Yves here. Below, Andrew Korybko describes some of the overly-romantic views that Palestine supporters of Russia’s willingness to signal opposition to US and Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He also makes a critical point about the evolution to a system of multipolarity: that great and greater powers will act in their own interest, and smaller fry will have to adapt. We have pointed out that the reality of being a smaller country means have to do the best one can of playing the interests of the heavyweights off against each other so as to hopefully secure maximum advantage.
We highlighted a warning from Vanessa Beeley and Fiorella Isabel, triggered by the lack of effective action by BRICS members to halt Gaza genocide or even make Israel pay a real price for it. From “BRICS Are the New Defenders of Free Trade, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank” and Support Genocide by Continuing to Trade with Israel, in which we quoted a discussion between Beeley and Isabel:
Vanessa Beeley (10:50): But I think I still, where I’m struggling with the issue of BRICS, BRICS countries and their lack of drive to end the genocide and to actually under the Geneva Convention to effectively prevent genocide and punish those that are accused of committing genocide…
We’re seeing an increase in trade between China and India and Israel, both of them being heavily involved in the arms trade with Israel and certainly not throttling back. China’s invested through Chinese state companies and the settlement programs in the occupied territories. It’s investing in Ashdod and Haifa port, both of which receive weapons for the Zionist military on a regular basis. India is both an energy supplier, it’s just inked a new deal with Israel in the last few days, but also a weapons mutual trade deals between them. Russia is providing energy…
Not a single gesture has been made by any of these countries, apart from, of course, South Africa and Iran…
And what I find sort of disturbing is this inability by these countries to even address the fact that it is a genocide. and even to uphold the measures that must be taken that have been recommended by Francesca Albanese, by the ICJ, look at Yemen’s adherence to the genocide convention….
And we know that both Russia and China are also heavily invested with Saudi Arabia and with the UAE, both of which, one, were created to partner with the Zionist entity when the British created the so-called State of Israel…
And I guess what I’m trying to say is morally, I’m not understanding why people are so clinging to a bias which blinds them to holding these countries to account and saying to them, you have the power to do something….They have literally, they have the only capability in the world today, apart from the armed resistance in the region, to actually do something economically, not militarily, economically, to stop what is happening in Palestine.
And they’re failing to do it.
And later in the discussion:
Fiorella Isabel (23:10): When the majority of countries that have the capability to stop the Holocaust of our time aren’t doing it, then what world can I expect? What difference does it make if China and Russia rise and they’re not doing something different? Then the U S perhaps cosmetically, there is more of a transactional, um, I would say soft power type of, you know, relationship. It is more cooperative. There is some sort of win-win to some, if you have, you know, if they, if there’s a respect, a mutual respect, if you have enough of a, of, of something to show for it, when it comes to Russia and the way they operate pragmatically, um, That is how it is. I mean, they will have respect for Iran, but they don’t necessarily have respect for the rest of the Middle East or West Asia. And I think we’ve talked about this before. They’re not…..
If you’re going to be against hegemony, that is an ideological perspective. I don’t really think they’re against the hegemony. I think they want to have a piece of the pie. And that’s very well and fine….
Vanessa Beeley (32:18): And as we keep saying, if you’re going to hold BRICS countries up, Russia and China up, as some kind of viable alternative to the paradigm we’ve been living in for decades and that the world is sick of, then how can we accept that they’re doing virtually the same thing?…
Fiorella Isabel (38:40): It is actually just a very formulaic type of, of cheerleading for a team. It’s just more iterations of that, you know, from the microscopic left, right paradigm to, you know, multipolar and unipolar thing. It’s become just very much iterations of the same type of mentality where you’re just choosing a team and you’re just repeating what is most advantageous for you, what is most popular, what X, Y analysts said and whatever they say goes. And so when you question outside of that, you break people’s brains.
More subtle evidence supporting Beeley’s and Isabel’s warning is the way Russia has taken to mentioning the importance of civilizational states1. If I am in a former colony like Malaysia, that clearly does not include my country. So this is a signal that some animals will indeed be more equal than others.
Now in fairness, there is another theory regarding the UN abstentions: Russia and China recognized that this Gaza scheme will not work out well for its sponsors, and they might as well get out of the way and let the US and Israel founder in their mess. But that does nothing to stop continued death and devastation in Gaza.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
The global systemic transition to multipolarity is increasingly characterized by the “19th-century Great Power chessboard” paradigm in which such states prioritize their interests at the (perceived or actual) expense of comparatively medium- and smaller-sized ones and non-state actors.
Quite a few folks on social media are disappointed, enraged, and/or disgusted that Russia abstained from the latest UNSC Resolution on Gaza after it authorized an “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) there in alignment with the peace plan that the US mediated between Israel and Hamas. They believe that Russia should have vetoed the resolution in spite of the Palestinian Authority’s support for it, thus essentially suggesting that Russia should be “more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves”.
These expectations aren’t surprising since they align with the general sentiment espoused by many members of the Alt-Media Community, especially top influencers, quite a few of whom have peddled false claims about Russian policy towards the conflict or at least reinforced false perceptions of it. The foundational lie upon which all the others are built is that Putin is an anti-Zionist secretly allied with Iran against Israel and that all facts to the contrary are just him “playing 5D chess to psyche out the Zionists”.
The reality though is that he’s actually a proud lifelong philo-Semite, even going as far as to describe Russians and Israelis as “a true common family” and Israel as “a Russian-speaking country”, but false perceptions about his views and Russian policy continue to proliferate for the reasons explained here. Russia’s abstention might finally shatter this false paradigm since it’s extremely difficult to spin this as anti-Zionist, however, especially since it’s widely seen as having been imposed upon Hamas by the US.
About that group, Russia officially considers October 7th to have been a terrorist attack, but it doesn’t consider Hamas’ political wing to be a terrorist organization even though Israel wishes that it did. At the same time, Russia doesn’t consider Hamas to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the role of which it considers to be played by the Palestinian Authority. This further contextualizes why Russia abstained from the resolution instead of vetoed it even though Hamas was fiercely against it.
Be that as it may, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN still harshly criticized the resolution in his detailed comments that are worth reading in full here, thus dispelling speculation that Russia “sold out” Gaza to Israel after Putin’s call with Bibiahead of the vote. Russia was therefore clearly displeased with this resolution, but it can’t realistically present itself as “more pro-Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves” after the Palestinian Authority supported it, ergo why it lambasted the draft then abstained.
Vetoing the resolution under these circumstances, especially without China doing so as well (it too abstained), would have therefore been blatant obstruction. It would also have offended those of Russia’s partners that are ready to participate in the ISF by withholding UNSC legitimacy from their mission. Since Russia has no desire to prevent them from deploying to Gaza, they’d thus likely do so anyhow, which would expose its grandstanding, embarrass it, and harm its ties with them without any benefit at all.
The global systemic transition to multipolarity is increasingly characterized by the “19th-century Great Power chessboard” paradigm in which such states prioritize their interests at the (perceived or actual) expense of comparatively medium- and smaller-sized ones and non-state actors. Accordingly, there was never any realistic chance of Russia siding with Hamas over the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and their shared ISF partners no matter how this makes some feel, which they still have the right to express.
______
1 Forgive me for not running down the link, but Lavrov did in a advocating for a pan-Asian organization.
