NST Leader: A just world order begins with the end of the veto

New Straits Times

a day ago

MULTILATERALISM may finally trump unipolarity and two blocs in the Global South — BRICS and Asean — are doing all they can to make that happen. About time. The United Nations stands crippled by the law of the powerful.
There are 15 members in the UN Security Council (UNSC), the legislative arm of the world body, but even if 14 members agree to pass a resolution — a rare feat indeed in its nearly 80 years of existence — one veto will kill it, as it happened recently when the United States stopped the Gaza ceasefire resolution from being passed.
This is not the world order the nations of the world signed up to. Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, writing an opinion piece that was published on July 10 in newspapers around the world, including the weekly English edition of Spanish newspaper El Pais, pointed to the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, intervention in Libya and the war in Ukraine as examples of some UNSC members trivialising the illegal use of force.
Even absent any form of threat whatsoever, one country is able to attack another sovereign country without any consequences, as happened in the recent invasion of Iran, first by rogue state Israel and then by the US. All because of a future threat, not a clear and present danger.
Even the "future threat" is dismissed by the UN's nuclear watchdog as speculation. No chapter in the UN Charter allows such an invasion on a sovereign country, yet it happened. Not held to account, the villainous Zionist regime is threatening to invade again.
If Teheran is an existential threat to Tel Aviv, the latter should be more so to the former because it already has nuclear weapons. Yet, the UN nuclear watchdog dares not criticise the rogue regime because the law of the powerful few makes sure that doesn't happen.
For far too long, too many nations of the world have been treated unjustly by neocolonial unipolarity. Multilateralism must rise. It has no choice if it is to respond to "the cries of humanity fearful for its future", to use Lula's words.
Asean, which is now beginning to show cohesion that was long absent, and BRICS, whose strength is growing as its membership increases, are the long ignored humanity's hope. Asean on its own may be viewed by the "mighty" powers of the current international order as inconsequential, but with BRICS, heft of all kinds is there for harvesting.
Asean is the fifth largest economy of the world, and by 2030, it is projected to go a notch up. BRICS, on the other hand, makes up 40 per cent of the world's economy, according to the International Monetary Fund's data.
The unipolar world order, fearing BRICS' growing heft, has been highlighting some of its members' "autocracies" and contradictions within the bloc. Even the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping gets the bromides it doesn't deserve.
The colonial powers of the West may have been forced to declare the countries of the Global South independent, but unipolarity is colonialism by another name. It still "smells" of injustice and inequality. Multilateralism must trump the unipolar world order. Justice has no other avenue.