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Empire has its privileges. But there are consequences. One recalls the scandal during the Obama Administration when in the wake of the 2013 Snowden leaks the leading powers went looking for him. Fearing he might be on the plane of the President of Bolivia (with the Bolivian President in it), certain European states closed their air space to the jet, which was forced to land in Austria. No Snowden, but lots of fall out diplomatically. "The geopolitical storm churned up by Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive
American intelligence contractor, continued to spread on Wednesday as
Latin American leaders roundly condemned the refusal to let Bolivia’s
president fly over several European nations, rallying to his side after
Bolivian officials said the president’s plane had been thwarted because
of suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on board." (NYT here). In the end, a few strategic apologies, some explanatory texts on an inter-governmental level, a delightful breakfast between the Bolvian and Austrian presidents on the Presidential jet, and the expected rebuke by high UN officials appeared to settle the matter (though not perhaps the feelings that it produced).
Among subaltern powers, however, the breaching of traditional baseline rules can produce much greater consequences.
On April 5th Ecuadorian police scaled the walls of the Mexican embassy (pictured) in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. They stormed the building and seized Jorge Glas, Ecuador’s former vice-president. He had been granted asylum by Mexico just hours earlier. (Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, is sympathetic to Mr Glas’s party.) For domestic police to raid an embassy is extremely unusual. It has outraged diplomats and been condemned around the world. Mexico immediately brought the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. (Why Ecuador Risked Global Condemnation)Almost immediately Mexico broke its diplomatic relations with Ecuador (here). Within weeks, the Mexican State, as is becoming quite fashionable among states that have now learned the benefits of engaging in politics through judicial mechanisms, filed an action with the International Court of Justice which sought among other things to "suspend Ecuador from the U.N. unless and until it issues "a public apology recognizing its violations to the fundamental principles and norms of international law, to guarantee the reparation to the moral harm inflicted upon the United Mexican States and its affected nationals" (Reporting here). And the expected condemnations followed--not that these were wrong, merely that, as in the Snowden adventure of a decade earlier, they were textual (eg here). The issue is clear enough, as a matter of law and norm, and the protection of a rightly perceived to be fundamental premise of inter-State relations--"'This is not a leftist thing, or a right-wing thing,' said José Miguel Vivanco, a Chilean lawyer and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'It’s a fundamental principle that has been breached and deserves strong condemnation from the international community to make sure this isn’t going to become the new normal.'”(here)
Nonetheless, for the instigators, the benefit might well have been worth the price, at least according to analysis published in the New York Times in the wake of the action.
President Daniel Noboa has been faced with flagging approval ratings amid rising violence weeks before a referendum that could affect his prospects for re-election next year. The spat with Mexico, which suspended diplomatic relations, may be just what he needed. . . Mr. Noboa’s ability to show that he can restore law and order to the nation of nearly 18 million may prove critical to his re-election, and that means tackling the country’s gangs, as well as corruption within the government that has enabled criminal groups, analysts say. (here)
But the story is more interesting that that.
Noboa admitted from Miami (Florida, US) in an interview with an Australian outlet that he did not regret ordering Glas' capture although it meant violating diplomatic conventions. He insisted he was on the “right side of history” despite worldwide condemnation. . . In his view, Mexico was the first to violate Ecuadorean sovereignty when assistance was provided to a fugitive and therefore ”we had to make a decision.“ Noboa added that Glas intended to flee Ecuador from the diplomatic mission. ”Justice is not negotiated,” Noboa also pointed out. (here)
The Ecuadorian position contrasts with the way that people thought about these things half a century agao when, for instance, clerics in one of the subaltern states of the Soviet Empire sought and was granted refuge in an embassy (Cardinal József Mindszenty living in the US Embassy in Hungary for 15 years from 1956). The new reality might not be Cardinal Mindszenty but Julian Assage, ironically a guest of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for 5 years ending in 2019 when he was asked to leave (here). Indeed, where the issue here includes corruption, the position of the Mexican States (though it can act as it likes to suit its politics of course, irrespective of the specifics around which those actions are undertaken) might be lessIn any case, there is a substantial gap between sympathy, strategic measures that force someone out, and a direct action. And yet, again, for Ecuador, the benefit may be worth the price.
Far more interesting has been the effects within the domains of Latin American politics, especially among the CELAC states (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) including Cuba--the competitor organization to the OAS (Organization of American States) including the United States. CELAC Member States support Mexico's claims and are now considering sanctions alongside the sanctions sought within the UN system. Ancient practices, unexamined in light of current conditions, but used strategically, can only produce the sort of theatrics that benefit those who are capable of taking advantage of its possibilities. But States can no longer time travel back to the Era of the Pre-Modern because it may suit them strategically; and the web of norm constructed since 1945 ought to make that impulse somewhat more problematic. All of this leaves a host of questions that perhaps beg for conversation if not action, and they do not cut in any particular direction, though each points to a need, perhaps, to revisit ancient concepts in the current stage of global historical development: (1) what ought to be the relationship between the interference of one state in the domestic affairs of another when balanced against the privileges of embassies and related organs; (2) to what extent ought embassies to be protected when they are complicit in violations of international law and norms (for example, facilitating networks of corruption); (3) what remedy ought to be attached to what duty; (4) to the extent that it is a global good to treat embassies as beyond the law of a State (and there are good reasons for that) ought there to be a central mechanism for managing embassy behaviors built into the structures of the UN system; (5) ought one to begin to develop frameworks for coherence in approach to embassy issues, practices, expectations, and legalities when exercised polycentrically by regional, national, and international organizations; (6) .
The Mexican President's summary of his presentation to CELAC (in Spanish), the Statement by the President of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez in support of the Mexican position, and an analysis authored by Marina Vanni for Latin Counsel follow below.
