The East Bloc

Russia and China are fast becoming the UN’s main arbiters of human rights issues at Europe’s expense. by TOL 19 September 2008 Editorial writers around the world have called the recent Russia-Georgia war a watershed in how Russia views the world and the world views Russia. Moscow’s response to criticism – “we don’t need the G8, the WTO, and anything the West has to offer” – has been met with handwringing over a supposedly new multi-polar world where, in fact, Russia might not actually need the West. And without any sticks or carrots, the West might just have to settle for a new imperialistic Russia that will act with hubris and without regard for the consequences.

If any more evidence was needed for that viewpoint, a new report out this week provides plenty of ammunition. The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has issued a detailed analysis of voting records at the United Nations in recent years and come up with some startling conclusions. Behind the scenes, Russia and China have successfully built coalitions at the UN to an extent where the majority of the world’s nation states are more likely to vote with them than with the European Union, let alone the United States.

This “soft” power has been remarkably successful, but very much under the radar screen for most people, especially those in the West, who probably assume that the rest of the world – like their governments – tends to oppose Russia on human rights issues, not to mention the Georgian war.

Those were the days: A victory party thrown by the Soviet delegation at the 1945 San Francisco conference where the UN was born. UN photo/Eastman.

That isn’t the case. In “A Global Force for Human Rights? An Audit of European Power at the UN,” the authors, Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner, show the reversed fortunes of the EU and US, compared with Russia and China. In the late 1990s, over 70 percent of the votes cast at the UN General Assembly on human rights issues supported EU positions; over the past two years, such “voting consistency” has fallen to only around 50 percent. The EU has lost the regular support of 41 former allies (including most of the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia). The U.S. has done even worse, seeing its consistency on human rights votes plummet from 77 percent to a mere 30 percent over the past decade.

Over the same time period, support for Russian positions, in contrast, has skyrocketed from around 50 percent to 76 percent today. China came in only slightly worse, at 74 percent.

“A pattern is emerging which points to declining EU influence throughout the UN to promote an international rule of law based on human rights and justice,” the authors write. “That is bad news for Europe and bad news for the world.”

The declining influence of the EU is not for want of unity. While in Europe, much gets made of the clash of opinions over issues such as the Lisbon Treaty, energy policy, and relations with Russia, at the UN, EU countries almost always vote as one, especially in the area of human rights (where the last split dates back to the 2005-06 session). Though enlargement has added 12 new countries, voting unity has increased, rather than decreased, and surpasses the era of pre-enlargement. And countries aspiring to EU membership one day – such as Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine – consistently vote with the EU bloc.

Yet all that unity comes at a price: hundreds of internal meetings a year that distract from constructing the alliances that the Russians and especially the Chinese have been so skilled at building. The Russian and Chinese mantra about protecting national sovereignty in the face of encroaching international organizations and the United States carries much weight around the world, especially among countries with a democracy deficit. Moscow and Beijing, the ECFR report says, have not been shy about teaming up with weak, developing nations against the EU or U.S. line to generate goodwill (and future votes on their side). And, just to remember, no matter how united Europe is, European countries only make up around 20 percent of UN membership.

THE CHINA CARD

Those Russia/China-led alliances have already generated very disturbing results, including in Eastern Europe. On the UN Human Rights Council, EU states have been consistently pitted against their opponents and have lost over 50 percent of the votes in the council since its founding in 2006. The arguments over national sovereignty came to a head in 2007 when Russia and China led a drive to prevent the council from assessing any individual country’s human rights record. Under the terms of a compromise deal, those countries backed off, but only in return for discontinuing council-mandated monitoring of Belarus and Cuba.

Although these developments must be troubling for human rights defenders around the world, it would be wise not to overestimate Russia’s power. In an interview, Richard Gowan, one of the report’s authors, made clear that China is the real ringleader at the UN.

“Chinese diplomats are well-trained and often creative. Russia still has a rather ‘Cold War’ view of the UN, and wants to be treated as a great power there,” he said. “Russia's immediate circle of allies on (or against) human rights is actually pretty small: Cuba and the Central Asian post-Soviet states. Most countries outside the post-Soviet space are more attracted to China than Russia. Even the Central Asian states obviously look to Beijing as well as Moscow. So Russia isn't that strong on its own and does best when it is closely aligned with China.”

Russia has clearly enjoyed a fruitful alliance with China, especially on the Security Council where they have derailed European initiatives on Darfur, Kosovo, Burma, and Zimbabwe – just in the past few years. As the ECFR report indicates, the partnership has done wonders in finding friends for Russia throughout the UN who might not normally follow Moscow’s line.

The question remains, though, if more Russian aggression would eventually backfire, alienating China and losing the non-Western support that Moscow has banked on at the UN, in the developing world, and in its own backyard. The tepid support of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – composed of China, Russia, and four Central Asian republics – for Russian actions in Georgia could be a foreboding of things to come and a warning for Russia that even its allies have their limits.

Politicians from the EU countries have insisted that they still have leverage with Russia, as the bloc represents Moscow’s largest trading partner. But the real leverage for dealing with Russia could be through Chinese reluctance to upset its own business deals with the union and the United States. Without the Chinese, Russia might not be so confident of finding replacements in other parts of the world for those friends has lost in the West.