ปฏิเสธ Nato ไม่เข้าร่วมกับพวกแก๊งสงครามของโลก .Do not join the global gang war. We must free ourselves from the hypocrisy and nob NATO.

Do not join the global gang war

We must free ourselves from the hypocrisy and nob NATO

Of:

Mikael Nyberg

PUBLISHED: TODAY 05.30

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.

"The United States and NATO justified the war in Afghanistan with an arbitrary reinterpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defense," writes Mikael Nyberg.

"The United States and NATO justified the war in Afghanistan with an arbitrary reinterpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defense," writes Mikael Nyberg.

Photo: Ivan Sekretarev / AP

CULTURE

War seldom develops as the instigators intended. For six months, the Swedish peacekeepers would stay in Afghanistan. Only 20 years later did the last soldiers leave the country, thanked by the United States and NATO. The Taliban, which abandoned Kabul in 2001, marched in again. Expenses for the war from 2009 to 2019: over 100,000 killed or injured Afghan civilians.

At the annexation of Crimea in 2014, national feelings in Russia swelled, but now Putin's great Russian nostalgia has run into a miscalculation. The opposition in Ukraine refuses to stand still.

With superior firepower it is possible that as in Grozny or Fallujah

lay cities in gravel and ashes. But then? The expertise estimates that an occupation of Ukraine would require 20 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants, a total of 900,000 men.

Young Russian soldiers on post in the street corners hardly know where they ended up, let alone why they ended up where they ended up. They are scolded by older women in their own mother tongue. They are ashamed.

If the feeling spreads in Russian society, it can grow into resistance to the war. But repression is difficult. The Russian peace movement needs a response. What we do and do not do affects the outlook.

On February 21, three days before the Russian invasion, the UN Security Council debated Russia's recognition of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Africa has many peoples divided by arbitrary borders, pointed out Kenya's UN Ambassador Martin Kimani.

But after the liberation from the colonial powers, the new states decided not to jeopardize the peace with territorial claims. The quest for reunification is understandable, he explained, "but Kenya rejects attempts to forcibly meet this desire."

Like representatives of many other states, he condemned Russia's violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. But he did not stay there:

"The United Nations Charter continues to be torn apart by the relentless attacks of the powerful. For a moment, it is invoked with reverence by countries that then turn their backs on it and strive for goals that are directly opposite to international peace and security. "

… In our part of the world, tunnel vision is a moral imperative.

Kenya expresses its strong concern and opposition to the recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. We also strongly oppose the trend in recent decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, to ruthlessly violate international law. "

Russia is not alone in attacking other countries and changing borders by force. NATO countries overturned the UN Charter when they bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 and gave Kosovo diplomatic recognition. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were blatant violations of the ban on aggression, and in Libya, NATO transformed a limited UN mandate into a carte blanche to force a regime change. Sweden participated.

The list can be made longer. The war on terrorism, with its drone attacks, kidnappings and torture camps, has been a long series of crimes against international law.

When the Western powers talk about violations of international law, they appear in many countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America as hypocrites. But in our part of the world, tunnel vision is a moral imperative. Pointing out the context is called "relativizing", that is, reducing Russia's crimes.

Is that not exactly how the leaders in Moscow apologize for their abuse? Putin uses word for word the same reasons as NATO countries to override the prohibition of violence under international law. He waves with precedent.

The United States openly reserves the right to violate international law.

But the context does not diminish the crime. On the contrary. It's like gang crime. Every single murder is an atrocity and a source of grief and anger, but in the tunnel vision of gangster logic there is no way out of the shootings, just an endless line of brutally killed young men. Only when the crime is relativized, when it is placed in its bloody context, does it appear as a greater threat. It will be possible to do something about the social driving forces.

The UN Charter, as Martin Kimani points out, is about to be torn apart. The great powers have always taken the paragraphs lightly. Today, there is not much left of the collective security that international law formally guarantees. A global gangster logic has taken over.

The United States openly reserves the right to violate international law. Richard Haass, Adviser to the Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 1997 advocated a "foreign policy by posse".

“Some analysts believe that… The United States should be prevented from acting in this way unless authorized by the Security Council. Otherwise, it is claimed, the rally led by the United States will be nothing more than the self-proclaimed citizen guard. But such a condition would in practice give the other four members of the council a veto over what the United States does. " ("The Reluctant Sheriff", 1997)

The UN Charter was not allowed to stand in the way.

At the NATO summit in 1999, the United States forced through an extension of the mutual defense obligations. They would now not only take effect in the event of an armed attack from outside one of the Member States, but also "in the event of other risks of a major nature, such as terrorist acts, sabotage and organized crime, and in the event of disruptions in the supply of vital resources".

The United States and NATO justified the war in Afghanistan with an arbitrary reinterpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defense. They considered themselves entitled to occupy a foreign country without UN intervention in order to retaliate against an attack by a group of terrorists and to prevent any future terrorist acts.

"If we wait for the threats to materialize completely, we have waited too long," President Bush declared ahead of the invasion of Iraq (FT 12 Mar-02).

The same logic guides the EU. In 2003, the Council of Ministers adopted its first security strategy: "With the new threats, the first line of defense will often be abroad… We must develop a strategic culture that promotes early, rapid, and when necessary, robust interventions."

This logic is incompatible with the respect for the sovereignty of all states that the UN Charter requires.

The Swedish conscription, prepared and equipped to withstand an attacker, was sent to the scrap yard to be replaced by professional soldiers trained for the preventive wars. The consulting firm SAIC, one of the largest contractors in the Pentagon, the CIA and the NSA, was responsible for the planning. Sweden's sphere of interest now stretched, SAIC explained in a report in 2001, across the Baltic Sea to the Baltics and further out into Europe. The Armed Forces would also prepare for global operations "especially in those parts of the world where Sweden has vital economic and / or political interests".

This logic is incompatible with the respect for the sovereignty of all states that the UN Charter requires. It leads straight into the deadly game of great power: If the United States, NATO, the EU and Sweden consider themselves entitled to place a first line of defense in Afghanistan or Libya, what does Russia mean by the same right in Ukraine?

But in the tunnel vision, reflection has no place. There, the Russian attack will be a reason to draw us deeper into the global gang war. We must clean up the last remnants of the freedom of alliance. Join NATO.

We should do the opposite. We should break free from the alliance with hypocrisy that has been the hallmark of Swedish foreign and security policy for decades. We can not give better encouragement to the popular forces in Russia that demand an end to the aggression.

Solidarity with Ukraine needs reflection. Let the war be a defeat for the gangster logic, let it not result in new serious twists in the great power game.