League Of Nations - UN -?

• ANDREI SANNIKOV
• 23.04.2022, 12:12

It is high time to think of an organization capable of punishing crimes.

The League of Nations was founded after the First World War in 1919-1920 as an organization designed to prevent a new war.

There was originally no Russia there. Neither was the USSR, which was formed later, but the League was not eager to admit it.

The USSR became a member of the League of Nations in 1934, when Hitler had already come to power in Germany and fascism was becoming active in Europe.

It was like, let's accept them in order to fight against the worst evils. It's like admitting today to the G7 and to the G20, and to the Council of Europe, etc.

The USSR was excluded in 1939 not because the Bolsheviks attacked Finland, but (attention!) because the world community was outraged by the Soviet blatant provocation and governments of the League of Nations had to decide to exclude the aggressor.

That, in fact, was the end of the League of Nations story.

It became clear that the mechanisms it had could not prevent a large-scale war.

Even before the League of Nations was formally dissolved, the United Nations was created with new mechanisms and the same task - to prevent a new large-scale war.

The UN was somehow or other coping with the task, although wars broke out, and the bloody ones too, but the international officials invented an excuse: it is better to talk than to shoot.

And so they were talking and talking and talking...

Until the UN was completely debased.

There were a lot of those dissatisfied with the organization of the UN's work. The issue of reforming the Security Council has been on the agenda for a long time. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it became more relevant. Germany, Japan, Mexico, India, Italy, Brazil... claim to be permanent members. Yet, how can the Security Council be reformed when Russia and China are standing up for their right to kill people, blocking any attempts to condemn these killings by the most representative international organization?

The League of Nations acknowledged its failure to prevent war and resigned.

The UN, which has proved unable to stop a war, and more than just one, is not going to dissolve itself and is not even going to reform.

This means one simple thing: With regard to Ukraine, the UN, as an organism, will do everything to preserve itself and not to curb the aggressor, Russia.

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) is such a modern replica among interstate organizations, which is also aimed at preservation of international peace and security.

What peace and security? The OSCE cannot even influence the totally insolent psychopath dictators in its region, those from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan!

The OSCE mechanisms simply do not work during a massive and now even military attack on democracy.

Do you think anyone has raised the issue of force majeure, the incompatibility of the OSCE with what is happening now? I don't know anyone who would do that, maybe you'll be lucky.

The Council of Europe, which stands for human rights and democracy, is a cool organization. Except that the area of democracy in the world is rapidly shrinking, despite the fact that the Council of Europe keeps defending it.

The positions of countries with authoritarian and dictatorial regimes are strong in all these organizations. It is absurd, of course, but it is a fact.

The question is: why does the democratic world inevitably care about indulging all sorts of scoundrels, rather than reinforcing the very values that are so nobly spelled out in the charters of these organizations?

I apologise for the rhetorical question.

However, there is a very democratic union of very democratic states - the European Union. And all the hope lies with it, because, on the one hand, it does not include autarchies, and on the other, it concentrates the most effective instruments of influence on the situation in Europe, and in the world. And yet, for some reason there are always lobbyists of dictatorships and aggressors in this very EU. I do not even know why. It could not be for money, could it?

One would think, Russia has attacked Europe, Putin wants to destroy Ukraine, where, by the way, Hungarians, Romanians, Greeks and other EU nationalities live along with Ukrainians, and still there are those in the European Union who oppose both sanctions against Russia and aid to Ukraine.

It is surprising that even the EU, an intergovernmental organisation with a fairly professional bureaucracy, has not yet created at least a high-level group on the war in Ukraine. This would not be difficult for them to do, and it would increase the effectiveness of their work and assistance to Ukraine, and would even resolve the issue of sanctions and blockades of arms supplies by some countries. Apparently, the aim is not to assist Ukraine in a real way, but to reduce the damage to themselves from this war.

The attempts to hold on to the old world, to the old international organisations, are doomed to fail.

Yesterday's peace was shot and destroyed by Russia in Ukraine's Bucha.

The rules of the game that were in place yesterday do not exist today.

New rules are needed: all means are legitimate and justified to stop the killing of civilians, the elderly, children and women.

All means must be applied to save Ukraine and therefore save the world.

And if the international organisations have no such means or are unwilling to see and apply them, then it is time for these organisations to take a well-deserved rest.

Even for the UN, because talking doesn't stop killing.

It is time to think of a universal organisation that not only describes crimes, but is also able to punish them.

Andrei Sannikov, leader of the European Belarus civil campaign, Facebook