António Guterres and the role of the UN Secretary-General

What to expect from the United Nations?

Victor Angelo

 

Charles Michel has just been in Kyiv. The visit followed those of other European leaders, including the presidents of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola, and the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

One of the first to make the trip to Kyiv was Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who was in the Ukrainian capital on 16 March at a time when the city was under very close threat. And Pope Francis is said to be preparing a similar trip.

Regardless of the practical results of these trips, their symbolic importance must be recognised. In a conflict situation, the symbolism of certain initiatives is fundamental to reinforce the legitimacy of the cause one of the parties is defending, as well as to underpin its narrative. Legitimacy and narrative are essential in conflicts such as the one in Ukraine, which are taking place under the watchful eye of world public opinion, thanks to the courage of many journalists, Ukrainian and foreign.

Politically, each visit seeks to show solidarity with the country that is the victim of the war of aggression. It is thus underlined that the invasion decided by Vladimir Putin is unacceptable. At the same time, it makes it possible to reaffirm the will to contribute to a political solution to a crisis which can in no way be resolved by force. The time has come to show that the use and abuse of force is no longer accepted as a source of rights on the international stage.

In Maurer's case, it was a question of highlighting the humanitarian dimension. This is the raison d'être of the International Red Cross. Maurer, who has moved on from Kyiv to Moscow, knows that leadership means being tirelessly on the front line and in contact with those in power.

For the United Nations, the humanitarian response should also be a way forward. For two reasons. First, because we are facing a major humanitarian crisis. Second, because it can open the diplomatic bridges needed to mediate the conflict. This has happened so many times without compromising the independence and neutrality of the humanitarian work, whose ultimate goal is to save lives. I have always advocated that there must be a clear separation between humanitarian action and political initiatives. But I have also always advocated that a political process can be built on humanitarian intervention.

It is in this line that the letter sent this week to António Guterres, and signed by a group of about 250 former senior UN officials, fits in. The tragedy unleashed by Putin seriously undermines the political credibility of the United Nations. Based on this concern, the main message of this letter is to call for the maximum personal and visible engagement of the Secretary-General in the search for a solution to the crisis. Given the gravity of the situation, the role gives him the moral authority to do so and requires him to be clear, objective and resolute.

In the view of the signatories, the Secretary-General must repeat loud and clear, and unceasingly, that aggression of this kind violates the international order and dangerously destabilises existing balances.  It is not just a question of condemning the actions of a permanent member of the Security Council. It is essential to express an extraordinary level of concern and, at the same time, to show an insurmountable and tireless back-and-forth dynamic between the capitals that count. Firstly, to insist on a cessation of hostilities - of Russian aggression, as it were - and then to propose a peace plan.  A plan that allows the victims to be compensated, those responsible for the aggression and war crimes to be punished and the process of reforming the Security Council to be initiated. Basically, the challenge is twofold: to promote peace and to adapt the UN to today's world.

In signing the letter, I had three questions in mind. First, about the complexity of the function of Secretary General of the United Nations, which is, above all, an eminently political task. Second, about the need to have an up-to-date global organization that corresponds to today's world and the challenges ahead. Third, about good leadership, which requires a very astute balance between prudence and courage.

PS: After receiving the message and seeing how the Russian side reacted to it, Guterres moved and wrote to Putin and Zelensky.

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 22 April 2022)

The French presidential election

Macron must win

Victor Angelo

 

In the first round of the French presidential election, some 56% of voters voted in a radical way, against the system. Such a result reveals a deep social malaise in a country that is one of the pillars of the EU and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is worrying. A closer analysis reinforces our concern - one citizen out of three voted for the extreme right. In other words, they opted for a backward-looking vision of what the France of tomorrow should be, for xenophobic ultranationalism, and for an overbearing leader who considers herself/himself a redeemer of the homeland. And such citizen did it with the uncompromising conviction of those who see the world in black and white, without nuances or respect for ideas different from their own. Radicals are like that.

The first round highlighted, once again, the fragility of democracies. When Donald Trump came to power, it was believed that the threat he personified was very much peculiar to the American institutional system. A similar situation, in Europe, seemed unlikely. Meanwhile, now on April 3, autocrat Viktor Orbán was re-elected, for the third time, as Prime Minister of Hungary. But that fact was more or less swept into a corner, with the excuse that Hungary weighs little in the chess of European relations and that Brussels would know how to respond. This time we have France, a key piece on our chessboard, and Marine Le Pen knocking on the door of the Elysée Palace.

Le Pen has realized over the past five years that you can't catch flies with vinegar. She has moderated her discourse, designed attractive, though unrealistic, social promises, and, above all, bet on empathy, on personal contact with the voters. She has dressed up as a democrat, but she is still, in essence, a dangerous extremist. And, like all extremists, she is incapable of having an overall vision, incapable of interpreting the complexity of the problems, reducing everything to two or three simplistic ideas that serve as a stick for the whole work.

It is a mistake to consider that Orbán or Le Pen, or people with the same political beliefs, are only illiberal democrats. They are, each in their own way, real threats against democracy. Period.

Certain intellectuals like to talk about "liberal democracy". But this is a dull concept, used only to sound erudite. Either there is democracy, without any other qualifiers, but with all that this implies in terms of freedoms, diversity of opinions and separation of powers, or there is not. This is what Hungary is not experiencing today and what may happen in France tomorrow. The same should be said of the exaltation of populist and ethnic nationalism, which is an attack against EU consolidation. These people have a merely opportunistic and mercantile view of the common project. In the case of Le Pen, the measures she proposes would fatally lead to France's exit from the EU if carried out.

In the interests of democracy in France and European unity, it is crucial that Emmanuel Macron wins the election. To think that his victory is a foregone conclusion could lead to defeat. In France, as in other countries, this is a time of uncertainty, frustration, and vulgar criticism from the elites. The televised head-to-head on April 20 will certainly be very important. But it may not be as decisive as the equivalent debate five years ago, when Macron laid bare the ignorance that Le Pen brought with her. It is now necessary to go further. Macron must speak concretely and avoid vague ideas and verbiage. The verbose flow is one of his weaknesses. He, like other politicians I know, confuse loquacity with good communication. This is a mistake. Politics today is done by talking to real people about their problems and their aspirations, about the difficulties of the present and the future with optimism. All this with serenity and a deep human touch. Barack Obama has shown himself to be a master of this art. Let's hope that Macron can do so as well. It is vital to bar Marine Le Pen.

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 15 April 2022)

Europe, China, India and Vladimir Putin

From Brussels to Beijing and New Delhi, in a time of atrocities

Victor Ângelo

In our part of the world, this was a week of turning for the worse. We are today in a much more delicate and dangerous situation. The atrocities committed in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, and in other places, shocked those who heard about them and seriously damaged the possibility of a dialogue between the Western countries and the regime of Vladimir Putin. Now, and without uttering the word that everyone fears, we may be in for a decisive confrontation between the two sides.

One of the two will have to give in. It would be a mistake not to think so. And, of course, backing down cannot be on our side. But it would be an even bigger mistake not to act consistently. This means that sanctions need to move to a new level, one that is aimed at decisively undermining the Kremlin's economic and financial capacity. It is essential to move beyond coal and stop importing all kinds of petroleum products. The statistics are clear: in 2021, the EU imported 74 billion euros worth of oil and oil products from Russia, while natural gas imports totalled 16.3 billion. There are those in the EU who oppose such sanctions, saying it would cause an inflationary wave and unbearable hardship for many of our businesses. Credible studies show that all this is manageable, given the sophistication of our economies and the resources that can be mobilized. But even more, it must be understood that achieving peace and safeguarding Europe's future cannot be achieved without some sacrifices in the short term.

It is also essential to isolate Russia further. That was the central issue of European concern at the summit with China last Friday. During the meeting, the message seemed to fall on deaf ears. The Chinese leaders insisted on the excellent cooperation that exists between them and Putin. But in the following days, the public discourse in Beijing evolved. It became more positive toward Europe. If you have money, you have friends, and the Chinese know that the EU has become their biggest trading partner. They cannot afford to lose the European market. Trade between them grew by 27.5% in 2021, despite the difficulties linked to the pandemic, rising shipping costs, disruptions in component circulation chains, and an unfavourable geopolitical climate. Nor can they miss out on investment from Europe. Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel have been able to play the investment card. The agreement on this matter, approved in Brussels in late 2020, has been frozen since then, which irritates the Chinese side. A greater distance between China and Russia could advance the thaw.

Besides the trade aspect, China wants a strong EU in the hope that it will be able to untie Europe politically and militarily from the US. This explains why it is constructive in the way it refers to the EU while at the same time following and amplifying Russia's rhetoric with regard to NATO. Regardless of that narrative, the important thing is to make Beijing see that excessive proximity to Putin plays against China's long-term interests. And it is not just economic interests, however important the raw materials extracted from Russia's vast territory may be. The deterioration of the Russian dictator's international image cannot be ignored by a country that aspires to be seen as one of the poles of the new global order and a beacon of peace.

In the midst of all this, it would be a serious oversight to forget India. Narendra Modi is investing in a close relationship with Russia, to prevent it from falling just to the Chinese side. Rivalry with China and enmity against Pakistan are the two main axes of Indian foreign policy. It therefore does not want to give China any opportunity to benefit from a comparatively more privileged relationship with Russia. In this regard, the EU must not neglect the dialogue with India, which must be frank and in parallel with the dialogue it must maintain with China.

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 8 April 2022)

They keeping echoing Putin's lies

The restlessness of confused intellectuals

Victor Ângelo

 

Some of our intellectuals are somewhat confused, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine. They complain, for example, about the media and the political class, which are allegedly engaged in persecuting those who do not follow what they call "the one way of thinking". They even claim that there is an attack against "the faculty of thinking". It must be a very sneaky attack, because the TVs and newspapers are full of all kinds of opinions and the most foolish and biased theories, including some of their own.

This manifest confusion leads them to try to explain the unacceptable at all costs and with supposed geopolitical and historical approaches, which were developed during the Cold War and are now largely obsolete. And the unacceptable is the violation of international norms by the undemocratic and aggressor regime that Vladimir Putin personifies. And they also forget the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Putin's troops carry out on a daily basis, as Amnesty International reminded us of this week. Crimes that are already under investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, as well as documented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, based on a resolution by member states passed on March 4.

These intellectuals add to their ideological clumsiness several attacks against intergovernmental institutions to which Portugal belongs and which are fundamental to guarantee our defence, security and prosperity. In doing so they seem not to understand the gravity of the crisis in which our part of Europe finds itself, in the face of Putin's revanchism and his aggression against the people of Ukraine, including Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

I want to believe that political alignment with the adversary is part of a visceral attitude of opposition to the prevailing order and common sense, a philosophy of good-natured contrariness, proper to those who think they are smarter than the rest. At a time like the present, some may see in this positioning something close to a betrayal of national interests. I think it is an exaggeration to characterize these people in this way, because we are not in an open war against any state, and therefore it is not appropriate to talk about treason.

To understand the defence Europe of now, it would be good to remember that the countries of the former Soviet area of influence, which joined NATO in the late 1990s and already in this century, could have sovereignly opted for an alliance with Russia. Moscow had created a parallel military structure to NATO in 1992, currently known by the initials CSTO - Collective Security Treaty Organization. However, on the European side, only Belarus and Armenia made this choice. In addition to these states and Russia, only three Central Asian countries have joined, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The other countries, and there are several, either stayed out or preferred the Atlantic Alliance. The so-called NATO enlargement was, in reality, the result of a series of sovereign national decisions. What authority does a Portuguese thinker have to tell the Polish, Latvian, Romanian, or any other people that they should not have made the choice they did? The same question can be addressed to Vladimir Putin.

To the theory of strategic zones of influence, an analytical construction dating from the early 1960s of the last century, but which had its origins in the colonial and imperialist movements of the 19th century, and which was consolidated at the Yalta Conference in 1945, the United Nations proposes a new vision. An alternative that has as its foundation the respect for human rights and universal norms, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and international cooperation. This may sound like idealism and geopolitical unrealism, especially when one bears in mind Putin's way of doing things or the strategic competition between the US and China. But this should be the banner of progressive intellectuals and all reasonable people.

(Automatic translation of the opinion piece I published in the Diário de Notícias, the old and prestigious Lisbon newspaper. Edition dated 1 April 2022)