Call it prudent or cynical, Russia’s decision to abstain from the UN’s resolution against Libya helped expose yet another regime-change crusade masquerading as new internationalism.
Naturally, the country’s long-standing military and commercial ties with Qaddafi’s government played an important part in Russia’s regret over the war.
However, a look at the security council vote reveals an eerie sense of deja-vu from 2003, with a new improved coalition of the willing led by the US and key right wing European powers: France, Britain and Italy, which are all led by hawkish conservatives (Merkel’s Germany being the sole big defector).
What’s more, according to the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, Cameron and Sarkozy have made it clear that the real aim of the no fly zone is regime change:
This war is personal now. Its primary, stated aim is to halt the regime’s attacks on Libyan civilians. But David Cameron and other leaders have made very plain they also want the Libyan dictator removed from power. The US and its allies will not relent until they “get Gaddafi” and their nemesis is captured, jailed or dead.
Cameron has offered high-minded justifications for the American-led “Operation Odyssey Dawn” air and missile strikes that Tripoli claims have killed more than 50 people. But his language also conveys a developing personal animus. Gaddafi had “lied to the international community” and broken his word on the ceasefire, the prime minister said.
Of the ‘pacifists’, we have Russia, Germany, China, Brazil and India, with echoes of the non-aligned movement and the ‘second world’. The pro-sovereignty, anti-interventionist stance of Russia, China and India is, of course, much less to do with morality than with their own internal situations: all three are determined to avoid any outside diktat over the questionable ‘pacification’ of’ Chechnya, Kashmir and the Nepalis/Uighurs.
Both sides, then, are motivated by cynicism: US-Cameron-Sarko-Berlusconi by a combination of populist jingoism, US bandwagoning and the promise of Libyan oil and markets; China-India-Russia by an equally self-serving insistence against interfering in other countries’ ‘internal affairs’. However, the latter have a better case.
The whole point of the UN is not to pick winners, but to regulate the rules of the game. This means it has the right to impose a no-fly zone but cannot be used as a cover to favour the rebels over Qaddafi. By hijacking the UN, Western powers have added no legitimacy to the capricious, presumptuous and bullying doctrine of regime change. Not to mention the screamingly obvious double standards involved in fixating on enemy Libya and ignoring friend Bahrain.
Russia was right to call them out on it, even if it did this for the wrong reasons.