Foreign Minister’s remarks to Muscat Retreat of Oslo Forum

The following is the edited text of a talk delivered by Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, Foreign Minister of the Sultanate of Oman to the Muscat Retreat of the Oslo Forum:

“This evening, I would like to talk about the challenges to international order and national sovereignty, which arise in cases of foreign military intervention.

“Of course, we cannot ignore such clearly illegal actions such as Russia’s war in Ukraine, or Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its continued illegal occupation of Palestine.

“But much as these developments are alarming, both for the violence they inflict on innocent people and civilians, and for the damage they are doing to global security more broadly, there are many other examples of less explicit but also very damaging interventions.

“And it seems to me that these other less obvious interventions have become more frequent in recent decades, or, if not more frequent, at least much more likely to pass without comment or any sustained objection from the international community.

“I accept that such interventions have a range of different motivations, and that some are even well-intentioned or undertaken in good faith, for what seem like sound reasons.

“But they very rarely succeed, often because those ordering, planning, leading and carrying out the intervention, lack the understanding of local conditions, and the relationships with people and organisations necessary to achieve political goals.

“And they almost always complicate the task of conflict resolution, because they multiply the number of parties involved in any conflict resolution process, and introduce additional issues and interests that need to be addressed in any mediation or negotiation.

“But above all, I think we need to recognise that such interventions, and their proliferation, are now undermining international law, and threatening to undo conventions and understandings which, although imperfect, have done much to limit conflict in the period since the end of the Second World War.

“My aim here is to ask for your collaboration, in fashioning a response to what I think is an increasingly serious problem. So, I will share with you some thoughts I have been developing in the last few months, which have led me to recognise the seriousness of such problem.

“After the mass deaths and global destruction of the First World War, the international community, tried to develop a framework which would, it was hoped, outlaw the practice of violent territorial conquest, which had previously been a more or less accepted feature of international relations.

“War was seen as an acceptable and legal means of enforcing national rights and resolving conflicts between states.

“In 1928, agreement was reached on the Kellogg-Briand Pact, according to which wars of aggression, were made illegal, and territorial invasion was prohibited.

“Frank Kellogg, the US Secretary of State, after whom, with his French counterpart Aristide Briand, the agreement was named, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year for his role in securing it.

“As it turned out, this pact was unable to check the aggressive and expansionist actions of Nazi Germany and Japan, which led to the Second World War.

“But it is worth noting, that the invasions which provoked the twentieth century’s second global conflict, were regarded as illegal, while those of First World War had not been.

“We may recall that the first indictments made at the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals, related to their violation of the terms of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

“And in 1945, the United Nations Charter reaffirmed that the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state” was illegal.

“In 1949 the Geneva Conventions went further to specify in some detail which actions during a war would be considered illegal.

“The international order, for which the United Nations remains the foundation and guarantor, had as one of its key purposes, from the very beginning, the aim of placing clear legal limits on the conduct of war.
For much of the rest of the twentieth century, this legal framework and its associated institutions, established a significant global consensus, in support of national sovereignty and against wars of aggression.

“This led to a significant decline in wars of aggression and territorial acquisition. By the end of the century the seizure of territory by one state from another had declined to less than 10% of what it had been in the century before these international agreements came into force.

“Of course, this new framework did not prevent violations. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 or the American military intervention in Grenada in 1983, or, for that matter, the entire Vietnam War all come to mind.

“But in each case, the actions of those making such interventions were frequently the subject of widespread condemnation, and efforts were made to use international law, and a range of other diplomatic and economic sanctions, to restrain those responsible and to reaffirm global norms.

“What is important here, is not that the international consensus prevented these interventions from happening, but that it prevented them from being accepted as the norm.

“Today, I think we are worryingly close to a world in which certain kinds of foreign intervention – if not outright invasion and annexation of territory – are accepted as a normal part of international relations, rather than as illegal violations of our shared international order.

“How did this happen?

“I have no interest in pinning the blame for this on anyone. Indeed, I fear that today’s perilous situation is in fact the result of some entirely well-intentioned actions since the 1990s, which have ended up with some very regrettable unintended consequences.

“I am thinking of the 1999 military intervention made by NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in a bid to end the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and, ultimately to secure the overthrow of President Slobodan Milosevic, a man who was subsequently placed on trial for war crimes.

“The irony, and thus the difficulty of this example, is that the framework of international law, within which President Milosevic was indicted, was itself violated by the military action which secured his overthrow, an action which, as was widely acknowledged at the time, had been launched with laudable humanitarian intentions.

“For those who supported NATO’s action, ethics prevailed over international law.

“But the justification of war, as a form of humanitarian intervention, would subsequently become the basis for a kind of global mission creep.

“And because it was associated so closely, in the case of NATO’s action in Yugoslavia, with the overthrow of a regime, it seems now to have turned into a justification for other projects of regime change, in which the ethical case for intervention is far less straightforward.

“Let’s think for a moment about Iraq. In 1990 and 1991, the international community clearly affirmed its commitment to the principle that wars of aggression and territorial acquisition were illegal, by acting together to reverse President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

“And what’s more, with that mission in support of international law accomplished, the coalition refrained from pursuing its war further into an invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the regime in Baghdad, although some voices urged such action.

“However, such restraint and respect for international law, was abandoned in the aftermath of 9/11, with the launch of not one but two foreign interventions, in Iraq and Afghanistan, ostensibly aimed at the elimination of a terrorist threat, but in reality, functioning as explicit projects of regime change.

“In both cases, the declaration of a ‘War on Terror’ served as a kind of humanitarian and ethical justification for actions which were not only illegal, but, as the history of the subsequent 20 years has clearly shown us, had profoundly damaging unintended consequences, for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also for the wider international community, including, of course, the people of this region.

“A line had been crossed. Regime change in Iraq would serve as a model for regime change in Libya, and in this case, rival interventions in support of those contesting a civil war.

“The two decades, since the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein, have seen numerous interventions, some direct, some through the use of proxies, and some as a murky combination of the two.

“It has become common practice to take sides in another country’s civil war, to arm one party against another, to send one’s own troop or hire mercenary forces to participate in such conflicts.  This is what happened in Syria.

“It has also happened in both Yemen and Sudan, and it is striking that in both cases, the results have included two of the world’s most acute humanitarian catastrophes, one of which may in fact involve a genocide.

“There have also been interventions of yet another kind, which also violate international law: the use of assassination, including the assassination of alleged enemy combatants, or political opponents on the sovereign territory of a third-party state, as in the case of Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last year.

“And because such actions are starting to become normalised, it has become a regular feature of some states’ conduct of international affairs, to threaten such actions.

“Even the less credible uses of such threats are dangerous.

“Suggestions, for example, that the United States might invade Canada or annex Greenland.

“These threats are probably not intended to be taken seriously, but all the same, they tend to reinforce the idea that such interventions can be openly discussed, especially if such statements are not comprehensively condemned by the international community.

“It is only a small step from such presumably frivolous suggestions to a world in which people might imagine taking such actions with impunity.

“In which, for example, gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean might escalate into an invasion of Venezuela.

“And that would be a world without international law.

“It would be a return to a pre-twentieth century world of disorder, in which wars of aggression become legal again.

“A world in which the weak and the vulnerable will be constantly at risk.

“A world in which might would be right, whatever the humanitarian costs in terms of innocent lives.

“That is why I am asking all of you – as colleagues, committed to mediation and conflict resolution, – to join me in thinking about how to reverse this damaging trend towards the normalisation of foreign intervention.

“As a first step, all such interventions and threats of intervention, need to be clearly, unanimously and formally condemned.

“A second step would be to convene a global conference, under the auspices of the United Nations, at which all states are invited to make an explicit reaffirmation of their commitment to those instruments of international law that prohibit such interventions. There is no need to write new law. But a formal and public act of renewal is required. There should also be consequences.

“A third step, and I acknowledge that this is at once the most important and the most difficult to achieve, would be to find a way of strengthening international law by making judgements of the International Court of Justice enforceable.

“As a practical suggestion, may I propose that a working group of this Forum could be charged with the task of working with legal experts within the International Court of Justice, to explore what mechanisms might be devised, to make such enforcement possible?

“This is basically, the food for thought I offer – for your kind reflection and consideration.

“Thank you.”