How to stop Russia?

Aleppo is being heavily bombed by Assad forces, whose effectiveness is non-existent without the support of Russian military "advisers" and the air force. Parts of Aleppo in the hands of the opposition are the target of the regime, whose last hope to survive is to gain as much control as possible until the new American administration takes office. The Russian government has quickly seen the window of opportunity offered by the procrastination of the Obama administration regarding a military operation in Syria. The U.S. will be doing just enough to keep Assad and the Russians at bay, carefully avoiding sending in U.S. troops. Putin knows it. He was formed in the old Soviet school, he can see and understand an exceptional opportunity when there is one.

Lavrov has been playing with his U.S. counterpart Kerry for a week, rendering more confusing the already inextricable situation in Syria. When the humanitarian aid convoys moved toward Aleppo, under the banner of the United Nations, the Russian military did not hesitate in destroying them, further occasioning civilian losses, in order to break down the morale of the besieged population in Aleppo.

This time, the bombing of a humanitarian aid operation has been done very openly, without taking any diplomatic precautions and without even giving formal excuses afterwards. Russian authorities thought it would be seen as an "acceptable" retaliation for the U.S. bombing of Assad troops, while they were targeting Daesh.

There was an immense outcry at the U.N. toward Russia and its criminal deed. However, nothing could have been done because of the virtual untouchability of a permanent member state of the Security Council. It is worth remembering that, when the structure of the United Nations was being established in 1945, there was no initial rule for the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to have a right to veto. It is only after Stalin's heavy insistence that such a right was granted.

An institution that was established to safeguard world peace has turned into an alliance of the great powers embedded in a universal organization. We owe this definition to Charles Webster, British civil servant and historian, who was instrumental in drafting the Charter of the United Nations.

This is what the world has seen so many times since 1945. Whenever there is a disagreement, a discord between the great powers (in fact, between the U.S. and Russia), the United Nations system ceases to function properly. Former Secretary General Kofi Annan wanted to have a multinational operational military force of about 40,000 men, directly responding to the Secretary General. Obviously he has not been listened to, his proposal was seen as an anathema, especially by Russia.

Now, the globalizing world has global problems, this is an obvious reality. But the world is not organized "globally" to respond to these threats and to manage global challenges. Russia is not the "unavoidable ally" of 1945. Even after the demise of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the relationship between democratic regimes and Russia did not totally change. There was an opportunity to do that, first under Mikael Gorbachev, then Boris Yeltsin. But these opportunities have been wasted by the shortsightedness of U.S. neo-con administrations. Now, we have Putin and a semi-rogue state that is not at all interested in global questions. Russia's main motivation is to keep its internal stability at all costs. The USSR was a different regime, despite its very centralizing and totalitarian system, it had a very clear understanding of world power equilibrium. Neither Stalin, nor Khrushchev or Brezhnev challenged the intangibility of frontiers after 1945. Putin has done it twice, first with Crimea then with Ukraine, and this is very clumsy on the part of a Russian leader. This does not bode well for the future of the world order.

In a much larger sense, we have a global world that has not turned into a global society. This is a structural problem, and a deep-rooted issue. Balzac, in his "Père Goriot" novel, gives the example of a Chinese Mandarin, whose death will not cause any trouble for a penniless Parisian young man, but it might turn him into a rich person.

Today, such an analogy is meaningless, because tragedies in a remote place in the world induce retaliatory terror attacks in very different places. Palestinian problems have started to "export" the violence and hatred in developed countries as early as the 1970's. Now, we have entered an era where thanks to information technologies, all the news travels at the speed of light, but the decision-making remains in the hands of nation states. In such a juncture, the role and existence of the United Nations has become primordial. Nonetheless, the major powers still try to act as if we live in the 1950's, with an obsolete understanding of the world's development. This is not sustainable anymore and the swifter the functioning of international organizations is restructured, the better it will be for the world's population.