Guterres embraces authoritarians – Algemeiner.com

UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan on the sidelines of the general debate of the 79th session of the General Assembly, September 24, 2024. Photo: Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo.

JNS.org – It is often said about anti-Semitism that Jews are the canary in the coal mine: what starts with them will not end with them, and sooner or later the rest of society will suffer the consequences of this deeply undemocratic ideology. . I won't delve further into this proposition here, except to say that while I don't entirely agree with it, there are times when its fundamental observation may prove useful.

A typical example concerns the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antnio Guterres. In June, I gave voice to the disappointment, I know, shared by many other Jews regarding the evolution of his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After initially seeming very promising and making all the right noises about why anti-Semitism is a global threat that must be addressed, Guterres changed for the worse after the Hamas pogrom in Israel on October 7, 2023, joining the chorus of reprimands against the Jewish state. on the international stage, from Ireland to South Africa, from Spain to Chile, and everywhere in between. His decision to place Israel on a blacklist of countries whose militaries abuse children, alongside paragons of virtue such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, Burma/Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen, is particularly shameful. Other democracies, including the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, could easily end up on a list like this given the actions of their military in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they don't because that the United Nations understands that the political costs of such action are minimal only when it comes to Israel.

Today, Guterres is diving deeper into the authoritarian and conspiratorial universe from which anti-Semitism springs. Last week, the UN chief arrived in the Russian city of Kazan for a three-day summit of the BRICS bloc of states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which presents itself as an alternative to economic institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which dominated the post-World War II world order.

The summit was hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used the occasion to demonstrate that his illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine did not actually deprive him of allies. More than 20 world leaders joined him in Kazan, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Other states keen to enter the BRICS fold, including Ethiopia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have also sent senior representatives to sit at Putin's feet.

By attending the summit in Russia, Guterres was in effect spitting in the face of Ukraine and Israel. In doing so, he proved that when you flirt with anti-Semitism and legitimize its tropes, you open yourself up to accepting all the baggage associated with it, the fake news, the wild theories, and the recasting of terrorism as a form of resistance.

BRICS is not an exact copy of the Warsaw Pact, the treaty organization that linked the Soviet Union to its communist satellite states during the Cold War, but it is certainly moving in that direction. Among its five founders, only Brazil and India have an interest in maintaining cordial relations with Western democracies, but they are no match for Chinese or Russian imperatives in this regard. Meanwhile, South Africa and states that have knocked on BRICS' doors more recently, such as Turkey, despite its status as a NATO ally, view the bloc as much more than an economic association. Above all, BRICS will provide rogue states like Iran and even North Korea with a veneer of legitimacy that is denied to them in Western circles.

Indeed, none of the subjects covered by the Russian press agency Tassciting a Kremlin statement reported to be on the agenda of a private meeting between Putin and Guterres regarding trade or economic development. Their discussion will focus on urgent issues on the international agenda, including the Middle East crisis and the situation around Ukraine, the Kremlin said. What Guterres will hear from Putin is the usual Russian line, smearing Ukraine's democratic government as a group of neo-Nazis and complaining profusely, almost three years after the invasion of Ukraine, that it is a war defense on several fronts of Israel against an Iranian axis. proxies that cause instability! Meanwhile, Iran continues to supply Russia with missiles and drones, while North Korea, according to South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence reports, has sent thousands of its troops to fight alongside Russians.

By celebrating a group of States which represent, in the terms of Kyiv Post According to commentator Orhan Dragas, Guterres' worrying mix of authoritarianism, undemocratic governance and war crimes is compromising the core values ​​of the world body's founding charter. His presence amounts to an endorsement of Russian actions in Ukraine and the deepening alliance between Moscow and Tehran. The only way to avoid this impression would be for Guterres to clearly state that Russia must withdraw entirely from Ukraine and that Israel, as a sovereign UN member state, has an undisputed right to defend itself against a association of states and paramilitaries seeking its destruction. . Of course, he won't say anything close to that.

The elephant in the room here is the US-led alliance of democratic states around the world. Over the past 80 years, there have been many reasons for them to abandon the United Nations in favor of a new global organization that does not allow its members to repress their own populations or sow chaos in the region in the name of national sovereignty. Yet they have not done so, primarily because they fear an outcome in which they would be unable to influence or control the behavior of authoritarian states. And with the future of American foreign policy hanging in the balance as the November 5 US presidential election approaches, Putin rightly calculates that this is the perfect time for him to strut onto the world stage, by presenting a vision of international relations that will strengthen positions. of Russia and its allies while weakening ours.

The practical effects of this weakness are already painfully visible. To take a few examples: Qatar, the Iranian ally which practices a form of apartheid by depriving nearly 90% of its population of the right to vote, was elected to the UN Human Rights Council; UNRWA, the United Nations agency dedicated solely to the descendants of Palestinian refugees, continues to operate despite ample evidence of overlap between its staff members and Hamas; and the top UN official breaks bread with a Russian leader eager to revive the threat his country posed during the Cold War.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that Western leaders' burying their heads in the sand approach to the fracture of our international institutions is largely responsible for the situation we find ourselves in. The only real pushback Guterres has received so far has come from Israel, which declared him persona non grata. As welcome as this decision is, it is an isolated decision that will have little impact until other countries have the courage to follow suit.