As the drums of war beat across Europe, and as the West begins imposing severe sanctions on Russia and its oligarchs in response to President Vladimir Putin’s military aggressions against Ukraine, many are wondering what role the United Nations Security Council could have played to prevent this war from escalating. After all, isn’t that the point of the Security Council – to prevent wars?

Seventy-seven years ago, on 26 June 1945, 50 states endorsed the United Nations Charter with a promise to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Reeling from the devastating impact of the Second World War, the states that ratified the Charter were determined not to repeat the scenario that had led to massive loss of life and physical destruction. For this reason, they created the UN Security Council, which consists of five permanent veto-holding powers, namely the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – the victors of the Second World War who had borne the brunt of the war and were expected to maintain peace in a post-war world. (Ironically, all five members are part of the global military-industrial complex that supplies weapons to the rest of the world.) The 10 non-permanent members of the 15-member Council are elected for two-year terms on a rotational basis. Their voices, votes and opinions don’t really count, even if they make persuasive anti-war speeches invoking nations’ sovereignty at the Security Council, as did Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Martin Kimani, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which some have claimed was hypocritical as Kenya itself ignored Somalia’s sovereignty when it invaded that country in 2011 despite being warned against doing so by none other than the United States).

If Europe descends into a Third World War situation as a result of Putin’s actions – which will no doubt create a massive refugee crisis in Europe and bring about economic hardship not just in Russia but globally – will the United Nations itself become largely irrelevant, reduced to dealing with a humanitarian crisis that would have never erupted if it had the power to prevent the war in the first place? Will it just appeal for humanitarian aid, as it has done in Yemen and other refugee- and IDP-producing places recently, instead of condemning and sanctioning Saudi Arabia, which started the war?

As recent history has shown, the UN Security Council has been unable to prevent wars in places such as Ukraine because the five permanent members, also known as the P-5, are not held to account when they themselves become aggressors. This is why Russia – a veto-holding permanent member of the Council – did not suffer any UN sanctions when it carried out military actions in Chechnya in 1999, in Georgia in 2008, and in Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. Imposing severe sanctions on a permanent member of the UN Security Council has rarely happened. This is why no sanctions were imposed on the United States and Britain when they decided to invade Iraq in 2003 without Security Council approval and despite anti-war protests around the world.  Western nations are quick to call Putin a “war criminal” but did not call Bush or Blair war criminals even when it became obvious that their assertions that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and harboured Al Qaeda were false, and even after they ignored anti-war protests around the world.

Before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell had made a detailed and elaborate presentation at the UN Security Council purportedly showing that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and links with the terrorist organization Al Qaeda that had carried out the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. His lengthy televised performance at the Security Council – which even he later regretted – did not convince many members of the UN Security Council that an invasion of Iraq was necessary. But US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were adamant about waging a war against Iraq. They ignored reservations expressed by some Security Council members, notably France, and went to war with Iraq anyway, even though UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had declared the war “illegal” (which goes to show how little clout UN Secretary-Generals have in military affairs). Despite this, Western nations did not impose sanctions on the US and Britain, as they are now doing with Russia, perhaps because this time European lives and the sovereignty of European nations are at stake.

Failed sanctions amid scandals 

The case of Iraq is particularly illustrative of the impunity that the P-5 enjoy when it comes to taking military actions around the world. It also shows how sanctions can have devastating consequences.

After the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, the US led a coalition of forces that pushed the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. Subsequently, the UN Security Council unanimously imposed sanctions on Iraq. The sanctions regime was to be implemented through the UN’s Oil-for-Food progamme that did not allow Iraq to sell its vast reserves of oil commercially; rather oil sales were managed by the UN and all the oil proceeds were held in a UN bank account. Two-thirds of the proceeds were to be used to pay for humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people while the rest was used to compensate Kuwait for the destruction it had suffered during Iraq’s invasion and occupation.

However, as investigations later showed, the Oil-for-Food programme was manipulated by Saddam to enrich himself. He managed to sell oil to hundreds of individuals and firms that were willing to ignore or bypass the sanctions (a tactic I believe Putin will also employ). The investigations revealed that more than 2,000 companies and individuals from more than 40 countries had paid bribes or received kickbacks from Saddam to participate in the programme and that billions of dollars that were intended for the Iraqi people had been lost. These revelations only came to light after the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was forced to order a probe into the programme following a series of exposés in the Iraqi and international media that showed that even top UN officials in Iraq were involved in the scam.

The case of Iraq is particularly illustrative of the impunity that the P-5 enjoy when it comes to taking military actions around the world.

The Oil-for-Food programme was not only corrupted, it was also a disaster for the Iraqi people. The UN investigation led by Paul Volcker showed that the Iraqi people received poor quality food and medical supplies under the scheme and that much of the food was “unfit for human consumption”. Unfortunately, the Volcker report was released when the programme had ended and when the United States and Britain already had their boots on the ground in Iraq.

The war was a disaster, and its impact is being felt even today. Independent sources showed that at least 600,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives. Saddam’s ouster also created a power vacuum that led to mayhem. Some of Saddam’s Baath party loyalists joined forces with Sunni jihadists to form the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which went on to unleash terror in Iraq and neighbouring countries in pursuit of an “Islamic Caliphate”.

Of course, Russia’s attack on Ukraine cannot be compared with the US and Britain’s war in Iraq because the circumstances leading up to the wars are different. Moreover, Russia has a permanent seat at the high table at the UN Security Council while Iraq doesn’t. And Russia has far more natural resources and military might than Iraq ever did. Iraq had oil that the world needed, but Putin has a lot more that Europe and the rest of the world needs, including oil, wheat and natural gas. Sanctions may cripple its international financial transactions, but Putin has probably thought of a way to get around them.

The Russian president and his allies, including China, will most likely gang up to evade or undermine sanctions as did Saddam, and perhaps even profit from them. Russia, as a veto-holding permanent member of the UN Security Council, will also not allow the Security Council to impose sanctions on it, although the US, Britain, France and other European will impose sanctions unilaterally and may even intervene militarily under the umbrella of NATO, as they did during war in the Balkans.

Time to reconstitute the Security Council 

As Russia and Ukraine lurch towards a war whose repercussions will be felt globally, perhaps it is time to think about reconstituting the membership of the UN Security Council to include states that have no interest in the weapons industry. Membership should be allocated to those countries that have not waged a war in other countries since the Security Council was formed in 1945, which do not have nuclear weapons, and which are genuinely committed to world peace. (At this point, the only country that I think qualifies is Bhutan.)

One might argue that some wars are necessary to remove evil men from power. The defeat of Germany’s Adolf Hitler was necessary, as perhaps was the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. But some wars lead to even more crises, as is happening now in Afghanistan, and in Libya when NATO bombed that country in a bid to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Libya today stands as a testament to what can happen when a strongman is removed without a plan in place on who will run the country after he is gone. The fighting there continues and anarchy has made Libya a leading hub for human traffickers.

However, it is unlikely that the reconstitution of the UN Security Council will happen any time soon because, as Richard Haass, the President of the US Council on Foreign Relations has pointed out, “those who stand to lose can and do block any such change”.

It has been described—in some mainstream media—as “… the biggest concentration of firepower in Europe since the cold war.” This weekend, The Economist estimated that there were about 190,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, ready to invade. By Monday, it has tapered off, though some claim Putin may still invade. In the end, this will mostly be about a power play between Russia and the West, especially the United States, with the Ukrainian people as their proxies.

But what does all this mean for Africans?

Apart from the fact that there’s a large African diaspora in Ukraine, including Ukraine’s most popular evangelical Christian preacher, there are geopolitical questions at stake. Will African states side with the US or their European allies or with Russia? The assessment of last week’s EU/AU summit is that the relationship between Africa and Europe is largely smoke and mirrors these days. The writer Tsitsi Dangarembga summarized it: “For those who long to be welcomed and nothing more, standing on a platform for a photoshoot is a success.”

One key reason for the cool Africa-EU relationship is that Russia and China are bigger players on the continent now. So are the Gulf States, Iran and Turkey. All of these states have deep pockets and soft power ambitions. While the AU hasn’t officially taken a stance, we know that the AU and Russia just signed a massive business-focused partnership. As VOA reports today:

Trade between Russia and African countries has doubled since 2015, to about $20 billion a year, African Export-Import Bank President Benedict Oramah said in an interview last fall with Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency, cited by the Russia Briefing investment news site. He said Russia exported $14 billion worth of goods and services and imported roughly $5 billion in African products.

Voice of America cites historian Maxim Matusevich, who has written on Africa Is a Country’s about Russia’s increasing African focus, that Russians today “are not offering any ideological vision” to Africans. This is not your parents communism.

What they’re essentially doing is they’re contracting with African elites on a one-on-one basis. … They insist on the importance of sovereignty and contrast that with the West, which is trying to impose its values, such as transparency, honest governance, anti-corruption legislation. Again, I’m not saying the West is always sincere doing that, but that’s the official message – and they [Russians] are not doing any of that.

Russia’s presence on the continent is growing, especially militarily. Yes, that means mercenaries. AP recently published a map showing Russian mercenaries in nearly 20 countries on the continent where Russian mercenaries are operating. Those include Libya, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Zimbabwe and Botswana. And the Russians are bullish about this—mercenaries in Africa are the new thing for Russian cinema, in Russian Rambo-style movies.

Recently, the Financial Times ran a long feature on a film titled “Tourisme,” filmed in the Central African Republic:

Touriste portrays Russian mercenaries as selfless heroes saving a poor African country. Its plot at times hews closely to reality (Russian fighters agree to train the CAR army and then battle alongside them against brutal rebel groups) while at others conveniently distorting it (the rebels alone are depicted doing things — indiscriminate killing, torture, bullying the UN — that the mercenaries themselves are accused of by the EU and human rights groups) …

It is essentially a 1980s-style action flick. The plot is typical of the patriotic fare churned out by parts of Russia’s film industry during Putin’s rule. A young Russian police officer signs up to fly to the CAR to train soldiers amid a bloody civil war. (The movie’s title derives from his call sign, Tourist). This much is based in reality. In 2018, Russia signed an agreement with the CAR to send unarmed instructors to train the local army, which has been fighting a rebellion since 2013. Officially, the governments say that 1,135 military instructors are now in the country.

More recently, Russia has been implicated in the return of military dictatorships in West Africa. Case study: Mali.

We hope to take a closer look at these entanglements soonest, but in the meantime, Africa is a country archive offers an overview of the long-short history of this relationship.

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

With just six months to go till Kenya’s general elections, preparations are in full swing. But the Kenyan authorities seem to be struggling at least in one area: voter registration.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has been trying to get young adults who have become eligible to vote since the last polls in 2017 to register. In October, the commission set an ambitious target of adding 6 million to the voter register within a month but only a quarter showed interest. In January, the IEBC tried again and today, near the end of the exercise, it has only netted 12 percent of the remaining 4.5 million potential voters it was targeting.

This has set off alarm bells among the political classes and commentariat. Politicians eying a run for office and their allies have been issuing increasingly strident calls for youth in what they consider to be their strongholds to go out and register. One county governor took the unprecedented step of giving all the county workers two days off to get family members and friends to register after only 5,500 out of 130,000 potential new voters in his region turned up to register. Another has illegally directed hospitals in his county to deny services to people who have not registered.

Among civil society types, the concern is also mounting with suggestions that by refusing to vote, the youth would be locking themselves out of the decision-making rooms where their future will be decided. “It is not elections that will bring change but, rather, the robust participation of the youth in these elections as both voters and aspirants (at all available levels),” wrote ARTICLE 19’s Eastern Africa Regional Director Mugambi Kiai.

I do not share in the angst. Quite the opposite, in fact. The fetishisation of elections as the primary vehicles for increased and effective popular participation in governance runs counter to evidence from around the world that elections primarily benefit politicians, not voters. Kiai acknowledges as much in his article when he asks: “How many times have we repeated to [the youth] that voting will change things – only for that promise to be promptly broken and translate into their hollow realities and futures?”

In Kenya, as elsewhere across the globe, the preoccupation with elections to the detriment of other more important forms of democratic participation is destroying democracy. And it reflects a crucial change in attitudes to state power that has intensified over the last two decades following the demise of the quarter-century dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi at the end of 2002.

Prior to that, resistance to the regime had focused on putting pressure on those in power in the Executive and in Parliament to implement reforms safeguarding the personal and political freedoms and free and fair democratic competition, including elections. It was about fixing the system rather than taking power.

Though the civil society organisations – the media, community groups, non-governmental organisations, faith-based entities – that formed the bulwark of that resistance, worked with opposition politicians, they remained, as a group, largely distinct from them. It is this struggle that ultimately birthed a new constitution in 2010.

However, the wave that swept out of power Moi and the KANU party – which had ruled for nearly 40 years reestablishing the colonial state that independence was meant to abolish – also demolished this Chinese wall between civil society and politics. After a quarter century of struggle, Moi and KANU had become the personification of all that was wrong in Kenya.

Coupled with a narrative coming out of the West blaming African problems on the lack of good leaders and good governance, rather than the systems of extraction inherited from colonialism, this seeded the idea that change required capturing state power. It was not enough to work for a system that protected Kenyans’ rights regardless of who was in power. State power was the solution, not the problem. And it needed to be wielded by the “right” people which meant Kenyans had to vote “wisely”.

So in 2002, Kenyans did indeed vote wisely, putting in power many of the opposition, civil society and media stalwarts who had been loudest in demanding change. It was a time of unprecedented euphoria. An opinion poll found Kenyans to be the most optimistic people on earth. On the streets, citizens were arresting policemen for demanding bribes. It seemed the country had been cleansed of the filth of Moi and KANU, and was now set for a new era of justice and abundance.

Of course, it did not turn out that way. Moi was gone, but the new crop of “good” rulers have, in the last 20 years, proved to be just as adept at running a corrupt, brutal kleptocracy as he was. Voting wisely, and even running for office, did not prove to be a protection against an oppressive system. As Kenyans once again prepare to cast ballots, the 2010 constitution continues to be more honoured in the breach than the observance, and the system of colonial plunder it was meant to undo continues to chug away.

In such circumstances, urging young people to register to vote is simply making them fodder for voter turnout machines and legitimising electoral contests that feed the winners into a colonial system that incentivises and rewards corruption. For more than 60 years, Kenyans have queued up to vote, and at every election, thrown out between half and two-thirds of “bad” incumbents. Yet their “good” replacements have proven little better. So rather than bemoan the fact that the youth do not want to play this game of musical chairs, we who have been playing should recognise that the problem is not who is sitting when the music stops. It is the game itself.