ABOUT ZAMBIA’S UN VOTE ON THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINE CONFLICT
By Sean Tembo – PeP President
1. Two days ago at the United Nations headquarters during an emergency session of the UN General Assembly, Zambia joined 140 other countries in voting to condemn Russia for its aggression in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Some pundits have come forward to condemn Zambia’s vote, arguing that we should’ve abstained, in keeping up with the principle of neutrality and non-alignment between the West and the East.
2. I beg to differ. The question here is not one of alignment between East and West but rather, one of ascertaining whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was justified or not. In determining whether our UN vote was right or wrong, one needs to focus on this particular specific question; was Russia justified to invade Ukraine? If the answer to this question is yes, then we should not have voted to condemn Russia. If the answer is no, then we voted correctly to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
3. I have listened to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s arguments very carefully as to why he had to go to war in Ukraine. His first argument is that he needed to protect Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine whom he claimed were being brutalized by the Ukrainian Government. His second argument is that the possibility of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would seriously undermine Russia’s national security because the forces and sophisticated arms of the enemy would be right at Russia’s doorstep. Suffice to mention that prior to these latest accusations, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
4. Let us assume that both of Putin’s claims are true. Let’s say Ukraine was indeed brutalizing Russian speaking people in the eastern Donbas region which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk. Let us also assume that indeed Ukraine did intend to join NATO. Would this be justifiable provocation for Russia to invade Ukraine? My answer to this question is a definite no.
5. The argument that Ukraine was engaging in genocide against its own citizens in the Donbas region does not carry water as a basis for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An independent neutral body such as the United Nations should have been allowed to undertake an investigation and if Ukraine was found culpable, then it should’ve been punished accordingly through sanctions or other appropriate measures. It is flimsy for Russia to invade another country on the basis of allegations that Russian speaking citizens of that country are being ill-treated.
6. Coming to the second allegation that Ukraine intended to join NATO and that such a move would undermine Russia’s national security and therefore Ukraine needed to be invaded in a preemptive strike. This argument again does not carry water. Russia has no standing to dictate which club or association another independent country should belong to or join. At the height of the Cold War, the East and west each had a military alliance. The West had NATO and the East had what was known as the Warsaw Pact which included countries such as Cuba, which is only 60 kilometers away from the US state of Florida. No one prevented Cuba from joining the Warsaw Pact, despite its proximity to the United States, so why should anyone prevent Ukraine from joining NATO because of its proximity to Russia?
7. We all remember that problems only arose when Russia decided to deploy nuclear ballistic mussels to Cuba which resulted in a blockade and stand off between then US President John F. Kennedy and then Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev. The issue that gave rise to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was not Cuba’s membership to the Warsaw Pact, no. Rather, it was the then Soviet Union’s deployment of ballistic nuclear missiles to Cuba. We have all seen that despite many Eastern European countries such as Poland joining NATO in recently times, NATO has not deployed any nuclear weapons to the doorstep of Russia.
8. If Putin wanted to respond to Ukraine’s wish to join NATO, he should’ve considered reviving the Warsaw Pact and enticing other countries including Canada, Mexico and Cuba to join it. I do not think America would invade Mexico simply because it has decided to join Russia’s Warsaw Pact. Every independent nation in the world has a right to self-determination. That is what makes Russia’s two excuses for invading Ukraine very flimsy and unjustified.
9. Therefore, Zambia was on firm ground to vote to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at the United Nations. We need to be a country of principles, and being a country of principles requires that we condemn a wrong wherever it manifests itself. A wrong is a wrong. We cannot just look at a country invading another country and causing so much destruction and loss of lives on the basis of flimsy excuses, and we remain silent because we do not want to rub Putin and his Russia the wrong way. What would that make us really? Cowards would be an understatement. It is my submission that Zambia should be a courageous and proud nation with strong principles and moral values. If our uprightness rubs another country the wrong way and upsets them in the process, then too bad for them. If as a result of our vote to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, Russia gets upset and decides to close their Embassy in Zambia, then let them go ahead. As a nation, we should not be cowed by any foreign power.
10. However, our uprightness must apply both ways, meaning that the next time America and its allies engage in a senseless war the way they did in Iraq, we should not hesitate to condemn them too.
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SET 04.03.2022