Russia Tests New Missile and Seeks to Rejoin UN Human Rights Council, ICJ Takes On Syria, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Russia may test a nuclear-powered cruise missile while it seeks a return to the UN Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice begins hearings on torture in Syria. It's October 5th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's get going. In Russia, there is recent satellite imagery indicating that Russia plans to test, or perhaps already has begun to test, an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile. Now, we know Russia has plenty of missiles and other strategic weapons, but what is generating attention about this new missile?

ROBBINS:
So Bob, we spoke a couple of weeks back about how we are inching toward a new potential nuclear arms race and the increasing danger of some miscalculation. And this report in the New York Times is one more reminder of that, especially when we don't have enough information on what our adversaries are up to. As for what we know about this, we don't know a lot. The Times reported that recently gathered satellite imagery shows equipment, the truck, trailer, other things moving around at a Russian missile launch site on a remote Arctic island that had previously been used to test, unsuccessfully I might add, so far. This new nuclear-powered cruise missile, known as the Burevestnik. By the way, the name means petrel, which is a seabird. I looked it up. And it was also the hero of a 1901 pro-revolutionary fable by Gorky. Anyway, the Russians also issued aviation notices, warning planes to avoid a quote, "Temporary danger area around the launch site." So that's why people think something's going on there.

So this particular missile and the Russians, as you said, have a lot of missiles that can carry nuclear weapons, is a nuclear-powered cruise missile. It's one of six exotic new weapons that Putin unveiled in 2018 along with a hypersonic missile system, a new intercontinental ballistic missile, an underwater nuclear-armed drone, which the Pentagon is actually most focused on. This is particularly interesting because of the nuclear engine. For liftoff, it uses a conventional engine, but it is powered by a nuclear reactor, which in theory means it could fly for a very, very long time. And the Russians also claim that its design allows it to fly low with an unpredictable trajectory, which they say would allow it to defeat any missile defense systems.

Okay, am going to sound cynical here for a moment, but if you look at the track record of our National Missile Defense System, which isn't so hot, most missiles can probably evade it. So why are people so excited about this? Most immediately, that nuclear-powered engine also means that if a test goes wrong, it could scatter a lot of radiation. In 2019, a failed test of the same missile killed seven people in an explosion, including several scientists working on the project and led to a spike in radiation off of Russia's northern coast. And some people have dubbed the Burevestnik a "Flying Chernobyl", which is hyperbole, but it's still pretty clever. And keep in mind, of course, we and the Russians and the Brits and several others all have nuclear-powered subs. And in the past, the Russians did have problems with those, but they don't run quite well now. But most experts believe that the Burevestnik is years away from deployment.

And so to go back to your original question, most important, this really is what it's going to do to the potential for an arms race. You can figure that here in the United States, and particularly at a time of so much tension, you're going to hear a lot more clamor from people on the Hill that we got to invest a lot more money in nuclear weapons. The Biden administration, President Biden came in, everyone thought he was going to be a committed arms controller, but he's now said he wants to go ahead with this first new warhead for a sub-launch missiles, and he tried to cancel another new nuclear weapon, the sea-launched cruise missile, and Congress wouldn't let him do it. So I think that's really the big thing. It's more political than it is making a difference because there's a hell of a lot of nuclear weapons pointed at us already.

MCMAHON:
So Russia didn't necessarily announce this. Maybe they wanted it to be revealed in some fashion, and as you said, they previously boasted about new weaponry, Carla, but is there still any appetite, at some point, for getting back to the table, at least between the U.S. and Russia, to try to mend some of the arms control framework that has been pretty much disintegrated and the post-Cold War period?

ROBBINS:
Unfortunately not. I mean there's only one arms control agreement left, this New START agreement, and earlier this year the Russians announced that they were suspending participation in it. They didn't say, or more the point, they went out of their way to say they weren't going to deploy more warheads. This puts a cap of 1,500 on each side. But what they did suspend, and this goes back to this new missile and the lack of clarity we all have, they did say that they were going to suspend the notifications and the inspections that are so intrinsic to arms control.

So much of it as Reagan would say, "Trust, but verify." So much of avoiding an arms race is knowing what the other guy is doing. This new missile, if it were to be deployed, and as I said, experts think it's years and years away from working, but if it were to be deployed and if New START were still in place and it's supposed to expire in '26, would have to go under the counting rules of any arms control agreement, assuming we had an arms control agreement. But the paranoia that this produces and the genuine fear potentially that this produces, I think has a huge potential political impact of lots more politicians saying that we too need more weapons and we need more new weapons. And that's a real recipe for a new post-Cold War or new, New Cold War arms race.

MCMAHON:
Obviously we're in the midst of a period of pretty intense sanctions directed against Russia from Western powers, but it's not clear how much additional sanctions or how much additional leverage could be brought to bear to change such behavior. As you say, it's once you get into the mindset of an arms race, where there's a will, there's a way, and the Russians have a lot of capability in this area.

ROBBINS:
What the Russians are doing is not illegal, the same way what we're doing is not illegal. It's just destabilizing. That's the thing that you have to worry about. And many people would argue that every arms control agreement up until now has been between the Russians and the Americans, and now we have other players out there, and most importantly the Chinese, who for a long time just kept themselves in the 300 range for nuclear weapons, and every intelligence agency in the U.S. is saying that they're now going to build a lot more.

So any attempt to get back to an arms control regime... Okay, I'm nerding out here now, Bob. Is going to have to consider bringing the Chinese in as well. So we truly have to get back to something because this missile is one more reminder that unless we try to figure out a way of talking to each other about this, informing each other what we're planning on doing, and really there's far too many nuclear weapons out there anyway. We got to get back to some sort of arms control conversations and slow things down here, but that's going to be really hard in the midst of the current hostility between Russia and the U.S.

MCMAHON:
So this is just what we needed, Carla, to kick off another week ahead look, a doomsday testing, although as you say, it's many years in the future, but still it's kind of troubling.

ROBBINS:
You know me, me and nuclear weapons. 

So Bob, let's shift to Geneva, but continue to talk about Russia, next Tuesday, the UN Human Rights Council will elect new members and Russia quite incredibly has formally requested to rejoin the council. Let's remember that the ICC, the International Criminal Court, has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine. And Russia was suspended from the council in April of '22 over quote, "gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights in Ukraine." The reasons for its suspension haven't changed. They're still committing horrific abuses in Ukraine. Why are they making this run at the council and how likely is it that they're going to be able to rejoin?

MCMAHON:
Well, on the latter question, Carla, it seems like they do have a shot at pulling this off because they're sort of testing the temperature of world opinion. We just came through a series of global gatherings in which you had a good deal of frustration voiced by the so-called Global South about the Western-led world order and the emphasis on Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine and so forth. And Russia has been extremely active diplomatically, although it's been isolated in a number of ways, and its president has not been showing up at these global events out of fear of being seized for an ICC trial. However, Russia is certainly hearing things and trying its way to get back into this particular world body because it wants to help control the narrative. 

It was a big deal for the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the Rights Council. And this is something that doesn't happen a lot at the UN. The threshold has to be pretty high, in fact. I mean, we're talking about an organization that gets routinely criticized by rights watchdogs for what it allows rogue member states to do. Let's not forget last year, North Korea temporarily took over as head of the top nuclear disarmament forum at the United Nations because it was part of the rotation. Iran has sat on leadership positions on UN bodies overlooking women's rights, for example, and we can go on and on. So it was a big deal. It was the first time since 2011, when Libya was suspended, that a member of the Human Rights Council was suspended and Russia took that hard. They try to see themselves, even as they rail against the Western-led sort of order. They do also try to portray themselves as doing things legitimately and observing global norms and so forth, as contrary to fact as that is.

And you've had in their absence a UN rapporteur for Russia coming out with a report about Russia itself, let alone Ukraine, but Russia itself showing its significant deterioration in its human rights. They cited almost 200 sources. There's also a UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine that has reported, just recently, that Russian forces are committing war crimes in Ukraine that include torture, rape, attacks on civilians. So they're seeing this ongoing kind of litany of reporting and fact-finding, and feeling like they need to be in these bodies to respond. China, which is also up for rejoining the Human Rights Council, routinely seeks membership on these bodies as well, for the same reason. It wants to be there to kind of sway members and steer the votes in this council away from, certainly, any scrutiny on China, as well as many other states that are in China's orbit.

Now you have some other states that are aligning up for joining, like Cuba for example. You have states currently on the Human Rights Council like Eritrea and Sudan. So that gives you a sense of who's been able to serve on the Human Rights Council to date. And again, Russia is taking the temperature and feeling like it has a shot and getting back and being able to project its voice.

This body does not create any sort of binding actions on its members, but it is the world's main universal rights body with a pretty loud bully pulpit and the power to appoint rapporteurs that come up with reports that are read out in the open in Geneva, and that can be a real sort of stinging, naming and shaming exercise. So Russia wants to try to stop this. There are reports that it's been using as part of its campaign to influence UN member votes, it's been using grain supplies as a sweetener, for example. And so that's why I say you can't rule out it having a shot at getting back onto this body. And it would be another strike against the UN's reputation certainly, but also for the cause of trying to really hold states accountable for really egregious actions.

ROBBINS:
It's one of these sort of Saturday Night Live routines if the council lets Russia back on or if it lets Cuba on. And the things that you talk about there, and actually this is the second iteration. I mean there was a predecessor body there that was dissolved because it was a caricature, because it really did have every, it seemed like every abuser in the world was a member of it and they were supposed to reform their rules to try to avoid that, but it doesn't seem like they did a particularly good job of this.

MCMAHON:
It's good point, Carla. I recall as when I was covering the United Nations, interviewing experts from places like Human Rights Watch, and they all had been working strenuously to try to create this new chamber and it was seen as somewhat of a victory to dissolve the Human Rights Commission because it had become so discredited. There was a term for the countries that would lobby to join it, called the "coalition of abusers," and they would bond together, and then you can go back and look at their voting record. It's just pretty incredible. China, for example, just did not want even debate to come up on any issues that was sensitive in regards to China.

Human Rights Council was then set up, and part of the founding bylaws were that first of all, countries couldn't stay on it forever. They had to after two terms, had to cycle off for a bit. Every country had to have reports done on its own, on their own rights records, including the United States, including any country that felt like it was in a position not to be challenged. That was part of the rule of entry onto the Human Rights Council. And they shrunk the membership a little bit, down from the commission, which is over fifty members, to forty-seven. But here we are again. So as you say, it's going to be a real strike against the UN if this goes through. 

By the way, Russia's running against, there's two seats in its region of Eastern European states. It's running against Bulgaria and Albania. So we'll see which votes prevail.

ROBBINS:
Well, I'd watch that. Certainly we know that the U.S. called the bid "preposterous," and I think preposterous is certainly the truth and I think it will, if the Russians get on, unfortunately will be a major blow to the credibility of the Human Rights Council. And the UN takes the backwash for this too, when things like this happen, because people conflate all these UN agencies into one.

MCMAHON:
Right, right. And as another bit of irony, Ukraine is actually one of the countries cycling off of the council this year, so Russia would potentially replace Ukraine. 

But let's stick on the European continent and go to another city where we see lots of rights issues playing out, and that would be The Hague. Next Tuesday, the International Court of Justice will begin hearings on crimes committed by Bashar al-Assad's regime against the Syrian people. There have been many, many cases of torture and mass atrocities reported since the start of Syria's civil war more than twelve years ago, Carla. But it's a question of whether this court's ruling can even make a difference at this point. Can it?

ROBBINS:
Well, like all international law, it's limited teeth there for a variety of complicated legal reasons. But let's first be clear that this is not the International Criminal Court. The ICC, which if it has jurisdiction and it can get ahold of them, prosecutes individuals for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As we were just talking about, Putin, there's an arrest warrant out for him. Syria's Bashar al-Assad should be one of the poster boys for ICC prosecution, but he's managed to avoid even an indictment because Syria is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, which is the founding treaty of the ICC, and you're all international law is opt-in. Unlike when you're inside a country, in which you're in the country, you're subject to the law, and international law, the way for most of this is that you got to sign the treaty to be subject to the court. So in 2014, the then prosecutor of the International Criminal Court released a statement responding to request to indict Syria for human rights atrocities and just said that Syria wasn't a party to the court, so they couldn't do anything. 

There was another path to the ICC, and I will get back to the ICJ, but I think this is pretty important. The UN Security Council can refer cases to the ICC. But guess what happened when countries pushed this, it was vetoed by Russia and China. So keep that in mind now, when we talk about the ICJ. So this case is instead playing out before the International Court of Justice, which some people refer to as the World Court. That is not a criminal court. It's a civil tribunal that settles cases, and it doesn't deal with people, it deals with countries. And in June, Canada and the Netherlands jointly filed an application to the ICJ to indict Syria for violating the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

In this case, unlike the ICC, ICJ has standing because all three countries involved, Syria, Canada, the Netherlands, are signatories to this convention. The prosecution it finds against Syria is going to be probably symbolic, but it's really important and it's really an important symbol because this is a time in which Assad is being brought in from the cold. Just last week we're talking about his four-day visit to China. Before that we talked about how it got back into the Arab League. This will be a reminder that all the bad things that have happened there and that the world still is watching what he did. 

After several delays, the case is supposed to go forward and if the court rules against Syria, it can call for an immediate halt to torture and other inhumane acts. Now, Assad can also ignore that, but if Syria fails to comply with such a ruling, the countries that brought the case have one more possibility. They can bring the matter before the Security Council. And unfortunately, just like with the ICC, we know what could happen there, which is Assad's defenders, Russia and China, could block any action. So more symbolism, but I think important that this case goes forward, particularly at a time when everybody, or a lot of people, are cozying up to a Assad again.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I mean just hearing you walk through the machinery of all this and the very clear prospect of a shielding of Syria yet again by Russia and China, makes you want to throw up your hands. But I think you're right, especially when you look at the dogged efforts of Syrian communities. Most of them are out of the country this point, the Syrian diaspora trying to get justice, trying to fight against impunity for what's happened. They have documented things that have happened against family members and friends and so forth meticulously.

I think there was a recent case that came to light in Germany, that was in public, about torturers in Syria and how important that was for Syrians. And now there's a large Syrian community that lives in Germany, that Germany's provided residency to. So I think for that, for the sense of justice, for the reason why people are still looking to bring to justice perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide almost thirty years ago, or some of the Balkan atrocities and so forth, there needs to be a memory, there needs to be an accounting and there needs to be a record of it at the very least. And then the world can hopefully start to put the pieces back together in some of these places. But it does seem like, inexorably, Syria is coming in from the cold regardless.

ROBBINS:
And there are decisions, we've talked about this, there are decisions that big countries in the West, the United States included, are going to have to make about what do we do to try to alleviate the suffering inside Syria and the part of Syria that Assad controls, he doesn't control all of the territory. But that country's rubble and a lot of people are suffering. And then there are also the millions of displaced people outside the country and there are policy decisions that have to be made, and he's in power there, unfortunately, in that part that he controls. But there has to be an accounting for this and the attempt to whitewash what he did is just utterly unacceptable. So these cases really matter. 

And there may be one more shot at the ICC. Last year, some human rights lawyers returned to the ICC, the International Criminal Court, and moved to indict Syrian leaders for war crimes committed in Syria, as well as some Iranian military leaders who were fighting there. And their argument is that the ICC does have standing in this case because they're bringing this on behalf of Syrian victims who were forced to flee to Jordan, which is part of the ICC's Rome Statute, the founding treaty. And there's precedent for this. Now, this may all sound like very arcane legal, international law stuff, but these courts do exist for accounting reasons. And if we can despair about the Human Rights Council and the jockeying that goes on there, these courts, when they do have standing, they really do represent the defense of international law. So we'll see what the ICJ does.

MCMAHON:
Okay, keeping an eye and a spotlight on Syria is important.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is a figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. Bob, when are they going to start choosing a happy figure? So this week, Bob, our audience selected, "A Hundred Thousand Ethnic Armenians Flee Karabakh." What's happening there?

MCMAHON:
What's happening, as our colleague David Scheffer has just written this week on CFR.org, is by all accounts and appearances an ethnic cleansing, which Azerbaijan will vehemently deny, but which just seems to be the only conclusion, as you see what's playing out, which is at last count more than a hundred thousand ethnic Armenians have fled Karabakh, as our Instagram poll voted. And there was most recently a report from a UN official that as little as fifty ethnic Armenians might be left in the enclave. 

This is extraordinary for all sorts of reasons. For me, it takes me back to my days at Radio Free Europe, covering this conflict which emerged from the wreckage of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And a period in the early 90s, especially when it was the ethnic Armenians who were triumphant, they had the firepower, they had the will, and they seized Nagorno-Karabakh. They not only seized Nagorno-Karabakh, they were able to control up to six districts in Azerbaijan proper, nearby causing hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis to flee and really having a lock on this part of western Azerbaijan and the enclave, and talking seriously about independence. It came up again and again. They were very strong in this. That's gone. 

Independence for an ethnic Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh does not exist anymore. Azerbaijan is the strong party now. It has parlayed its petro dollars and its connections into a stronger military. And by the way, its military connections are not only Turkey, which has been widely reported, but Israel. It has a very strong ally in Israel. And there's a report just this week from the Associated Press indicating that it was Israeli armaments in particular that helped them come in this September 19th military blitz, that essentially defeated the Nagorno-Karabakh ethnic Armenian forces and really prompted the mass flight.

So it's now a question of, okay, we've been talking a lot about international justice and international norms. Is there a path for, first of all, protecting this population of a hundred thousand plus, which is mostly in Armenia itself now, but then also punishing Azerbaijan and potentially coming up with some sort of process to address all these grievances that both sides have. Because this is a very much a two-way conflict going back decades, and it's a very tricky time period, I should say. There's lots of storylines playing out about not only what's happening between the two countries, but Russia's role and sort of standing by the side. It had a couple thousand peacekeepers in the area that did nothing. Armenia has just joined the ICC this week to give it a chance to kind of contribute to prosecution of violations of the worst crimes against humanity. As I say, Carla, there's lots of things still moving in this story, but what we've seen play over the past week or so has been a bit sort of a shock to see.

ROBBINS:
So as horrifying as this is, this is beginning to look like a fait accompli, isn't it? I mean they swept out, most of these people. Correct me if I'm wrong, Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory.

MCMAHON:
Yes. That's right.

ROBBINS:
And they've done this blitz of ethnic cleansing and the world's attention is focused in lots of other places, most directly on Ukraine. And so they can bring things to the court and the odds are, I don't know, do you expect to see those people ever back in their homes?

MCMAHON:
I think we can assume they're not going back at this point. You might see a trickle back. There might be assurances provided, ironclad assurances from the Azerbaijani officials to bring back some sort of token number of ethnic Armenians. But I would bet that the vast majority of that a hundred thousand is not ever going back. It'll be repopulated by Azerbaijanis and we'll just be sort of talking about it in a different way going forward.

There's one other enclave we should mention, that people should keep an eye on as part of this story, which is an Azerbaijani enclave that's surrounded for the most part by Armenia, called Nakhchivan. And there's been discussion that Azerbaijan might press to create some sort of a bridge to that enclave and in the process cutoff parts of Armenia. So it's just worth watching how that one's going to play out. These, so-called, frozen conflicts from the post-Soviet phase are showing themselves not to be so frozen after all, Carla, but they are a bit, as you say, forgotten, or forgotten in the midst of so many other big things going on. But they will bear further attention and further diplomacy to try to keep things stable and then take care of the people who are now officially stateless, or going to have to find new states.

ROBBINS:
So the EU is committing what 5 million euros or so to working with humanitarian groups to aid the refugees and those who are still left in Nagorno-Karabakh. Are we hearing anything from the Biden administration, threats of sanctions or other sort of pressure behind the scene diplomacy to try to persuade the Azerbaijanis that they can't make this as a fait accompli?

MCMAHON:
I think you're going to see certainly attempts to join the EU in aid. I think Samantha Power, the head of the USAID, was in the region recently. Through UN bodies and other agencies, the U.S. will try to help. It had played, off and on, a role trying to help in diplomacy in the past. I think you might see the U.S. revisit this because I think it has a number of interests, not only in the broader protection of human rights, but in maintaining regional stability. But certainly, no overt threats have been issued that I've seen, Carla, at this point.

And that's our look at the ever turbulent world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund hold their fall meetings in Marrakesh, Morocco. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Czech Republic. And, a liftoff is scheduled for the NASA and SpaceX Psyche asteroid mission.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation, are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on CFR.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Molly McAnany is our New York recording engineer. Thanks, Molly, great boots. And special thanks to Sinet Adous and Kaitlyn Esperon for our research assistance. And welcome, Kaitlyn. Our theme music is provided by Marcus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.