Ambassador Bolewski Speaks on Ukraine and International Law

On March 5th, Professor and Ambassador Wilfried Bolewski gave a talk at AGS about the current Ukrainian crisis through the lens of his dual expertise as a career diplomat and a specialist of international law. Providing a thorough legal, political, and diplomatic background to the current situation, Bolewski framed it as part of a wider Russian identity crisis, linking it to similar events in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Georgia (2008). He declared: "There can be no solution to the Ukrainian crisis against Russia, but only with Russia".

Bolewski highlighted several obstacles to the resolution of the current standoff. Not least of these, he argued, are Russia’s selective application of the principles of international law and its unilateral reinterpretation of these principles. According to this ‘Russian exceptionalism’, only limited sovereignty is granted to the countries that are under Russia’s self-proclaimed sphere of influence, and the new norm of Responsibility to Protect is extended to virtually any military intervention in favor of Russian nationals as well as ethnic Russians abroad. Bolewski believes the International Community should clearly reject, in the global public square, President Vladimir Putin's virtual and ideological stances as unilateral misinterpretations of international law.

To break out of the gridlock over Ukraine at the UN Security Council, and de-escalate its ad hoc diplomacy from confrontational to relational, Bolewski calls for ‘minilateralism’, searching for mutual interests among the countries most affected and ensuring Russia is brought to the table and not sanctioned into defiance. He recommends opening a ‘multilogue’ within a newly created Contact Group as suggested by Chancellor Merkel.

Bolewski believes that Germany could have an important role in resolving the crisis, suggesting the Merkel government is in a unique position to bring together a coalition of the influential and promote dialogue between the parties. He adds: “Former Chancellor Schröder could be mandated to preside over this form of ‘minilateralism’ and quiet diplomacy comprising representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the US, Germany, the UK, Poland, France, the EU and the IMF in order to discuss the future of Ukraine.”

A lawyer by training and career diplomat, Wilfried Bolewski is former German Ambassador to Belize, Jamaica and the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, and former Chief of Protocol to German Chancellors Merkel and Schröder. He is now a professor at AGS, where he teaches the courses on "International Law and Diplomacy" and on "Foreign Policy Formulation". He also teaches at Sciences Po Paris and the Free University of Berlin. Bolewski is the author of Diplomacy and International Law in Globalized Relations (Springer: Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 2007).

See Ambassador Bolewski's profile on the AGS website

See Video Interview of Ambassador Bolewski on his teaching at AGS: