MH17: Julie Bishop’s UN speech against Russian veto her finest hour

This is a big call. But surely Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has never in her political career, indeed in her life, had a finer public moment than in the short, crisp, devastating speech she made to the UN Security Council rebuking Moscow.

The rebuke was delivered for Russia’s veto against a resolution to establish an independent tribunal to prosecute those responsible for bringing down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine.

Bishop first sketched the enormity of what was involved in this atrocity: “Thirty-nine Australians were among the 298 men, women and children whose lives were tragically taken when MH17 was brought down … Among our number were six children. Two religious leaders. Two doctors. A number of teachers. An award-winning fiction writer. A promising aerospace engineer.”

This is powerful prose, explaining but also humanising the story by its very particularity. With no disrespect to our fine professional diplomats, this does not sound like a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade speech.

Quite rightly, the speech then moves from the particular to the general: “Millions and millions of people around the world place their trust in the security of civil aviation as a matter of course each and every moment of each and every day.” But then back to the particular: “I have spoken to the Australian families over the past year … Their loss is incalculable; their grief inconsolable. They are desperate for answers.”

A couple of nations, most significantly China, abstained from voting on the resolution. But only Russia voted against.

Let’s dispense with the substance of this matter quickly. There is no serious doubt that the plane was shot down by Ukrainian separatists backed, trained, armed, financed and directed by the Russians. The only other remote possibility is that the Russians committed the atrocity. There is no other serious alternative.

Although Bishop’s speech contains an emphatic determination to continue to seek justice, there is no prospect at all of the Russians allowing that to happen.

It is worth pausing here to consider how comprehensively this episode rebuts the idea that in multilateral institutions there is some system of universal justice to be found. Apart from the foundational fact that the UN is comprised of the world’s national governments, many or most of which are dictatorships, the power structure of the Security Council guarantees there is no such thing as universal justice in this system.

Any of the permanent members of the Security Council can veto any resolution. So justice can only be secured against nations, national governments and even non-government actors that are not permanent members and do not have a friend or patron on the Security Council.

The Ukrainian separatists have only one significant international friend. But that international friend has veto power. So there will almost certainly never be justice visited on the perpetrators of this particular outrage.

Nonetheless, Bishop’s speech was wise, profound, powerful and important. Before explaining why I think that is the case, it is worth recording the most powerful part of her speech, where she condemns the Russian veto.

She said: “In a world with an increasing number of violent terrorist groups and other non-state actors, many with sophisticated military capabilities, it is inconceivable that the Security Council would now walk away from holding to account those who brought down a commercial aeroplane. The veto only compounds the atrocity. Mr President, only one hand was raised in opposition, but a veto should never be allowed to deny justice. The recital of discredited contentions and the anticipated excuses and obfuscation by the Russian Federation should be treated with the utmost disdain.

“The exercise of the veto today is an affront to the memory of the 298 victims of MH17 and their families and friends. Russia has made a mockery of its own commitment to accountability enshrined in Resolution 2166.

“If Russia has evidence relevant to this matter, surely Russia would want it heard by a wholly independent and impartial tribunal …”

There is some more, involving a forensic demolition of Moscow’s absurd position. Bishop’s magnificent eloquence here can almost certainly have little or no practical effect in securing justice for the murdered Australians. So why was it so important, in both practical and principled terms, for her to make this speech nonetheless?

There are several reasons. The first is that a nation is worth very little if it does not care deeply about the taking of the lives of its nationals. Yes, a nation like Australia which espouses universal principles is concerned with injustice everywhere. But our government has the particular civic res­ponsibility to protect Australians.

A serious nation establishes at every point that there is one thing it will really make a fuss about, and that is the persecution, and especially the murder, of its innocent citizens. Anyone who thinks that by paying special attention to Australians in distress — as for example in the heroic efforts to get Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran spared from the death penalty in Indonesia — an Australian government is somehow diminishing the universality of the principles it stands for, is profoundly mistaken.

Secondly, although Russia will not be greatly troubled by Australia’s poor opinion — we warn the tsar! — this Security Council resolution was a moment when a larger number of the world’s eyes were on this forum than usual.

We cannot exact any price from Moscow for its murderous actions except a political price, and that is not much, but we should exact that price to the fullest extent possible. Vladimir Putin is resurrecting tsarism in Russia. He believes America is weak and that Barack Obama is feckless and inconsequential. Like many bad actors, he feels emboldened as a consequence. Other players, such as Australia, need to make sure that he pays some penalty for his recklessness. This is even more important given the absence of effective American leadership.

But Bishop was also right to make this speech as a gesture. This is a tricky and complex business. Much of foreign policy is gesture — signalling approval and disapproval. Many such gestures are indeed meaningless. Just going along with the crowd. Expressing platitudes and pieties. Ganging up to kick unfashionable victims. A lot of it in fact is positively rotten.

And it is all hemmed in by basic realist considerations of power. We can make this gesture against Russia because our relationship with Russia is not very important. It would be much more difficult if these actions had been taken by a nation that mattered to us much more every day.

Nonetheless, democratic politics still requires moral leadership. And the public, cynical as it may be about many things, can often recognise that genuine moral leadership when it sees it.

Surely the most magnificent speech ever delivered at the UN came from Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He was the US ambassador to the UN in 1975, when the General Assembly passed a resolution saying that Zionism equated to ­racism.

Moynihan began his magnificent and justly celebrated address with these words: “The United States rises to declare before the General Assembly of the United Nations, and before the world, that it does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

This fine speech contributed to the ultimate repeal of that notorious resolution.

In the body of the speech, informed throughout by a white flame of moral outrage, Moynihan drew the implications of what the resolution meant for the UN: “The abomination of anti-Semitism has been given the appearance of international sanction. The General Assembly today grants symbolic amnesty — and more — to the murderers of the six million European Jews. Evil enough in itself, but more ominous by far is the realisation that now presses upon us — the realisation that if there were no General Assembly, this could never have happened.”

There is a faint echo of this in Bishop’s call to the Security Council to persist in prosecuting the case of the killers of MH 17 even in the face of Moscow’s veto.

Bishop’s speech is not quite in the Moynihan class, but it is as good, and as important, a speech as any Australian has delivered at the UN for a very long time.