Ending Putin's war in Ukraine starts with ending impunity: Canada's UN ambassador
‘There have to be consequences,’ says Bob Rae
As Canada's Ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae has had a front row seat facing a world beset by increasingly complex crises: inequality, climate crisis, conflict and unprecedented displacement.
"It is not a time when let's say one or two things have gone wrong. It's a time when disruption is the norm and not the exception," said Rae.
As another year begins, global crises continue to multiply, and the institutions put in place at the end of the Second World War to solve such problems are beset by crises of their own. Rae acknowledges the UN is flawed, but he has faith in multilateral organizations as the best starting point for collectively overcoming global challenges.
"We make a mistake to think pursuing peace, ending conflict, pursuing justice, creating sustainable economies and societies are all the product of wooly and well-meaning compassion. They are not. They are hard things to do and hard things to pursue," said Rae.
"Unless we continue to engage effectively, we shall face a world in which our choices will be limited, our prosperity will be more elusive. And, yes: our lives will be harsher and yes, nastier and yes, shorter."
In October 2022, Rae made an impassioned plea in a speech titled Engaging with a World in Turmoil. He spoke at the Carleton Dominion Chalmers Centre in Ottawa to mark the 10th anniversary of the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship.
In an interview after his talk, Rae spoke to IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.
Here is an excerpt from their conversation.
You pointed out in this speech that we're not in a world war, and yet we're told that Ukrainians are at the front line of the fight for democracy, for our rights, for freedom and all those things. And as you said, we're not neutral in this conflict. At what point do we acknowledge that this is, in fact, a kind of world war?
The reason why the UN is so involved… is because the fundamental no-no in the charter is the aggression of one country against another. It's unambiguous. It's against the law. It's against the rules to do that.
The invasion of one country by another country is what started World War Two. It's what started World War One. And we are, as we say in the charter, just saving future generations from the scourge of war. That's the one fundamental lesson we've learned. You cannot attack another country. So that puts the Ukrainians firmly on the front lines of what has become a — it's not a world war, but it's certainly a global conflict. Maybe I'm just playing with words, but it's certainly one that has huge ramifications.
The reason why in many respects the stakes are high for both sides is ensuring that both can come away from the end of the conflict — when it comes — with the knowledge that some lessons have been learned. And I think that's the key point that we have to keep reinforcing. We can't let Putin think that 'oh, well, I got what I wanted', or 'nobody's going to punish me and there's nothing else they can do about it.' There have to be consequences.
What do consequences look like when Russia is part of a Security Council that was designed at a very different time and has a kind of paralysis about trying to impose immunity or to stop impunity?
Now that Russia has basically vetoed the Security Council into irrelevance on this particular issue, we then have to say: well, what other institutions do we have? And actually, we've been quite inventive. We've got the General Assembly, we've got the International Court of Justice with the International Criminal Court. [There is] talk about a further tribunal that will deal with the crime of aggression, whatever form that takes.
Plus, the fact of the matter is that a number of countries have frozen hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets. And the Russians are furious about it. They hate it. They deplore it. They will denounce it every which way they want.
The legal justification for it is that the International Court of Justice has said this is aggression and this is what we're dealing with. And so as that becomes clear, the steps that can be taken to extract accountability out of Russia are good steps. We're not there yet. It's slow. It's painful. It's not immediate... but we're much further ahead than I think many people thought we would be on February 24th [2022].
Back to the Security Council. As you said, we've seen repeatedly a virtual standstill there on so many incredibly important issues. They've really failed to achieve anything of substance in recent years. How do you restore faith in the UN without radical reform of the Security Council?
I think it limits your ability to put all of your faith in one place or one institution. I mean, it has to be realistic. I always remind people that the Security Council didn't do much over Vietnam either. Let's face it, that was a serious conflict that dominated the world for a decade between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies, that finally got some kind of criminal accountability issues in Cambodia with the courts.
The problem of the UN is not a new one. It's not like: oh, my goodness, this thing was really running great, running on all 12 cylinders, and suddenly something bad happened — and what are we going to do about it now? It's always had this terrible flaw in its original design. And so the most we can do, I think, is to say to people, don't do it again.
Don't give new countries a veto because that's a bad idea. Expand the membership. Sure. But there are ways within the UN structure, lots of ways, of giving credence to other institutions.
The P5 — as we call them — the permanent five members need to become more enthusiastic about what some of the other institutions are doing, like the Peacebuilding Commission, which has got a lot of legs in dealing with the prevention of violence, the prevention of conflict. These are the kinds of things we need to be working on.
*Q&A was edited for clarity and length. This episode was produced by Nahlah Ayed.
