Bernard-Henri Lévy's Latest Silly Intervention

Lévy’s argument is characteristically unserious and ill-informed.

Bernard-Henri Lévy makes a silly proposal:

Ukraine can and should inherit the rights of a fallen Russia. Remove the Russian Federation from its seat as a permanent member and transfer it to Ukraine.

The idea that Russia can be stripped of its position at the U.N. has been floated many times since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, but it is not true and it is at best a distraction from the problems created by the war. If Russia shouldn’t have inherited the Soviet seat at the U.N., it is even more absurd to suggest that Ukraine should get it now. No other government objected when Russia took on the rights and obligations of the USSR at the U.N., and in the decades since there has been no effort to overturn that status. Lévy’s argument is characteristically unserious and ill-informed.