The Western Fiasco: Failure in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine E-Book

Hang Nguyen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 128

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Meticulously researched, formulated with suspense and with a great deal of empathy for those suffering from the horrors of war, the authors give a brutally honest recount of the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine - and more! Far beyond that, this book is about the global mechanisms of power. All three countries exemplify the callous principle of proxy wars. Here, the power games of the superpowers enfold in regions that happen to serve as "venues." The authors highlight the impotence of the United Nations as well as the paralysis of the European Union. Beyond analysis and accusation, Hang Nguyen and Jamal Qaiser outline concrete ways in which peace processes can be initiated and steered towards success. Not only, but also in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine.

Leseprobe

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the children of Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. In all innocence, they are caught up in a life marked by violence and war. They are the victims of the global struggle for power and influence that afflicts their homeland from outside. Let us hope that this experience does not turn them into warmongers themselves who inflict suffering on the next generation, but that they manage to escape hardship and lead a life of peace and fulfilment.

Table of Contents

Preface

Proxy wars: Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine

Peoples' right to peace

Failure of the League of Nations

The beginnings of the UN

Basis for a better world

Marginal note: Germany is an enemy state

The UN War

Failure in Afghanistan

Nine-Eleven: The Drama begins

War on Terror (WoT)

Unconditional surrender

Afghanistan 2021 was like Saigon 1975

USA as largest arms supplier to terrorists

Russia and China speak out on Afghanistan

New refugee waves to Europe

Syria – the small world war

Four decades of Assad

The UN plan

The new proxy war

Private mercenaries on the rise

The UN dilemma

Ukraine – the new Cold War

Not a day without concern

Rapprochement with the EU fails

UN appeals to the OSCE remain futile

Crimea belonged to Russia since Catherine the Great

Russia strikes out

The idea of a European army

NATO's zigzag course

Nine-Eleven – the first case of alliance

European army faces huge hurdles

Global rearmament

Peacekeepers: the Blue Helmets

UN missions between success and failure

Blue Helmets under attack

Dubious reputation of the Blue Helmets

Blue Helmets and trafficking in women

The suffering of the refugees

Death of drowned Syrian toddler jolts the world

The first refugee crisis in 1992

Russian Federation on the way to Europe

The second refugee crisis in Europe

Balkan route of the smugglers

Non-papers on border closure

Many roads lead to the West

The EU-Turkey Deal

Syrian Lieutenant Colonel

Illegal migration clearly underestimated

Right of asylum has no tradition

Geneva Convention on Refugees (GCR)

Basic right of asylum

Paths to Peace

Small world war, new world war, Cold War 2.0

Happy place and non-place Utopia

About the authors

Hang Nguyen

Jamal Qaiser

Books published by DC Verlag

About the Diplomatic Council

References and Notes

Preface

This book is about the conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine – and more! It is also about the global mechanisms of power that prevent – or do not prevent – wars. All three countries exemplify the callous principle of proxy wars, in which the power games of the superpowers enfold in regions that happen to serve as "venues". The Vietnam War and the division of Korea were the most prominent "proxy tragedies" after the Second World War; Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine are the most recent ones.

This development is even more deplorable because since the Second World War, the community of states has in fact had a global organisation in the form of the United Nations to resolve conflicts around the globe peacefully. Perhaps not always in friendship, but without military confrontation – and above all without the endless suffering of the civilian population as a result of the war. This book is therefore also about the power, or rather the impotence, of the United Nations in international disputes, in the crucial questions of war and peace. So, it is also about the failure of the UN – not only of the "West".

In any case, it needs to be clarified to what extent the term "the West" will still be appropriate in the future, how sustainable the political friendship between Europe, or more precisely, the European Union, and the United States of America will be. Let us remember it was the intergovernmental military alliance, NATO that was responsible for Europe being suckered into the US revenge campaign against Afghanistan after 9/11. And it was a US president who vociferously demanded that Europe should contribute more to the costs of NATO – so vociferously and over such a long period that a European head of state introduced the idea of an independent European army into the public discussion. This could be an approach to decouple Europe at least a little from the proxy wars of the three big superpowers.

Answers to all these questions are to be found when it comes to the failure of the West in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. This book claims to make a significant contribution to the discussion while providing a whole series of answers.

Hang Nguyen, Jamal Qaiser

Proxy wars: Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine

In all three countries – Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine – doom has set in due to the clash of geopolitical power blocs. And in all three countries, proxy wars have led the population to disaster. Therefore, in a book about the failure of the West in Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine, the decades-long failure of the international community of states far beyond these three countries in all attempts to bring peace to the world deserves mention at the very beginning.

Peoples' right to peace

The idea of a peaceful community of states is not new. The term "international law" was first mentioned in 1625 in the book "On the Law of War and Peace" by the Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius. In 1795, the philosopher Immanuel Kant advanced the idea of a "consistently peaceful community of peoples" in his philosophical essay "Project for a perpetual peace." The Enlightenment brought about the first international peace movement in the 19th century, which led to the Hague Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907.

The aim was to develop principles for the peaceful settlement of international conflicts. The idea behind it is great: the abolition of war as a means of dispute between peoples and instead the establishment of a legal process to resolve conflicts. It did not work back then, the League of Nations founded after WW I failed, and with around twenty wars a year today, it is difficult to argue that the UN has been more successful. But, despite all the criticism, one should pause for a moment to appreciate the greatness of the idea of legal process replacing war, which was the aim of all these efforts.

At the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, twenty-six states met, and at the second conference in 1907, forty-four countries came together to work out an international legal order. It was agreed to set up a court of arbitration in The Hague, but they were not able to establish any binding force for the court rulings of the newly created institution. As early as then, the core question became clear: how much sovereignty do states want to relinquish to submit to a kind of "supranational world order"? The possibilities of enforcing court judgements have already also been discussed, i.e. the question of an international executive arm, as represented by the UN's "Blue Helmets" today.

At that time, the binding force was to be determined at a third peace conference, initially planned for 1914 and then 1915, and was institutionalised in the League of Nations as collective security.1 The International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is now part of the UN, is the highest judicial organ and is decisively based on the work of the Hague Peace Conferences.

Failure of the League of Nations

The idea of creating a worldwide organisation that would serve as a neutral platform for understanding between states was revived after the First World War. To this end, the victorious powers convened the Paris Peace Conference, at which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and the founding of the League of Nations was decided.

It is difficult to deny that the Versailles Peace Treaty made a significant contribution, at least in argumentation, to the rise of Hitler and thus to the outbreak of the Second World War. Even then, simple lines of argument were lacking: The Versailles Treaty unduly subjugated Germany and the population suffered. Nevertheless, we not only tolerated this but defended ourselves – this is how the popular sentiment against the Treaty of Versailles in Germany at the time can be summarised.

These are the facts: Germany had to cede Alsace-Lorraine to France and Poznán and West Prussia to Poland, the Memel Territory came under French control, the Hlučín Region went to the newly recreated Czechoslovakia (which much later split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), the Saar Basin, Danzig and the German colonies were subordinated to the League of Nations.

On the one hand, these comprehensive measures were apparently not enough to keep Germany permanently small, but, on the other hand, they gave the National Socialists substantial arguments to defend themselves against what they called the "imposed peace." The French Marshal Ferdinand Foch provided an excellent analysis of the Versailles Treaty: "This is not peace. This is a 20-year truce. "2

It was already evident then – as it was later with the founding of the United Nations – that the formation of an alliance of states after a world war in which there are winners and losers has a fundamental flaw: the winners dictate the conditions. This problem continued when the United Nations was founded as the successor organisation to the League of Nations. In very simplified terms, the UN consists of the Security Council as a reflection of the balance of power at the time, a flexible, military reaction force under the leadership of the Security Council, a group of sub-organisations for practically all subject areas of humanity, an all-encompassing network of aid organisations and a gigantic bureaucracy built around it.

Back to the League of Nations: As a result of the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War and based on the "14-Points" put forward by US President Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations, based in Geneva, began its work on 10 January 1920. The objective at that time was just as lofty as it was later at the UN: lasting peace through a system of collective security, international disarmament and the settlement of possible disputes between states through an arbitration tribunal.

In contrast to the UN, the Constitution of the League of Nations provided for an obligation of all member states to provide military aid "immediately and directly" in the event of a military attack by a country against a member state. True to the principle of "nip it in the bud," this was intended to prevent delays caused by consultation in committees. In an emergency, however, none of the member states adhered to this requirement but operated at their own discretion. Consequently, when the UN was later founded, this obligation was rescinded, apart from resolutions by the UN Security Council. The opinion prevailed that it is better to make non-binding declarations than binding ones that are not implemented.

With the outbreak of World War II, the failure of the League of Nations was sealed. On 18 April 1946, the thirty-four remaining member states decided to disband the League of Nations with immediate effect. But the idea persisted. While the Second World War was still raging, the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill revived the idea of a world organisation to ensure peace, which shortly after the war led to the founding of the United Nations Organisation.3

However, Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 after a long and serious illness and was no longer able to see the founding of the UN on 24 October 1945.

The beginnings of the UN

"Mr. Chairman and delegates to the United Nations conference on international organisation: Oh, what a wonderful day this can be in history!" With these words, US President Harry S. Truman opened the conference on the establishment of the United Nations.4

To this end, diplomats from fifty countries met on 24 April 1945 in San Francisco for the founding conference. With 850 delegates, consultants and other staff – a total of 3,500 people – it was considered the largest international conference of its time to date. It was one of the longest conferences with ten general assemblies and almost four hundred committee meetings all spread over a good two months. So, one can say without further ado that the roots of today's megalomania of the United Nations were laid when it was founded.

The bureaucratic approach in San Francisco was equally ground-breaking. Initially, the conference setup a steering committee made up of the heads of delegations from all participating countries. This committee was given the task of deciding on all political questions and fundamental matters. Even with only one representative per country, the committee size of fifty people was of course too unwieldy for detailed questions. As a result, a 14-member board was elected from the heads of delegation to prepare recommendations for the steering committee.

The draft Charter was then divided into four sections, each of which was examined by one commission. The first commission dealt with the general objectives of the organisation, its principles, membership, the secretariat and the question of the amendments to the charter. The second commission reviewed all the powers and responsibilities of the General Assembly, while the third commission discussed the Security Council. The fourth commission prepared a draft statute for the International Court of Justice. But it did not stop there: the four commissions were again subdivided into twelve specialist committees.5

Anyone who claims today that the UN has become increasingly complex over the years is right but, in all truth, the UN was complicated from the very beginning. Perhaps this is due to its mammoth task – securing world peace – but perhaps this also explains why it is only inadequately able to fulfil this task.

Even at the time, the struggle to find the right words, the politically correct terms, was already emerging. For example, when releasing colonies into freedom, should the assumption of trusteeship by the United Nations bring the affected state "independence" or "self-government?" Even then, the rule was: anyone who thought that it was insignificant, as long as it brought the people concerned the desired freedom they longed for, had not reckoned with the bureaucrats. The result of the deliberations on this specific question probably already indicated the future of many UN results at that time: It was agreed on the formulation "independence or self-administration."