The operator of “Nord Stream 2” (Nord Stream AG) appealed to the arbitration court due to the inconsistency of amendments to the European Union Gas Directive Energy Charter.
The United Nations International Court of Justice ruled that its jurisdiction included the consideration of a claim dated January 16th 2017 in which Ukraine accused Russia of violating the International Convention against the Financing of Terrorism from 09.12.1999 and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination from 21 December 1965. “Naftogaz of Ukraine” filed a lawsuit with the Stockholm arbitration against Gazprom for $22 billion. At the same time, Gazprom disputes the previous set of decisions of the Stockholm arbitration, according to which “Naftogaz” was owed more than $2 billion.
These are not all reports of the wonders of the world’s justice system over the past week. Only those that directly concern Russia and only the most visible. It is not difficult to see that any international judicial bodies with regard to Russia are working with an accusatory bias. Moreover, the courts accept any fiction of the prosecution, forcing Russia to prove that it has not committed the crimes imputed to it, instead of demanding evidence from the prosecutor.
Similarly, a joint investigation team was working to investigate the downing of flight МН-17 under the supervision of the Dutch Prosecutor’s Office. It is sure that the upcoming trial in the Netherlands will also do everything to blame Russia (it is not by chance that Malaysia, whose plane was downed, declared in advance no confidence in the results of the investigation). And before that, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) covered itself with indelible shame, carefully accusing the Serbs and justifying all other sides of the series of Yugoslav civil wars.
Russia eventually withdrew its signature from the agreement establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), which replaced the established ad hoc ICTY to work on a permanent basis. By the way, the United States also revoked its signature, stating explicitly that it could not allow American soldiers and other officials to be tried by a non-American court. China has not signed the agreement at all. It is clear that without ratification by the three strongest world powers, the Rome Statute (which defines the rights and powers of the ICC) is a worthless letter.
It should be noted that while the United States withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute as early as 2002, Russia finally renounced its intention to become a party to the ICC only in 2016. At this time, the international justice system was already being used against Russia, and it was clear that Moscow’s ratification of the Rome Statute, as the ICC would immediately turn into a structure by which the non-member US would judge its member Russia.
The ICC situation has demonstrated that, since the United States started to destroy international law, having acquired the competence to try, punish, and pardon any state without answering to anyone, the international judicial system has also failed to resist. Russia has done everything to ensure that it was preserved, avoiding a radical first-stage reaction even to apparently wrong decisions on the claims against it. Moscow’s position was clear and correct. If the US leaves the position of hegemon and is deprived of the ability to influence the international judicial system in a decisive way, we can try to make it truly fair and turn it into a way of conflict-free resolution of inter-state contradictions on the basis of all understandable and all accepted rules.
However, it has emerged that the international judicial system, like other international organisations, has been packed with left-liberal globalists over the past two decades. For the latter, the destruction of their dream of a globalised “tolerant” world run by the United States is a disaster. It is Russia’s fault for this catastrophe, which refused to obey the American leadership. A disaster must be prevented, and if this fails, Russia should still be punished. Thus, this system starts to work against Russia not only under the order of the United States, but also independently. Moreover, even in the domestic political struggle in the United States, they take a certain position of support for anti-Trump left-liberal globalists. So if the Democrats had managed to bring Trump’s impeachment to the ICC, I am afraid that the current US president would be in trouble (he could have ended up like Milosevic).
In general, the international justice system in the planet-wide conflict of left-liberal globalists against right-conservative patriots took the side of liberals. International courts are not just no longer objective or even directed exclusively against any one state or group of rogue countries (as before), they are a mechanism in the first planetary civil war of globalists with conservatives, which takes place in almost every country (only in each individual case it takes different forms).
By trying to make its weapon out of the judicial system, the globalists condemned it to destruction. They did not take into account that the international tribunals are the weapons of the winners, and the globalists are clearly losing this war.
Russia will continue to try to preserve at least some fragments of the modern system of international law, at least some active international organisations and at least part of the judicial system. This is due not to any particular goodness of Moscow, but to pragmatic considerations. First, the destroyer of the game’s rules is always the first to lose support. Therefore, formal primacy in the destruction of the international judicial (and other systems) is better left to others (as the United States was the first to withdraw its signature from the Rome Statute). Secondly, even the remnants of the working mechanisms allow you to restore the system faster and with lower costs than if you create it from scratch. Thirdly, some organisational structures are still needed during the transition period in order to avoid the full-scale chaos of our world.
But Moscow takes into account that its opponents have sufficient destructive potential and have clearly gone rogue (as is evidenced at least by the worst, on the verge of falling into civil war, confrontation between Trumpists and globalists in the United States, which has already spread in a mild form to Europe). Russia may have a banal lack of available resources to preserve at least part of the current international order. Therefore, we have been seeing Moscow testing an alternative to the current crisis management system for five years. Russia simply accepts responsibility for ensuring the implementation of the agreements reached by the parties. Guarantees are then given, which are then observed. At the same time, a solution is developed with Russian mediation exclusively by the interested parties involved in the conflict. Even the countries of the region in which the conflict is unfolding need to demonstrate minimum adequacy and contractual capacity in order to participate in its resolution.
This mechanism has been effectively tested on the Syrian settlement, where Russia replaced the Geneva process with Astana in one touch. Russia is now trying to spread it to the entire Middle East, chaotised by the Americans under Obama. The affair is not moving without problems, but interested countries simply have nowhere to go. Unlike the current international judicial system, which serves the interests of left-liberal globalists, Russia acts as a really honest broker. Its diplomats encourage the parties not to push some single position, but to find a reasonable compromise, and then the inviolability of this compromise is guaranteed by the Russian military.
By the way, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the authority of the Russian state in those regions where it actively participated in the settlement has increased so much that it does not need to keep thousands of groups of troops to carry out the control mission. A simple patrol of the military police, showing the Russian flag, produces a beneficial pacifying action on the parties to the conflict. However, for this purpose it was necessary both in 2008 in Abkhazia and Ossetia, in 2014 in Crimea and Donbass, and in 2015-2018 in Syria to show what happens to those who do not understand that delicate peace is better than a strong fight.
It is clear that Russian good offices missions are now seen as a temporary forced replacement of the world’s judicial system in cases where the latter does not work. But there is nothing more permanent than temporary.
Rostislav Ishchenko
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