COP 29
COP 29 is in trouble. It was inevitable. This year’s climate change conference is in oil-producing Baku, Azerbaijan, and host president Ilham Aliyev is using the conference to push oil and gas as “a gift from God.”
This is encouraging the Saudis who are working hard to strike the phrase “transition away from fossil fuels” from previously agreed communiques.
Then there is the question of the transfer of money from the developed to the developing world; partly to compensate them from the effects of climate change problems created by the industrial north and partly to help them transition away from fossil fuels to clean, green energy.
Previous communiques talked about $100 billion. Now it is generally agreed that $1.3 trillion is a more realistic figure. A big fine, global figure which is facing the problem of devilish detail. What for instance, constitutes a developing country. Officially Saudi Arabia, China and India are all developing countries. The Saudis are as rich as Croesus, China has the second largest economy in the world and India the fourth and will soon be third.
And how will this transfer of $1.3 trillion be organised? Will it be hand-outs which might well end up in some dictator’s Swiss bank account? Will private investments which can create a return for the Western investor be counted in the $1.3 trillion, or research and development grants? All this is being negotiated as I type and will probably be unresolved long after the conference ends.
In fact, the protracted negotiations are proving to be an insurmountable hurdle for the understaffed Azerbaijani diplomatic service. They have been forced to turn to the British and Brazilians to help sort out the muddle and—hopefully—produce a communique.
Any real progress is likely to have to wait until the next COP summit. But that is unlikely to achieve anything because the world’s second largest polluter and the world’s largest per capita—the United States—will not be attending. Donald Trump has promised to withdraw from the COP summits and “drill, baby, drill.”
Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his sacked defense minister Yoav Gallant this week had arrest warrants issued for them by the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Hamas leader Mohammed Deif has also been charged but he is unlikely to ever appear in court simply because he has been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces.
There are 123 countries who are signatories to the ICC. This means, according to international law by which they have pledged to abide, if Netanyahu, Gallant or the ghost of Mohammed Deif, step on their territory, they must arrest them.
Britain and the Netherlands have confirmed that Netanyahu faces such a fate if he dares to visit them.
America has condemned the arrest warrants as “outrageous” and said that the Israelis are safe with them. Well, they have a legal out. The Clinton Administration signed up to the ICC and its obligations but George W. Bush “unsigned”, so the US is under no legal obligation to work with the court. Other countries which are not signatories are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and China.
The Hungarians, however, are bound by the ICC convention. They signed up to it in 2000. But as soon as the court issued the arrest warrants, Viktor Orban showed his enduring contempt for international law by issuing an invitation to Netanyahu to visit Budapest. The arrest warrant, said the Hungarian leader, “is a complete defamation.”
The Czech Republic and Austria also said they would ignore the ICC even though they too are signatories. They also have far-right governments who argue that national law supersedes international law and obligations.
It is clear that the visiting rights of Messrs Netanyahu and Gallant are going to become one of those issues that divides left from right and promoters of international law from those who scorn it or, at the very most, apply it selectively.
Ukraine
The past seven days have fundamentally changed the Ukraine War. And that does not include the spectre of Donald Trump which hangs over it.
On Sunday President Biden gave Ukraine the go-ahead to fire missiles into Russian territory. Britain followed suit. Ukraine fired them on Monday. Moscow retaliated with an experimental medium-range, hypersonic missile with a multiple warhead system. Putin claimed the “Oreshnik” could evade all Western air defense systems.
Then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unilaterally rang Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending a two-year isolation of the Kremlin head from major Western leaders. Scholz was seeking to curry favor with pro-Russian voters in eastern Germany ahead of a general election, but justified his call by saying that if Trump was going to talk to Moscow, Europe should too. Ukraine and Poland were publicly angry; France and the UK quietly seethed.
Then on Thursday the UK Defence Intelligence, normally a staunch advocate of the Ukrainian military, said that the front line was more “unstable” than at any time since the invasion. That is a euphemism for Ukraine is losing.
It is bleak in every direction. South of Kharkiv, Russia is advancing near the city of Kupiansk. Supply lines are threatened around the eastern Donbas region. Southern Zaporizhzhia seems under greater pressure, and Moscow is persistently trying to push Ukraine out of its Kursk border region.
The Biden administration may rush in anti-personnel mines and announce more ammunition, but the changes are happening right now, across trenches where snow is settling. They look set, in the most optimistic reading, to at least give Moscow the upper hand territorially for a bleak winter.
Trump’s presidency expedited talk of talks. Yet the immediate response has been a headlong rush to exacerbate the hot war ahead of its possible freeze. The acute risk is that this lurch forwards to a better negotiating position, develops an unstoppable momentum of its own.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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25 Comments
Hopefully Trump as stated will put an end to this madness in the East . First it was long range artillery, then tanks , then F16s , now it’s long range missiles …The so called spring offensive is over 2 years old & now we have Russia is firing Ballistic missiles .. Ukraine is going through £billions of armaments and a generation of men just to hold a line …
It’s ““A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing”
I am sorry, but I have to disagree vehemently with Jenny and Martin. We know a great deal about Russia. Its history is peppered with cruelty towards its neighbours and the desire to dominate. If we know less about Ukraine it is because it is one of those neighbours who has suffered terribly at the hand of the Kremlin. It is now a democratic country which wants to determine its own course in the world. If we believe in democracy and self-determination than we have no choice but to back them.
Tom – there is no doubt that many Ukrainians in the east look to Moscow rather than Kiev – this has been going on since 2014..Many in the West couldn’t even name the provinces that the fighting is over – let alone be concerned for the integrity of Ukrainian borders ..Just what exactly is the end game here . Huge amounts of weoponwry and money has poured in just to try and hold the current line – Spouting the Western line – as long as it takes etc , just doesn’t look feasible …
I’m 100% with Tom in this one. It is as if some people have totally forgotten the lessons of Neville Chamberlain and his so called “Peace in our Time.”
Perhaps it call for a more modern version of Martin Niemöller’s saying
First they came for the Ukrainians, and I did not speak out—because I was not Ukrainian.
Then they came for the Poles, and I did not speak out—because I was not Polish.
Then they came for the Germans and the French, and I did not speak out—because I was not German or French.
Then they came for us — and there was no one left to fight with us.
The questions every one of us has to answer is whether we believe in the values of Liberal Democracy enough for them to be worth defending,
… or are they just for me?
I don’t think we disagree, tom. It’s a quote from Neville Chamberlain about not getting involved in a war with Germany over the German demands to annex the Sudetenland. (part of czechoslovakia) – and we all know how “peace in our time” turned out. The analogy with the Ukraine conflict would be the lack of any support for Ukraine following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the lack of any drive to improve European defence capabilities. Surely we could have been producing artillery shells in 10 years.
““A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing”, writes Jenny Barnes, who may, of course, have posted it as an ironic response to Martin Gray.
Fact is, the statement was made by Neville Chamberlain on September 27, 1938 when he announced the Munich agreement. We know how he and all that ended up.
David …Russia poses no threat to our territorial borders. The Wests neocon tub thumping about NATO membership of Ukraine should never have been entertained – it would have been a bitter pill to swallow for any Russian president let alone Putin.
Those Western liberal values are meaningless to many conflicts around the globe – even genocidal ones..
Completely agree with Tom, David above – and I think Jenny was making the same point (if I interpret her correctly) by quoting N Chamberlain’s ill-fated words about Czechoslovakia in 1938.
On the subject of Czechs, I don’t think Tom is correct to say that the Czech Republic has a “far right” government. It is rather more nuanced than (say) Hungary (or the leading party in Austria). The Czech government is a coalition, the largest party in which is probably best described as “centre right”, similar to German Christian Democrats (without the christianity!) or One Nation Tories – and it also includes the Pirates, who are probably best described as libertarian-left (a concept which may be confusing for Anglo-Saxon readers but actually isn’t a million kilometres from a lot of Lib Dem members).
Martin legitimately asks what’s the end game . Is it a withdrawal of Russian forces including Crimea , which is the Ukrainian governments current position. If so, how is that going to be achieved ?
Martin Gray – It is interesting that you used the Russian spelling (Kiev) rather than Kyiv.
The comparison with the Sudetenland seems to be on the assumption that if the west had actively opposed the integration of the German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich, in 1938, then WW2 would have been avoided.
Possibly. But it’s far more likely that it would only have started a year earlier than it did. The west had no means of preventing the occupation of what turned out to be the whole of Czechoslovakia.
If we want a war with Russia sooner, we can actively oppose Russian occupation of the Eastern Ukrainian Russian speaking provinces including Crimea. Alternatively, we can can take a chance on history not repeating itself and encourage Zelensky to drop all demands for a Russian retreat from all of Ukraine and start negotiating.
@Jenny …In those ten years we were happily doing business with Russia as was many other countries – cheap energy & all that stuff etc … Technically we still are as it’s refined elsewhere ( mainly India) and sold on the open market..
One of the biggest sanction busters is in fact NATO member Turkey – who’ve turned a blind eye to the huge increase in haulage traffic originating from within its borders – with the goods ultimately ending up in Russia ..
It’s not a question of a quarrel far away we know nothing about – it’s a matter that the vast majority do not care – or in the US case couldn’t find Ukraine on a world map let alone be interested in the integrity of its borders.
Jenny’s quote from Neville Chamberlain might well have been applied to Ukraine before the full scale invasion in February 2022.
The position of Ukraine today might be more aptly encapsulated by one of Churchill’s “Darkest Hour” speeches. In case we forget, a new film “Blitz” has been released in Cinemas this month.
There is plenty of blame to go around on all sides for the handling of Ukraine’s situation since the Euromaidan revolution, but there are two indisputable facts that we can hold onto:
1. Regardless of Rusia’s purported grivevances, there is no moral or legal justification for the invasion of Ukraine and the murder of its population.
2. The sooner a treaty or armistice acceptable to Ukraine can be negotiated and the fighting ended, the better for all concerned.
In May 1940, there was a heated debate between Churchill and Halifax as to whether to seek terms with Germany . Churchill’s speech to Parliament was along the lines “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” I am not so sure that too many would sign-up for this choking in our own blood today, but the sentiment was enough to carry popular support for fighting on.
It was not until the 2nd battle of El Alamein in November 1942 that the tide began to turn for Britain, such that in 1943 Churchill could say “‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.’
As long as the Ukrainian people are determined to fight for their independence, the UK should honor its committments under the 1994 Budapest memorandum and render all the military, diplomtic and economic support we are capable of mustering.
@Martin Gray: You say that Russia poses no threat to our territorial borders. Might I suggest that the people who have been murdered on British soil by Russian security forces might, if they were still alive, disagree. As well as all the other people impacted by the Salisbury poisonings. Then there are all the IT-based attacks on our infrastructure that appear to originate from Russia, as well as Russia’s attempts to undermine our democracy by spreading extremist propaganda. Make no mistake, even without Ukraine, Putin’s regime regards the UK as their enemy and they will do anything they think they can get away with to damage us. Our territorial borders are most definitely under potential threat.
@ Peter Martin,
So, one might reasonably ask, at what point are the Russians told that enough is enough?
That point evidently wasn’t the occupation of Transnistria in 1992, or South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, or of Crimea in 2014, or of the Donbass.
And, if not now, are slices of Estonia, or Latvia, or Lithuania “up for grabs” at some point in the future?
Offering up bits of other people’s countries in order to protect our relatively quiet lives might, possibly, work in the short term, but if you keep rewarding theft, you shouldn’t be terribly surprised to find, one day, that your garden furniture is missing, and that there’s nobody there to protect your rights.
@Simon….All that you mention has been reciprocal and been going on for decades.
Extra judicial killings – Russia way down the list compared to the US and it’s covert drone strikes – obviously the biggest culprit is Israel who tops the league in that respect.
@Mark ….It’s far more complex than that & deep down you surely realise that some in eastern Ukraine don’t want to be part of it
..Russia doesn’t pose a threat to our territorial
borders . If people are that keen on on supporting Ukraine – pack your tin hat …
I didn’t realise that the USA ‘unsigned’ from the ICC under George Bush, though not particularly surprised by this fact. What is surprising is that Obama didn’t undo that damage when he took over as President. Quite shocking, really.
@ Martin,
“Some people in eastern Ukraine don’t want to be part of it” – and yet it requires Russian military intervention to maintain a supposedly spontaneous independence movement. All the pre-2014 evidence suggests that greater autonomy would have met the wishes of the majority of the population of Luhansk and Donetsk.
“If people are that keen on on supporting Ukraine – pack your tin hat…”
Really, is that the best you have to offer? Look, I know that your world view tends towards the isolationist but unless mid-sized and smaller countries stick together and work as allies, you leave the ring to the “giants” – America, Russia, China and India, all of whom have issues in terms of commitment to democracy. Like it or not, we have an interest in maintaining and supporting our fellow democracies and encouraging moves towards democracy elsewhere in the world.
And if you really believe that there is a point where the Putin regime will conclude that they’ve got all that they want, I’ve got a bridge in New York to sell you.
Mark …Wars end on a negotiated settlement .
I …Then comes the question that all the comments above avoid – just how are you going to get to the Ukrainian govt position ..
It’s barely holding a line at huge costs, two years after the ‘ spring offensive’ …
Do you honestly think they are going to take Crimea…
Martin (Gray), I am profoundly saddened by the increasing volumes of unsubstantiated claims you seem to be willing to make here in order to justify your views here. Let’s look at your claim to Simon that “All that you mention has been reciprocal and been going on for decades”.
So Simon mentioned “people who have been murdered on British soil by Russian security forces.” Can you provide any evidence that Britain has sent security forces into Russia to murder its citizens or people who have been given asylum there, perhaps with the addition that in defence we claimed that our operatives were tourists looking at some ancient cathedral or similar?
Likewise you say to Mark “deep down you surely realise that some in eastern Ukraine don’t want to be part of it.” Indeed and there are some people who live here who don’t want to be part of Britain, and doubtless you could say the same of every other country in the world. However you don’t just change borders on the basis of a minority view, and certainly not by meekly accepting a very large superpower can annexe any bit of a foreign country on that basis.
Finally you say with no hint of doubt “Russia doesn’t pose a threat to our territorial
borders.” Any evidence?
As they say, and I fear it is true in far too many ways, The one thing you learn from history is that some people don’t want to learn anything from it.
@ Martin,
Ah yes, the “sovereignty is fine for us, but it doesn’t matter for others” argument. You are, at least, consistent.
If you’re content with a world in which the strong bully the weak without consequence, then fine. But remember, the Russians have already laid claim to territory they don’t currently occupy, way beyond the previously disputed territory, and we, and Russia, guaranteed the 1991 borders a long time ago.
Ukraine might not be able to reclaim its lost territories on the battlefield, and almost certainly not alone, but that doesn’t justify us turning our back on our allies. Solidarity is a two-way street.
@Peter Martin “The comparison with the Sudetenland seems to be on the assumption that if the west had actively opposed the integration of the German speaking areas of Czechoslovakia into the German Reich, in 1938, then WW2 would have been avoided.
Possibly. But it’s far more likely that it would only have started a year earlier than it did. The west had no means of preventing the occupation of what turned out to be the whole of Czechoslovakia.”
WW2 might not have been avoided, it might have started sooner but in all likelihood would have been shorter. The Czech defences in the Sudetenland were famously strong (the Germans discovered this for themselves when testing them after having had them gifted to them) and the Czech armaments industry was also among the most advanced & productive – indeed the Germans used many Czech tanks in their own army from 1939 onwards. Finally, the German army was also much less well prepared for war in 1938 than a year later. So all in all, selling the Czechs down the river was as short-sighted as it was disreputable.
The parallels to the current position with Ukraine (notably with Crimea) are clear.
@ Martin Gray Sadly, its become obvious that the Ukraine is a faraway country of which you know (or care) nothing.
COP is a process rather than an event and so needs to be viewed as such. The next one is in Brazil and is likely to be more sympathetic to the issues it is supposed to address. It needs to remove all fossil fuel interests from its events and perhaps streamline its procedures. It is also too top down in its statements and needs to encourage countries to consult more with their citizens about the issues and their solutions.