Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes that the approaches expressed by representatives of the new US administration to international processes do not show that Washington respects its obligations under the UN Charter.
“With the return to power in the US of the Republican administration led by Donald Trump, Washington’s understanding of international processes after World War II has acquired a new dimension,” Lavrov wrote in his article “The UN Charter should be the legal basis for a multipolar world” in the journal Russia in Global Affairs.
“The new Foreign Minister Marco Rubio made very meaningful statements on this issue in the Senate on January 15,” the Russian Foreign Minister recalled, adding, “Their meaning was that the post-war world order is not only outdated, but has also become a weapon used against US interests. That is, not only the Yalta-Potsdam peace, in which the UN played a central role, but also the ‘rules-based order’, which embodied the selfishness and arrogance of the West led by Washington in the post-Cold War era, is no longer acceptable.”
“The shift to ‘America First’ has alarming resonance with the Hitler-era slogan of ‘Germany First,’ and a focus on ‘building peace through force’ could ultimately bury diplomacy,” he wrote.
Lavrov added: “I am not even talking about the fact that such statements and ideological fictions do not show the slightest respect for Washington’s international legal obligations under the UN Charter.”
Lavrov noted that “multipolarity is growing stronger and the United States, instead of opposing this objective process, may in the foreseeable historical perspective become one of the responsible centers of power along with Russia, China and other powers in the Global South, East, North and West.”
