NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference after a meeting of the alliance's Defence Ministers at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 16, 2022. /CFP
Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
Ahead of an extraordinary meeting of NATO defense ministers, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held a press conference on March 15 in which he made a ridiculous comment about China.
When asked about whether there was evidence China had some kind of role in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, Stoltenberg said that "China has an obligation as a member of the UN Security Council to actually support and uphold international law" by not supporting Russia's military operation.
There is, first of all, no evidence to support any claim that China has an active role in this situation. China is, however, like the vast majority of countries in the world, not joining on to Western-led sanctions that are cutting Russia off from the global economy. These sanctions are, notably, not rooted in international law.
That the lead functionary of NATO, the world's supreme violator of international law and human rights, can even speak about this subject in the sentence as China is laughable.
For its part, China's mission to the EU responded to these remarks by noting that NATO (the U.S. specifically) bombed the Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on May 7, 1999, during its illegal bombing campaign. This is an event not forgotten by the Chinese people – and something that adds immediate irony to Stoltenberg's comments.
But really, NATO and its most prominent member states have made such a mockery of international law that the entire concept hardly exists today. We can look at a few notable examples, namely NATO's involvement in the Balkan region, Afghanistan and Libya.
Each of these situations is notable because NATO's involvement has corresponded with some action by the UN Security Council. In the former Yugoslavia, there is little doubt that the 1999 NATO bombings were a total violation of international law – but several resolutions had passed previously through that decade that provided cover for NATO's role in the situation.
In Afghanistan, Resolution 1386 established the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to help secure the country after the U.S.-led invasion that completely and unequivocally violated international law. The UN Security Council then, with no other realistic options, put NATO in charge of securing Kabul – but that only ended in 20 years of disasters and a laundry list of war crimes and human rights abuses.
In 2011, Resolution 1973 gave NATO the mandate to impose a ''no-fly zone'' over Libya and granted "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. That resulted in immeasurable human suffering, obvious war crimes and the overthrow of the Libyan government, which has left one of Africa's most prosperous countries a failed state to this very day.
Afghan families live in summer camp tents, which were overturned by cold strong winds and covered in mud by the rain, in Herat, Afghanistan, January 16, 2022. /CFP
After all of this, the idea that the UN Security Council could unanimously agree on anything, let alone address ongoing conflicts, is unimaginable. And that's because the council's backing has been essentially a rubber stamp for some of the most egregious violations of human rights ever seen.
This is why some permanent council members, like Russia and China, can no longer turn a blind eye to NATO's misdeeds. While these two countries did hope there could be a Western-led world order after the Cold War ended that could make the world safer, it has exposed itself to be anything but what it claims.
Each time NATO has been mandated by the UN to manage a conflict, it has surpassed and abused its role to impose American hegemony. This is also similar to how the United States and its allies abuse the council's sanctions, often going above and beyond what the council agrees to in order to impose its political aims with no regard for the impact on civilians.
It is precisely this behavior that has torn international law to shreds and created the conditions for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Even if we accept the premise that Russia's military operation in Ukraine is illegal, laws that are not applied equally are not laws; they are merely political tools. The inconsistent application of international law that suits one bloc's interests has arguably created an even more unstable world order than the one prior.
It's for this reason that NATO and its most prominent member states are in no position to lecture anyone about international law, after having consistently and flagrantly violated it so many times. On the contrary, they have so thoroughly undermined the concept of international law that a dysfunctional UN Security Council is ironically better for global security than one that blindly endorses NATO's crimes against humanity.
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