Famine looming over South but no abatement of big power tensions

The world has it on the authority of the UN that food insecurity and famine born of conflict and war are distinct possibilities in parts of the global South. Some of these countries that are ‘Knocking on famine’s door’ are: Ethiopia, Northeastern Nigeria, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan.

Executive Director, UN World Food Programme, David Beasley had the bleeding statistics. He told the UN Security Council recently: ‘The world is facing a global emergency of unprecedented magnitude, with up to 345 million people marching towards starvation and 70 million pushed closer to starvation by the war in Ukraine. It is incredibly troubling that 50 million of these people in 45 countries are suffering from acute malnutrition….What was a wave of hunger is now a tsunami of hunger.’

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaking ahead of the current UN General Assembly summit, hoping to set the predominant tone and theme of the summit’s deliberations said, among other things: ‘Our world is blighted by war, battered by climate chaos, scarred by hate and shamed by poverty, hunger and inequality.’ The challenge before the international community is to rise to the great challenge of easing these unprecedented multiple challenges. It is an acid test of exceptional severity for the world body.

However, to what degree is the world community prepared to face up to these tasks that would constitute a test of its humanity? This is the question that calls for urgent answering. It ought to be plain to see that the success in alleviating the suffering stemming from these multiple crises needs to be predicated upon the peoples of the world coming together to manage the challenges in question unitedly. But, as matters stand, this is hardly the case.

For instance, the Russian and Chinese leaders have opted out of the ongoing UN Summit and it goes without saying that Russia’s and China’s participation is crucial for the success of any global endeavor aimed at bringing relief to peoples suffering as a result of the aforementioned crises. There is no doubt that the leaders’ personal presence at the UN deliberations would have been a major stimulant to any global initiative aimed at easing the lot of the world’s impoverished millions. Their non-participation should be seen as a drawback to these historic efforts.

The inference is inescapable that the UN system is at a crossroads in consideration of these developments that have a huge bearing on the organization’s efficacy. Being key UN Security Council members, Russia’s and China’s cooperation is crucial to the smooth functioning of the UN. To the degree to which they hesitate in working together with the rest of the membership of the UN, to the same extent would the functioning of the global body be undermined. Consequently, cynics could not be prevented from eventually questioning the reason for the UN’s existence.

The principal challenge before the UN chief and his core team at this juncture is to keep the international community united and solidly behind the UN. It ought to be obvious that global political divisions and tensions are proliferating as never before. Clearly, power blocs of a regional nature, for example, are opting to think and act independently of the UN and there is marked implied questioning of the UN’s moral authority by these quarters. Power centres emerge that not only tend to reject the UN’s principal standing in the current world order, but prefer to be guided by only their self-interest. These are dangerous tendencies that need to be contained by the UN leadership.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February this year could be described as marking a new low in the currently increasing international disorder. While military invasions of comparatively weaker countries by big powers have been nothing new in the post-World War Two order, what disturbs the world’s conscience in the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the unconscionable spilling of Ukrainian civilian blood by the invaders. Apparently, the UN can do nothing about it. This compounds the runaway international lawlessness of our times.

Nationalism of the most inimical kind is being let lose by competing powers and increasingly humanity is counting for almost nothing. This is the greatest of dreads. At the time of writing President Putin has reportedly announced a partial military mobilization of Russians for the continuation of the Ukrainian invasion and this bodes ill for Ukraine as well as Russia.

The Ukrainian invasion was preceded by the formation of Western-centric security blocs, such as, the Quad and Aukus, which have as a principal aim the containment of Chinese military and economic power in the Indo and Asia-Pacific regions. China’s muscle-flexing in the Taiwan Straits and in the East and South China seas over the years was seized by the West as a main reason for the formation of the Quad and the Aukus groupings.

Earlier, the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq marked a resurgence of Western military interventionism in the South, with the UN being reduced to a helpless onlooker. Needless to say, all such interventions were carried out with impunity and accountability on the part of the invading powers was never a factor to contend with.

Thus was the stage set for a dramatic spiraling of international disorder. The issues to be unraveled by the international community are complex and there are no simple answers to these questions. Whatever its limitations, there is no denying the continuing usefulness and relevance of the UN. However, it faces the grueling challenge of reining in and inspiring compliance to its directives from Western and Eastern-centric power blocs that are in constant competition for global military and economic dominance.

At present Eastern-centric power formations, such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, are increasingly proving formidable in the face of threats to their influence and dominance from the above mentioned Western-initiated power blocs. Considering the enormity of their military muscle neither of these competing alliances is likely to succumb to each other’s pressure.

As a short term measure, the UN could raise awareness among the governments and publics of these competing powers of the enormous cost to themselves of their current power projection exercises and military interventions regionally and globally. After all, all that they have achieved is to make life impossible for themselves in the form of steeply rising prices of every essential. Creeping global impoverishment is a distinct possibility. The big powers concerned will only earn the wrath of their publics.