Is the UN relevant to Greater Eurasia anymore?

On April 24, Armenians commemorated the 101st anniversary of the 1915 genocide that consigned 1.5 million men, women and children to a torturous end. The Anglo-Saxon world, which was battling the Turks during this period, appeared powerless as another 700,000 Assyrian and Syrian Christians, 350,000 Greeks and an unspecified number of Syrian Muslim intellectuals were killed at the hands of sadistic Young Turks and their Kurdish errand boys.

A century of international double-standards

The post-WWI Treaty of Versailles did not extract any reparations from Turkey. Instead, it was hell-bent on imposing punitive terms on Germany while Japan—not deemed as a human equal to the West—was singularly denied their victor’s spoils. Turkey’s immunity from war crimes may have arguably emboldened Adolph Hitler in his own genocidal quest three decades later.

A toothless Treaty of Sevres (1920) was annulled by a subsequent Turkish-Armenian war in which Armenians suffered more losses in terms of population and territory. Attempts by Josef Stalin to retrieve lost Armenian territories in the aftermath of WWII were characteristically rebuffed by the US State Department whose kid glove treatment of Ankara continues today.

Since 1915, Turkey had invaded and occupied Northern Cyprus, and had suppressed Kurdish nationalism through unfettered pogroms. Turkey’s trailblazing decimation of minorities, especially of Christians in the Middle East, was emulated by its regional co-brethren for another 100 years, culminating in a similar, ongoing genocide in Syria and Iraq. History has indeed come a full circle due to the collusions and cowardice of a West-defined “international community.”

Few communities have suffered as protractedly as the Armenians, Assyrians and assorted Middle Eastern minorities in a century of “US exceptionalism.” The US is only perpetuating an ancient meme here, as history itself is a testament to the two millennia-old Western hatred of Eastern Christendom and Jewry. This ceases to appear as an exaggeration when one compares the number of UN sanctions proposed against Israel since 1947 and similar, if any, motions proposed against Saudi Arabia during the same period.

Sanctioning Saudi Arabia, not Israel, has been the United States’ age-old red line. The usual American veto in favour of Israel is just part of the West’s good cop-bad-cop geopolitical circus. The May 4 Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day was in fact commemorated amidst the backdrop of US-sanctioned neo-Nazi thuggery in Ukraine, and a pandemic rise in anti-Semitism all over Europe.

Did someone say, “Never again!”?

Perhaps, the growing chasm between Western rhetoric and reality was a reason why Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the creation of “a non-aligned system of international security to counter global terror” during his May 9 V-Day speech. He warned off the “double standards” and “short-sighted indulgence to those who are nurturing new criminal plans.”

Greater Eurabia is America’s “Free World”

Since 1915, the US has taken over colonial Britain’s lead in completing a contra-civilizational compact in the form of an undeclared “Greater Eurabia.” It is an agglomeration of tin-pot dictatorships, sharia tyrannies, banana republics and soon-to-be failed states (Western Europe). Whenever the US styles itself as the “leader of the free world,” it is actually referring to its headship of this tyrannical axis. With the United Nations functioning as its prime rubberstamp, Greater Eurabia decides what is wrong and right; what constitutes an infringement of international law; what constitutes a war crime and who should be punished for it.

Double-standards flow as naturally as flushed multinational waste inside an American sewer. China will be condemned for building outposts in the South China Sea. Russia will be similarly castigated over the Crimean reunification.

Obama, in fact, had a special message for China with regards to ASEAN and the South China Sea in his Washington Post Op-ed dated May 2. It accurately encapsulated American antipathy towards international law and trade:

“ . . . America should write the rules. America should call the shots. Other countries should play by the rules that America and our partners set, and not the other way around.”

The United States biggest fear was well-captured by Obama’s own rhetoric:

“ . . . Asia-Pacific region will continue its economic integration, with or without the United States. We can lead that process, or we can sit on the sidelines and watch prosperity pass us by.”

There you have it. Greater Eurasian autarky is the West’s biggest fear and its existential death knell.

Yet, instead of global accommodation, the West is raising the stakes in the game of international double standards. A US judge can order Iran to pay $10 billion in damages to the families of 9/11 victims despite Tehran having had nothing to do with the terror attack. The same judge conveniently cleared Saudi Arabia of any culpability despite 15 of the Magnificent 19 being Saudi nationals. The White House and the US Congress concurred. President Barrack Obama’s rationale for this jurisprudential schizophrenia was timeless: “If we let Americans sue Saudis for 9/11, foreigners will begin suing US non-stop.” Iran was exempted, of course, as well as an increasing number of nations standing up to the jaundiced justice of the United States.

The irrelevancy of the UN

As US-facilitated lawlessness abounds, can the United Nations play any meaningful role in promoting a semblance of international law?

Sooner or later, the people of Greater Eurasia, particularly within the core nations of Russia, China and India may demand a governmental reappraisal of their UN memberships. What does the UN do? Prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which failed in the case of Pakistan, North Korea and possibly Saudi Arabia? Prevent the emergence of Western-backed transnational jihad from the Mujahedeen-era to present-day Syria and Iraq? Prevent Western-backed regime changes and colour revolutions?

Even neutral UN drafts are conveniently reinterpreted by the US to satiate its geopolitical bloodlust.

Between 2012 and 2015, the UN Security Council (UNSC) passed eight resolutions concerning Syria. Although the wording of each was neutral, the US and its allies mendaciously depicted them as a “unanimous” international condemnation of Damascus. Resolution 2209 (2015) was particularly noteworthy: While the envoys of Russia and China condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria, both avoided blaming any party before formal investigations were complete. The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, however had no hesitation in blaming Bashar al-Assad’s culpability in the official draft. Later, an 85-page UN report issued on Dec 13, 2013 acknowledged that chemical weapons were indeed used—against Syrian “soldiers and civilians!”

In the meantime, up to 500,000 Syrians have been killed, many of them via beheadings, crucifixions and immolations. More creative execution methods include RPG firing squads and freezing deserters to death. How can the Islamic State afford such sadistic extravagance?

The Syrian human toll does not include the rapes, enslavement and forced conversions perpetrated on the Yazidi and Christian minorities. While this article is being read by someone, somewhere, some minority Syrian girl is being caged, raped in captivity or sold off by terrorists propped up by Greater Eurabia.

A US-led UN resolution is therefore tantamount to a national Siren Song. Blood inevitably flows, lives will be snuffed out and targeted nations will be ruined. (Luckier nations like Cuba and Iran only get sanctioned). It doesn’t matter that the stats are pretty incriminating. If the US had militarily intervened in 30 nations in the past 30 years, all 30 of them would be showpiece basket cases. One study claims that the US had “killed more than 20 million people in 37 ‘victim nations’ Since World War II” while yet another shows that the US has been at war 93% of the time—222 out of 239 years—since 1776!

In the final analysis, one should ask: As a pan-Eurasian institutional and arbitration complex takes shape, is the post-WWII UN model relevant anymore?

Mathew Maavak is a doctoral researcher in security foresight at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM).