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Diplomatic Briefing — KAS Cambodia and CICP

10 — DP Vol. 05

Cover Story

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. An integral part of this security system is the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Southeast Asia.

Russia has committed acts of nuclear terrorism, seizing nuclear power plants in Ukraine and holding their personnel hostage. Russia also threatens Ukraine with nuclear weapons and everyone else in the world should they intervene in the war. Nuclear bluffing has become a useful tool for strategic deterrence using fear as the main resource.

Such behavior is undeniably irresponsible. Threats to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, especially those that have voluntarily renounced their nuclear arsenal, such as Ukraine, or that have made a commitment of never having one, like the ASEAN countries, are undermining global efforts to build a world which is safe for all. It is the responsibility of all nations of the world to severely punish such actions in order to preserve peace for all mankind.

For many countries in the world that rely on the rules- based order, Russia’s war on Ukraine creates a funda- mental threat that cannot be accepted. Since 2014, Russia has violated close to 400 international treaties, to which both itself and Ukraine are parties. The world’s response to the violation of international law and the UN Statute was weak and uncertain in 2014 during Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. This gave Russian leadership the idea that even more aggression would be readily accepted.

Today, while facing unprecedented sanctions, Russia is trying to convince some national leaders that there is room for normalizing the situation by giving Russia a degree of concessions. But this simply amounts to blackmailing. Giving in to the blackmailing of big states cannot end the current hostilities and does not set a precedent that will prevent the future hostilities of big states against smaller ones.

International sanctions are not the reason for the current crisis. The reason is that Russia is waging war on Ukraine and thus ruining the economy and society of one of the top world food producers, disrupting global trade, violating numerous international and bilateral agreements, and neglecting its own obliga- tions as a member of the UN Security Council. The longer the war continues, the deeper the crisis will become and the graver the consequences.

The largest ever package of sanctions on Russia thus far was imposed by ASEAN’s external partners, who are determined to pursue a consistently restrictive policy against violators of international law and order. Thus, in the long run, attempts to maintain cooperation with Russia may have profound grave systemic conse- quences both for the economies of these countries and for the stability of the ASEAN region as a whole.

Facing sanctions, Russia searches for ways to circumvent them through enhancing cooperation with traditional partners in South East Asia. But what is left behind the scene in such negotiations is that Russia is constantly worsening its own business environment, in particular through legitimizing state raiding and autho- rizing intellectual property theft since the beginning of the war. This is a serious warning for those who still plan doing business with Russia: they will lose money and assets in deals with Russia, sooner or later, moreover, they will be out of reach of any civilized court to recover.

In fact, the abandonment of ties with Russia in critical areas could actually create conditions for new promising projects in cooperation with world economic leaders, investments, innovations, and more. In the global market, there appears to be an empty space - the new suppliers will come to compete in order to get the best deals, and this competition will drive more prospective developments for the benefit of the AESAN.

While many heads of states, including the ASEAN leaders, are convinced that sanctions cannot end the war, such measures are an effective, peaceful tool for stopping the aggressor and bringing the Russian- Ukrainian war to the end. It is of the utmost impor- tance how the war ends: armed aggression must not be rewarded and Russia should not leave this war with any, even minor, gains, or the negative impact on the current rules based world order will be immense.

A united and clear response from the world to aggression in international relations is necessary. Countries and regions of the modern world are highly interconnected and must work together to meet the challenges of building a crisis-resistant world order, a system in which ASEAN plays an important role. Only international solidarity and a strong, united response to aggression against sovereign states can protect the world from further attempts to use force in violation of the fundamental principles of coexistence in the twenty-first century.