Opposition to Imperialist Conceptions of "Responsibility to Protect" and "Rules-Based International Order"Venezuela's Ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, made an intervention earlier this year explaining why Venezuela opposed inclusion of a resolution in support of "The Responsibility to Protect and Prevent Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity" put forward by Canada and others on the agenda of the 75th session of the General Assembly. The Ambassador made clear the need to oppose attempts to introduce concepts into international relations to justify undermining the purposes and principles of the UN. Specifically he denounced the "instrumentalization and selective use of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a tool of colonial intervention that has resulted in the suffering, death and destruction of countries subjected to its false protection, citing the case of Libya in 2011."
The same powers that promised the salvation of nations but actually destroyed them under the banner of R2P, he said, are using the same discourse today, threatening to destroy the independence, territorial integrity and peace of the Venezuelan nation with the use of armed force. He pointed out that in Colombia, where the president attacks the civilian population as if they were a military target; where dozens of peaceful protesters have been assassinated in its cities; where hundreds of social, community, Indigenous and political leaders and human rights defenders are systematically assassinated; and where those who have been disappeared number in the thousands, the interventionist powers never speak of the R2P. The U.S. military bases in that country are not for protecting Colombians, he said, but the government, while the people are left to fight for their human rights alone. Nor do the powers pushing R2P feel any obligation to apply it when Israel, the occupying power, perpetrates war crimes and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. Moncada concluded by pointing out that unilateral coercive measures are acts of economic aggression which violate the human rights of hundreds of millions of people in more than 29 member countries of the United Nations. The first responsibility to protect consists of stopping the use of the economy as a weapon of mass destruction against the peoples, he stated. At the virtual launch of the Group of Friends in Defence of the UN Charter on July 6, Vassily Nebenzia, the Permanent Ambassador of the Russian Federation, focused on attempts by the same group of powers to "replace the UN Charter-based system of international law with ambiguous concepts such as 'rules-based international order' or 'rules-based multilateralism,' when the 'rules' are being elaborated by a narrow group of states and adjusted on a case-by-case basis." He said this can be seen in their arbitrary labeling of the sovereign internal processes in different countries as "democratic" or "authoritarian," their undermining and even overthrowing of legitimate governments, and their imposition of illegal coercive measures against those who do not comply with the "rules" formulated by "closed groups of allegedly democratic nations." Russia's position was further elaborated in the High-Level Debate at the 76th UN General Assembly in September by its Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, who devoted a good part of his intervention to the same topic. He said, "Lately we have witnessed persistent attempts to diminish the role of the UN in solving today's key problems, to sideline it, or transform it into a malleable tool that furthers someone's selfish interests." These attempts, he said, were clearly visible in the so-called "rules-based order" concept that the West is persistently introducing into political discourse in opposition to international law.
Cuba's president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, used the same venue to expose who is behind the notion of a "rules-based international order" and why, saying, "Today we are witnessing unacceptable practices and policies in the international context, which go against the universal commitment to defend the Charter of the United Nations, including the sovereign right to self-determination. Independent and sovereign states are being led by multiple pressures to subordinate themselves to the will of Washington and to an order based on its capricious rules." Others singled out some of the most pernicious examples of the U.S. applying its "rules" in violation of the principles of the UN which its members, particularly those that sit on the Security Council are charged with upholding. Many called for the U.S. to honour the unequivocal will of the international community expressed in 29 consecutive General Assembly resolutions by ending its blockade on Cuba and by ending the use of unilateral coercive measures generally, understood to be a preferred form of so-called non-violent warfare practiced mainly by the U.S. against the peoples of countries whose governments it targets for destabilization and regime change. Similar messages were conveyed at meetings of different UN Committees and bodies held since the opening of the current session of the General Assembly, thanks to the efforts of those who have come together to wage the necessary fight to defend the UN Charter and international law against U.S.-led attempts to impose its own "rules" in a modern day version of might makes right.
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