Mexico and Chile’s recent referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation on crimes against civilians in Gaza during the current Israeli campaign (and the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel) is another sign of increasing support in the Global South for an international legal route against the ongoing war and siege of Gaza.
The question of whether Israeli troops are committing war crimes in a continuing and devastating war has been met with deep resistance and anger in Israel and among its supporters in the United States. As the core backer of Israel’s war, there are reputational implications for the United States here, too.
Several developing countries have explicitly come out in support of South Africa’s case (or “application”) against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in late December 2023 on the even more serious charge of genocide, while others have done so indirectly, as a part of resolutions passed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League.
And in November, South Africa, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Comoros, and Djibouti made their own referral to the ICC on possible crimes committed against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip.
There is also another case making its way through the ICJ on an advisory opinion “in respect of the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” The case is the outcome of a UN General Assembly resolution asking for such an opinion adopted on December 30, 2022. Indonesia has recently announced that the foreign minister herself, Retno Marsudi, will fly to the Hague to make oral arguments backing Palestine in this case.
Mapping the increasing recourse to international legal action by Global South states against Israel’s actions in Palestine is revealing, indicating that time does not seem to be on Israel’s side when it comes to winning friends in this space. States either leading or supporting such actions span across almost all of the Global South, including Latin America, Africa, West Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. And the actions initiated by South Africa, Mexico, and Chile, and the wide support for the UNGA resolution of December 2022, shows that this sentiment extends well beyond Arab or Muslim-majority states.
When tallied by the populations of these states, about 59% of the Global South has now led or backed international legal action against Israel. Moreover, as our mapping of the UNGA resolution of December 12 showed, a vast majority of Global South states have gone on record supporting an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Sarang Shidore is Director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute, and member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University. He has published in Foreign Affairs and The New York times, among others. Sarang was previously a senior research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and senior global analyst at the geopolitical risk firm Stratfor Inc.
Dan M. Ford is a junior research fellow at the Quincy Institute's Global South Program. Previously he served as a research and communications associate at the Global Interagency Security Forum in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this month, President Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, announced her country’s support for adding two new permanent African seats to the U.N. Security Council. This came on top of existing U.S. support for its democratic allies and partners Germany, Japan and India to receive permanent seats as well.
Crucially, however, the U.S. does not support granting these new permanent members the same veto privileges that the P5 – the U.S., United Kingdom, France, Russia and China – have enjoyed since the U.N.’s inception. Britain and France, no longer veritable great powers, have not used their veto since the 1980s. As a result, the U.S. proposal would see the creation of a club of ten permanent members — perhaps more when Latin America is factored in — but with only three effectively able to veto resolutions.
Reforming the composition of the Security Council requires amending the UN Charter — a process over which the P5 enjoy a veto. And it’s not hard to see why Russia would oppose the U.S. proposal. By creating two tiers of permanent members, it would set a precedent through which Moscow, as a power in relative decline, could be demoted to second-tier status someday and have its veto disregarded.
Committing to Council reform is commendable. But to make it happen, UN member states, including the U.S., need to get more creative and put together a formula that a sufficient number of countries can get behind.
Why Security Council reform is needed
When it comes to reforming the Security Council, the P5 are an obstacle, but they are far from the only one. Member states remain divided on the future of the veto, especially given the perception that Washington and Moscow have abused their veto privileges as of late. They also need to agree on how to apportion seats fairly in an expanded Council.
To get around this issue, the Quincy Institute’s Better Order Project brought together leading experts, scholars and practitioners from around the world to devise a compromise proposal that can garner widespread international support.
Naturally, many countries are worried that expanding the permanent membership of the Council will lead to more vetoes — and therefore to more gridlock. And that is gridlock that the world can ill afford in today’s era of monumental international and transnational security challenges.
At the same time, if the Council does not grow its permanent membership, then it will fail to reflect the world’s emerging multipolar distribution of power. If increasingly influential countries such as India conclude that they are no longer able to advance their interests through the U.N., then multilateral cooperation could be dealt a blow even more severe than the risks of a perpetually paralyzed Security Council.
Some contend that the P5 are loath to grow their own ranks. China, for example, is wary of extending the veto to countries with which it has security tensions such as India and (especially) Japan. Yet if the P5 do not agree to Council reform, they risk diminishing the long-term relevance and influence of a body in which they hold considerable power.
It will therefore be crucial to find a way to grow the Council’s permanent membership while also reducing veto usage. And as part of this process, there will be a need to satisfy the aspirations of various regional and cross-regional groupings and to compensate rising middle powers that fail to gain a permanent seat. Without a formula that can check all these boxes, the U.N.’s membership will remain divided — and Security Council reform will remain elusive.
A consensus proposal
There is a need for an expanded Council to reflect the realities of a multipolar world. That said, many states are worried that this would lead the world away from multilateralism between sovereign equals and toward balance-of-power realism.
One way to get around this could be to allow the General Assembly, which comprises the entire U.N. membership, to select new permanent members instead of handpicking those countries in advance. This would avoid formalizing the notion that great powers are entitled to special privileges by virtue of their size and give the world a chance to elect countries based on their commitment to international peace and security instead, including a commitment to limit their use of the veto.
More veto-wielding members will not necessarily lead to an increase in the number of vetoes cast. The political cost of standing alone in opposition to a Security Council resolution will become even greater when the number of permanent and non-permanent members grows. And a wider pool of permanent members may find it more advantageous to forge coalitions with one another to advance their interests rather than wield a unilateral veto to protect them.
There are other creative ways to reduce veto usage. For example, why not give permanent members the right to vote “no” on a resolution without vetoing it? Doing so would raise the political cost of invoking a full-blown veto, give great powers a tool for signalling their disapproval of certain measures to their domestic audiences, and provide them with a novel pathway for remaining constructive in the face of pressing matters of peace and security.
Finally, if the Security Council is going to have new permanent members, many middle powers may feel left out. Mexico and Argentina would feel excluded if Brazil were permanently selected to represent Latin America. The same is true of Nigeria and Egypt if South Africa were afforded that privilege on behalf of the African continent.
One solution is to give these countries the chance to be elected to a pool of 20 countries that would automatically rotate on and off the Council five at a time. This pool would last for 24 years — three cycles of eight years — before fresh elections are held.
Getting to serve for two out of every eight years would represent a marked improvement for these countries over the current arrangement, in which they must compete for every two-year term and cannot be immediately reelected. Smaller countries would also benefit from this formula, as they would no longer need to compete against 20 middle powers for a standard elected seat on the Council.
The vast majority of the world’s countries want multilateral institutions to become more equitable and inclusive. Those countries that demonstrate creativity and political will on the question of multilateral reform will have an added edge in shaping the international order of the future. While the post-Cold War “unipolar moment” may be receding beyond the horizon, advancing U.S. interests in a changing world is anything but a zero-sum game.
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Austria's Freedom Party (FPOe) leader and top candidate Herbert Kickl attends his party's election campaign kick-off in Graz, Austria, September 7, 2024. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
UPDATE 9/30 6a.m. ET: According to the Associated Press, preliminary official results showed the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) finishing first with 29.2% of the vote and Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s Austrian People’s Party was second with 26.5%. The center-left Social Democrats were in third place with 21%. The outgoing government — a coalition of Nehammer’s party and the Greens — lost its majority in the lower house of parliament.
VIENNA/MUNICH - “Wars belong in museums” reads an inscription in front of the Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria.
As the crow flies, there are less than 400 miles between Lviv in western Ukraine and Vienna. In the Austrian capital, however, the distance feels much greater. Unlike many German cities, no Ukrainian flags are seen in Vienna’s institutional buildings. In Vienna, one of the few reminders of the ongoing war in Ukraine is to be found behind the Soviet War Memorial, where a wall is painted in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Recent regional elections in Germany have been shaped by growing discontent with the country’s Ukraine war policy. Meanwhile, to Germany’s south, slight attention is paid to the ongoing war in Ukraine ahead of the Austrian parliamentary elections on September 29. The public debate in Austria is instead dominated by topics such as migration and asylum politics, and future coalition options.
The limited weight of foreign policy in the conversation can partly be explained by Austria’s specific circumstances as a neutral country. Austria has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 1995 but is not a member of NATO. After Sweden and Finland joined NATO in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, only three other European countries (Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta) share Austria’s category.
But foreign policy could play a significant role in negotiations to form a government coalition after the elections. The far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which is polling first at 27%, could put European Ukraine aid under the microscope. In its election program, the FPÖ opposes sanctions against Russia and demands a halt to Austria’s contributions to the European Peace Facility (EPF), the mechanism through which the EU has provided $6.8 billion in military support to Ukraine.
Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has long used its veto power within the EU to block military aid packages for Ukraine or allow them to be approved in exchange for concessions. Orbán, who has an alliance with the FPÖ in the European Parliament, is seen as a role model by Herbert Kickl, the FPÖ’s candidate for chancellor.
The FPÖ has never won a national election but it finished first in the elections to the European Parliament in Austria last June. A win for the FPÖ would not guarantee its participation in government, let alone the privilege of appointing the new Austrian chancellor. Still, forming a government coalition while bypassing the far-right party would be complicated.
The FPÖ is followed closely in the polls by the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), led by Chancellor Karl Nehammer. He currently leads a coalition government with the Green Party. Third in the polls comes the center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ). The two traditional center-right and center-left political forces would probably need a third party to reach a parliamentary majority. The ÖVP and the FPÖ, on the contrary, are likely to gain over 50% of the seats in parliament.
The conservatives appear ready to reach out to the FPÖ after the elections, although they have announced their opposition to Kickl, the FPÖ leader, serving in a future cabinet. The two parties already shared the government in the early 2000s and again later on, from 2017 to 2019. On both occasions, the ÖVP filled the chancellor position. It could be different this time, especially if the FPÖ wins by a significant margin over the ÖVP.
Christoph Schwarz, a Research Fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, said if the FPÖ enters the government, “one can assume that Austrian support for EU initiatives in support of Ukraine will be harder to attain.” Even so, he adds, much would depend on “political bargaining and the composition of such a government.”
The FPÖ and United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party, signed a Friendship treaty in 2016. The FPÖ’s Russian connections have led to bizarre moments. Karin Kneissl, appointed Austria’s foreign minister on the FPÖ’s recommendation in 2017, danced with Putin at her wedding in 2018. Kneissl now lives in Russia, where she was recently appointed goodwill ambassador for Siberian tiger conservation. The FPÖ has since distanced itself from the Friendship treaty, but ties between the far-right party and Moscow have survived.
Austria’s neutral status is key to understanding its foreign policy. Following its annexation into Nazi Germany in 1938, Austria did not fully recover its sovereignty until 1955 after reaching an agreement with the former Allied powers. An independent Austria was something both the U.S. and the USSR could accept as long as the country renounced union with Germany and remained neutral.
On October 26, 1955, the Austrian parliament approved a declaration of neutrality. The date is Austria’s national holiday, underscoring the importance of neutrality for Austrian national identity. During the Cold War, Austria’s neutrality contributed to the International Atomic Energy Agency, or the IAEA, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, establishing their headquarters in Vienna. Vienna also hosts the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (or OSCE) and is one of the four major U.N. headquarter sites.
Recent polls indicate that neutrality remains popular with some three-quarters of the Austrian population in favor of it. The Ukraine war has not had a major impact on the numbers. Schwarz argues that, in Austria, “foreign policy thinking has been largely outsourced to Brussels and any topic that could lead to a potentially uncomfortable discussion on neutrality is avoided at all costs.”
The meaning of Austria’s neutrality, however, is certainly far more diffuse nowadays than it was during the Cold War. As an EU member, Austria is part of its Common Foreign and Security Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy. The country has also participated in NATO’s Partnership for Peace since 1995. Some recent developments have brought Austria closer to NATO. In July 2023, Austria joined the German-led Sky Shield initiative, which seeks to strengthen Europe’s air defenses in light of the Ukraine War.
The FPÖ opposes this step, whereas the ÖVP promoted it in the government.
Broad support for neutrality does not necessarily mean Austrians want to keep their army small. A slim majority supports increasing military expenditures and the government has taken steps in that direction. As of 2022, only three EU countries were spending less than Austria on their armies in proportional terms. Back then, Vienna spent 0.8% of its GDP on defense. This year, it will be close to 1%. Schwarz believes that, regardless of the composition of the next government coalition, the current commitment to a military expenditure of 1.5% of the GDP by 2028 will be maintained.
In comparison to other EU countries, Austria retains significant ties with Russia even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is the largest Western bank still operating in Russia. The Austrian government successfully lobbied in December 2023 for RBI to be excluded from the EU's 12th package of Russia sanctions.
Since then, the European Central Bank and U.S. authorities have continued to exert pressure on RBI and the government in Vienna.
Nevertheless, in 2024, over half of RBl’s profits came from its operations in Russia and Belarus. Although the bank’s stated objective is to “heavily scale back” from these markets, there is no clear path to repatriate the profits. The situation was further complicated in early September when a Russian court blocked any potential sale of RBI’s Russian subsidiary.
Aside from banking ties, Austria is heavily dependent on Russian gas. This year, Austria has imported at least 80% of its natural gas from Russia every month. That percentage is higher than in the previous two years. In this sense, Austria represents the reverse image of Germany, which has progressively diversified its energy supply away from Russia since 2022.
Although there was no time for parliamentary approval before the elections, the Austrian government recently agreed to review the current national security strategy, which dates back to 2013. Back then, Russia was described as a “partner.” The new national strategy, however, would define Moscow as a “threat” and emphasize the need to decrease Austria’s energy dependency on it.
Schwarz argues that “there is a good chance of this strategy being adopted in more or less its current form” if the next government does not involve the FPÖ. There will be far more uncertainty about the next national security strategy, and Austria’s foreign policy overall, if the FPÖ enters the government, especially if it fills the position of chancellor.
The elections on September 29 will determine the negotiating strength of the different parties, but talks to create a government are expected to take time. The EU will pay particular attention to the negotiations in hopes of avoiding a new Austrian government that complicates EU sanctions against Russia and military aid for Ukraine.
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Diplomacy Watch: Moscow bails on limited ceasefire talks
“I think we are closer to…peace than we think.” That’s what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC News amid his tour of the United States ahead of his speech at the U.N. General Assembly this week.
Zelenskyy appears to believe we are closer to peace in Eastern Europe because of a plan he says is a blueprint to win the war, one that he presented to President Biden on Thursday.
“Partners often say, ‘We will be with Ukraine until its victory.’ Now we clearly show how Ukraine can win and what is needed for this. Very specific things,” Zelenskyy told reporters ahead of the trip. “Let’s do all this today, while all the officials who want victory for Ukraine are still in official positions.”
There are reportedly military, economic, and diplomatic components of the plan which reportedly includes asks to authorize the use of U.S./UK suppliked long range weapons inside Russian territory, to put Ukraine on a path to NATO and EU membership, and increase sanctions on Russia.
While some European leaders are encouraging the Biden administration to okay long range weapon use, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz — who is facing domestic pressure to help wind down the war — said this week that “Germany will not support lifting restrictions.”
As for Zelenskyy’s so-called “Victory Plan,” the Wall Street Journal reported this week that “the Biden administration is concerned that the Ukrainian leader’s plan for winning the war against Russia lacks a comprehensive strategy and is little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on long-range missiles.”
European and U.S. officials also said the plan offers no clear path to victory with the most developed part being, according to the Journal, “the first phase — the requests related to weapons — while the rest of the key elements have fewer specifics.”
“I’m unimpressed, there’s not much new there,” one senior official told the Journal.
Meanwhile, President Biden got ahead of his meeting with Zelensky on Thursday, issuing a statement “on U.S. support for Ukraine.”
“I am announcing a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and a series of additional actions to help Ukraine win this war,” the president said, including allocating all remaining security assistance and including an additional $2.4 billion in aid, providing more long range weapons and air defenses, expanding training for F-16 pilots, and offering tools to combat Russian sanctions evasion and money laundering.
The statement does not say anything about allowing Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia with U.S. weapons.
In other Ukraine war related news this week
— Ukraine accused Russia this week of “seeking to illegally seize control of the strategically important Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait, as hearings opened in a high-stakes arbitration case between Kyiv and Moscow,” according to the Associated Press. The hearings — which take place at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague — are the latest in a series of similar cases involving the two sides since Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.
— Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week she’s confident that the West can help fund Ukraine’s war effort with the use of Russian assets, according to Politico. “I’m very confident Ukraine will start getting the money in the coming months,” she said. “At this point what we’re talking about is the technicalities.”
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