurs when another country is invaded without prior motive or provocation. The first special tribunal for this purpose in history was that of Nuremberg in 1945, the one proposed today is also inspired by the special tribunals of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia. This is why the Zelensky government located the discussion within international organizations in view of the need to obtain a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. It is moreover the natural place, because a permanent member of the Security Council violates the fundamental principles and provisions of the United Nations Charter itself.

The issue will also reach the American continent where, unlike in Europe, it will be difficult to reach a consensus in favor of Ukraine’s position. This for various reasons: there is a long history of “neutrality” in Latin America; the quotation marks for having been almost always neutral, not out of principle but out of hypocrisy. The only country aligned with the Allies during World War II was Brazil. There was no shortage of those who declared war on the Axis, only after they surrendered.

Latin American duplicity can be observed today in the position of several countries in relation to this conflict. Zelensky himself exposed the ethical and political miseries of the region. “Which side would Simón Bolívar be on in this war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine? Who would support José de San Martín? Who would Miguel Hidalgo sympathize with? I don’t think they would help someone who is just plundering a small country like a typical colonizer,” he told them in a video last October.

Never more opportune, then Maduro talks about imperialism, but in addition to thousands of Cuban intelligence officers, he owns three Russian military bases, in Valencia, in the state of Carabobo, and in Manzanares, in the state of Miranda.. So Ortega. In his speech, he is still at war with the contras, but last June the Nicaraguan National Assembly authorized the entry of Russian military equipment and personnel into the country based on his request. And the Russian military presence in Cuba, meanwhile, dates back to the Soviet era and continues.

And then there are the incoherent, those who vote contradictorily in international bodies: Bolivia always abstains on this question, but Argentina, Brazil and Mexico vote erratically on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. . Maintaining the status quo or an eventual Russian victory would serve to further strengthen dictators allied with Putin. Ukraine’s victory is necessary for the survival of democracy and the validity of human rights in Latin America.

Maduro’s regime is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, complaints have been filed against the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship for similar crimes – last week for the forcible transfer of “liberated” political prisoners – and the documentation of the Cuban movement even includes the notion of “contemporary forms of slavery”. Putin in an international court is bad news for all of them.

But that’s not all. Putin in front of an international tribunal to try him for the specific crime of aggression is a direct message for the expansionist ambitions of Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela has a claim to Essequibo, a territory of Guyana that represents no less than two-thirds of the country. The dispute has existed since the 19th century, but it has intensified since 2015. The reason is simple: in that year, gigantic oil reserves were discovered at the bottom of the ocean near this region, making Guyana one of the fastest growing economies on the continent. the planet and should become the country with the highest per capita oil income in the world.

Guyana represents a fraction of the territory and of the economic and military power of Venezuela. But in Venezuela, as in Russia, a troubled despot rules, sanctioned and without international legitimacy. It would not be the first time that a tyrant repudiated by his people would embark on a pseudo-nationalist military adventure, that is to say by a crime of aggression, to regain his strength. For all the past an international tribunal to try Russia’s crime of aggression would also be great news for the peace and security of the Americas.

This European war is today a world war. As Viet Thanh Nguyen so aptly said, “All wars are fought twice, the first on the battlefield and the second in memory.” Like Nuremberg, this tribunal is necessary in order not to forget, in order also to win the war of memory.