The urgent need for multilateralism

In the good old days when the World was divided between the Western Bloc composed by the USA and the States subservient to Washington and the Soviet Bloc which was developing public services for billions of people worldwide, the international community was balanced, stable and safer, there was more respect and cooperation. Things then went awry.

What happened? As per the terms of the Soviet Constitution itself, the Union decided to disintegrate as governors chose a new way without consulting the people and the Union transformed into the Commonwealth of Independent States. As per the terms of the Constitution, in areas where there were ethnic issues to be resolved, there was a clear process set out for public consultations on status, to be expressed through Referendums.

Georgia, for instance, never enacted this obligation, and the growing pressure resulted in the crisis in 2008 when NATO wannabe and protegé Tblisi murdered Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia and planned to do the same in Abkhazia. In both cases the response from Moscow was responsible, measured and in line with the letter of the law. It did not nuke Tblisi, as the United States of America decided to do in Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the same terms of surrender had been publicly mooted by the Japanese as were signed after the second terrorist strike, neither did Moscow strafe Georgian civilians with Napalm as the USA did in Vietnam, or carpet-bomb the cities as the USA did in Korea from 1950 to 1953.

The Western usurpation of a position it has no right to assume

Yet the Western reaction to the Georgia crisis back in 2008 was a telling sign of the psyche of a Bloc which usurped a position it had no right to take, namely that of a world policeman without being chosen and without having won a contest to assume the role. The West sided with Georgia and complained vehemently about Russia - despite the fact that the USA and chief lapdog UK had outraged the international community and breached international law in Iraq.

The Iraq atrocity confirmed a worrying ill which had reared its head in Kosovo in 1999 when the Western Bloc sided with Albanian terrorists and backed them despite their murderous campaign against Serbian policemen and emergency services personnel, despite their practice of organ trafficking and despite the fact that they were beheading Serbian civilians.

The Iraq atrocity came after the Western Bloc decided to attack Afghanistan because it had decided that Kabul was responsible for 9/11. The Iraq atrocity came after the failed coup d'état attempt in Venezuela which had all the hallmarks of the USA and in which all roads led to Washington. It came before another outrage, namely the invasion of Libya led by the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US), when once again the Washington-led clique used military equipment to strafe civilian structures and civilians with a wanton disregard for law and life.

Western intrusion lurches from crisis to disaster

And so the circus continues, now in Syria but also in Yemen where Western intrusion lurches from crisis to disaster, with hundreds of thousands of human victims, caused by military intervention, Western-sponsored terrorists or disease. Where next?

Given that the vector of intrusion and belligerence is one-sided and always coming from the same source (the West) and given that the Russian Federation has from the start adopted an approach in line with international law, following the legel precepts laid down under the UN Charter, using debate, discussion and dialogue as  the tools for crisis management and not invasions, backing terrorist forces and arrogance, we may conclude that the need for multilateralism is greater than ever. Indeed, until such an approach is followed, our planet will teeter on the brink of a flashpoint which may lead to a catastrophic cataclism.

Photo: By Patrick Gruban, cropped and downsampled by Pine - originally posted to Flickr as UN General Assembly, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4806869

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey

[email protected]

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.