Putin’s War on Ukraine
https://www.project-syndicate.org/topic/the-russia-ukraine-crisis
How to Prosecute Putin
Apr 10, 2023
Putting the Russian president on trial for the international crime of aggression would be more straightforward than trying him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since the International Criminal Court has no mandate to prosecute such crimes, a special international tribunal must be formed – with US support.
EDINBURGH – A few weeks ago, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. It is a significant – indeed, historic – step toward holding Putin and his henchmen accountable for their crimes in Ukraine. But more must be done.
Evidence of Russian atrocities in Ukraine – including murder, rape, torture, and attacks on civilians, civilian infrastructure, and other non-military targets – continues to accumulate. Just last month, a United Nations-backed inquiry published a report accusing Russia of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. While the ICC indictment is unlikely to be the only legal action brought against Putin and his cronies, it is the first. The ICC prosecutor has ensured that Putin will go down in history as the first leader of a permanent member of the UN Security Council to be indicted for an international crime.
The move is not merely symbolic. Those who think imprisoning Putin is an impossibility should recall that Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor is currently serving a 50-year sentence in a British prison, and former Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević died in prison in The Hague while on trial for war crimes. And those who think that the arrest warrant will have no impact on the accused should take note of reports of growing dissent within Putin’s leadership cabal, with insiders no doubt fearing that they will soon face indictments as well.
Admittedly, while the ICC president has moved unusually quickly and issued a statement of intent to arraign Putin in The Hague, Putin is unlikely to leave himself open to arrest by entering any of the 123 states that are signed up to the ICC. Sadly, Russia does not recognize the ICC (nor does the United States). So, given that US President Joe Biden has welcomed action, despite opposing the ICC, how can the world add to the pressure on Putin and his cronies?
The crime of aggression – beginning with the invasion of Crimea in 2014 – is Putin’s “original sin,” the font of all the recent atrocities. As University College London law professor Philippe Sands has argued, aggression would be more straightforward to prosecute than war crimes and crimes against humanity, because it can be linked directly to the Kremlin.
The ICC’s mandate does not extend to prosecuting the crime of aggression, but a special international tribunal can be created with an explicit focus on this “leadership crime.” The tribunal’s work would complement and give weight to that of the ICC.
The encouraging news is that all major European countries, as well as the European Union and the Council of Europe, have endorsed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s request that Putin and his circle be prosecuted for the crime of aggression. A tribunal could be constituted in the coming months.
But American support will be vital to the success of such a tribunal. Biden need not fear that supporting an investigation into Putin would tilt the scales – which he has so carefully calibrated – from support for Ukraine’s defense to active aggression against Russia. After all, the US has regularly supported special tribunals – notably for Cambodia, Lebanon, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and the former Yugoslavia – to prosecute international crimes. And US prosecutors were at the forefront of the Nuremberg trials, carried out by the International Military Tribunal to prosecute and punish leading Nazis after World War II. The same went for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which carried out the “Tokyo trials” of Japanese war criminals.
Both tribunals were founded upon the 1941 Declaration of St. James’s Palace, or London Declaration, in which the Allied powers agreed that there would be no safe haven for those guilty of aggression. This would likewise form the basis of the special tribunal tasked with investigating and prosecuting Putin.
Concerns that such a tribunal would open the door for prosecutions relating to conflicts like the Iraq War are also unfounded. The special tribunal on crimes of aggression in Ukraine would be a response to Zelensky’s explicit request, made on behalf of Ukraine’s government and people. The tribunal’s authority would be derived from Ukrainian law, together with the prohibition on crimes of aggression inherent in international law. And the body would focus exclusively on the situation in Ukraine, where the evidence of wrongdoing arguably – and unlike in many other conflicts – meets the very high standard of proof required.
Nor will the prospect of a trial make Putin less willing to contemplate peace talks. I dealt directly with him, as both finance minister and prime minister of the United Kingdom, not least over the assassination in 2006 of the UK-nationalized Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko. Those experiences taught me that the only language Putin understands is that of power. He will not view pulled punches as an olive branch worth taking, but as yet more appeasement born of weakness.
In the face of Russian brutality, Ukrainians have stood united and fought valiantly. The rest of the world – led by the US – must show the same courage and resolve to ensure that justice is served, beginning with Russia’s top leaders.
America has willed the end – accountability for Putin and his cronies. Now it must join Europe in supporting the means.
Gordon Brown, a former prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer of the United Kingdom, is Chair of Education Cannot Wait’s High-Level Steering Group.
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The Great Revision
Mar 31, 2023
Amid so much instability, one thing is clear 13 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: the world order will not survive in its previous form, and Europe will have to adapt quickly. Even if cooperation eventually prevails, the European Union’s basic character will have changed.
BERLIN – Did Russian President Vladimir Putin know what he was doing when he ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February 24? That decision was a turning point for Europe. For the first time in eight decades, a great land war had erupted on the continent, shattering Europeans’ cherished illusions of peace with a force paralleling that of the Russian bombs that have been exploding in Ukrainian towns and villages ever since.
Putin apparently cannot conceive of Russia as anything other than a weaponized, feared, authoritarian world power. But achieving that status requires Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe – a revival of the imperial legacy of czarist Russia and the Soviet Union – for which Putin needed Ukraine. But he badly underestimated the Ukrainian willingness to fight and die for their freedom and independence. This, together with the support provided by NATO and the European Union, has prevented him from achieving his goal.
Three days after the invasion, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz captured the moment well in a speech to the German parliament. “We are living through a watershed era,” he declared. “And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before.” In fact, the war in Ukraine is about much more than most people – including Scholz – realized 13 months ago.
Obviously, the fighting is first and foremost about the Ukrainian people’s survival and the future of their homeland. But it is also about the future of the international order. Will violence triumph over law, or can we return to a lasting peace based on law and treaties? And what are the broader geopolitical implications? Russia’s invasion represented the global order’s first major revision in the twenty-first century, and now China and Russia have entered a deeper (albeit unformalized) alliance to challenge the United States and the West’s dominance.
This struggle – a revival of Cold War power politics – is embedded in two major global transformations: the encroaching digitalization of all spheres of modern life, and the final crisis of fossil-fueled industrial society.
Moreover, Russia’s war has revealed an increasingly complex international picture. Important emerging economies – such as Brazil, India, and South Africa – have refused to take a clear stand. So, too, have most of the Gulf states. All are behaving strictly according to their national interests. When they assess the new great-power conflict, they see not only economic advantages (discounted oil and gas shipments from sanctioned Russia), but also opportunities to enhance their own geopolitical and diplomatic standing.
There is no doubt that the so-called Global South will play a major role in the emerging struggle for dominance in the twenty-first century; that much is already obvious after 13 months of war in Ukraine. Unfortunately, many of these countries and regions will remember the treatment they received from the West – and particularly its leading power, the United States – in the recent past. Their participation in confronting powers like China cannot be assumed. It will have to be won.
In any case, beyond those directly affected by the fighting, Europe will be the region most changed by Russia’s aggression. The war is being waged in its own immediate neighborhood, and it was started by an authoritarian regime that embodies values completely antithetical to its own. With the illusion of peace shattered, Europe’s task now is to overcome its internal divisions and its defenselessness as soon as possible. It must become a geopolitical power capable of self-defense and deterrence, including nuclear capability.
This will not be easy, and the path ahead is strewn with hazards. Consider some of the worst-case scenarios. What will Europe do if another “America first” isolationist is elected to the White House next year, followed by the ascent of French right-wing nationalist leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée? This outcome is a distinct possibility.
With Russia unable to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, the war will eventually have to be ended through difficult negotiations. Whatever the outcome, Europe will be living in a different world, just as Scholz foresaw. It will have to adjust to the existence of a perpetual threat from the East, regardless of whether it is Putin or his successor.
Although the EU will have gained more internal stability, its basic character will have changed. Security will be a central concern for the foreseeable future. The EU will have to start thinking of itself as a geopolitical power and as a defense community working closely with NATO. Its identity will no longer be defined mainly by its economic community, its common market, or its customs union. The bloc has already accepted Ukraine as a candidate for future membership, and that decision was driven almost entirely by geopolitical considerations (as was also the case, previously, with Turkey and the West Balkan states).
A great revision of the world order is underway. If this struggle plays out according to traditional power politics, everyone will be worse off. Cooperation must prevail if we are to create an order adequate to the great economic, security, and climate challenges of the twenty-first century.
Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005, was a leader of the German Green Party for almost 20 years.
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How Vladimir Putin Saved NATO
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