FPIF (Foreign Policy in Focus) : Power is unevenly distributed around the world... by John Feffer

 Dear ...

 

Power is unevenly distributed around the world.

 

Some countries have nuclear weapons, others don't. Some countries are members of the UN's exclusive Security Council, most are not. And some countries are subject to international law, while others behave as if they are above the law.

Russia is one of the permanent five members of the Security Council. It possesses nuclear weapons. And with its invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, it demonstrated that it doesn't consider itself bound by the basic tenets of international law.

Recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an indictment against Russian President Vladimir Putin and the minister who has overseen the forced relocation of Ukrainian children. The charges represent only one of the war crimes that Putin has committed in Ukraine, including indiscriminate killing of civilians, the execution of POWs, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.

In one respect, the charges have broken an important taboo against charging the leaders of major countries with war crimes.

In another respect, however, the indictment reflects only a small breach in a world order that favors the powerful.

After all, as Farrah Hassan points out this week in Foreign Policy In Focus, the United States is not a member of the ICC. However much the Biden administration welcomes the ICC charges against Putin, the United States has refused to give the ICC any authority to hold U.S. leaders or soldiers to the same standards. It should, she argues.

My colleague Phyllis Bennis agrees, pointing out that the United States has never been held to account for the war crimes it committed in Iraq. Instead of established international law, she argues that the U.S. has instead peddled a vague “rules-based order” that Washington itself never seems to violate.

In my World Beat column this week, I look at that other pillar of global power imbalance, nuclear weapons. Putin has made several threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, which has contributed to pushing the Doomsday Clock to the closest it has ever been to midnight: a mere 90 seconds. 

But is Putin really likely to use nuclear weapons? And what can the United States in particular do to reduce that likelihood?

John Feffer
Director, FPIF