Looking Back 2023: Return of the honest broker

If the business of government in the post-Muscat phase of Labour has been nothing but prose, Robert Abela has attempted to produce some poetry for his country outside its shores.

2023 has been an important year for Malta’s attempts at burnishing its long-held reputation as an honest broker on the foreign stage, despite being haunted by the legacy of the Caruana Galizia assassination and the Pandora’s box of rule of law shortcomings it exposed.

In various fora, Malta’s name abroad represents something vague – between exotic outsider in European travelogues and island-base for (onceuponatime) crypto-bros and tax avoiders – yet always radically different to so many kinds of audiences. Malta can either be a week-long combination of sun, sea, food, history and clubbing, or the very tenuous ‘paradise of corruption’.

The Maltese tend to be overly conscious of their image abroad – when sullied, they will recoil in shock when it’s one of their own who perpetrates an act of international embarrassment. When the critics are foreign, that embarrassment can turn into either shame, or vitriolic defensiveness. With an island-nation so needy of recognition, there is little room for self-awareness. Apart from a few headlines, it is possibly true that nobody beyond Hurd’s Bank gives a hoot about Malta...

Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier

Off the greylist, on to the UN

In 2023, Robert Abela’s administration took a step forward in revitalising once again Malta’s name on the international stage. Freed from the blemish of the FATF greylisting and navigating the choppy waters of GRECO’s and the Venice Commission’s oversight on its legal and political reforms, Malta could look ahead for a bit of celebration: at home, it used the Europride convention in September to bolster once again Malta’s ‘unblemished’ LGBTIQ record – on paper, it is top of the European league of queer rights. In practice, its law enforcement problems, the ones that also fail to protect women from the risk of domestic violence at home, might still leave Malta’s queer population facing risks that so many other citizens do not have to face on a daily basis.

But on the foreign policy front, it was Malta’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council and its two-year-membership that has set the tone. Coinciding with the first-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Malta effectively presided the UN’s highest decision-making body at a moment of great tension: even simply extending an invitation to Ukraine to address the UNSC was fraught with protestations from Russia, a permanent member of the Council. But that job was left to the redoubtable Vanessa Frazier, Malta’s permanent representative to the UN, who armed with her pocket rulebook on the UN’s procedures, gave Malta a dynamic rule in this forum.

For the UN is a place that is ruled by the alarums of procedure, where statements are rightfully burdened with meaning, and where mere words can be turned into a diplomatic battleground. Malta used this stage to flex its diplomatic prowess by advancing friendly concerns dear to many small states – the bulk of the UN’s members – such as climate change and its effect on islands and maritime zones.

Vanessa Frazier, seasoned diplomat who in November conveyed successfully a UNSC resolution demanding a temporary humanitarian pause in Gaza, has served her country for the past 30 years across Europe. By her own admission, her job is underlined by her passionate patriotism for Malta. Woe betide they who criticise Malta: “They will find a lioness,” she said back in February. Unfazed by the power dynamics of big countries whose political bandwidth soars higher than that of the UN’s numerous minnows, Frazier spells out clearly the realpolitik of Maltese foreign policy in the UN. “It is a place in which every country’s own national interest comes first,” which means Malta must state its piece loudly, and clearly.

Frazier says Malta is valued as a consistent and principled country. “And that is what’s important. The lesson I’ve learnt in here, is that you win only if you stick to your principles. If you don’t compromise on your principles, you are always a winner.”

In New York, it has meant that Malta had to ensure dignified proceedings in a playground of political actors where the big boys find it easy to browbeat the smaller nations. Malta’s choice of ‘significant events’ during its UNSC presidency in February and March, was climate action on sea-level rise, and the safeguarding of children in conflict. The first subject especially married Malta’s pioneering work on UNCLOS address a lacuna in the treaty on what happens to countries’ maritime and economic rights when sea rise obliterates their coastlines.

Malta will now chair the OSCE Permanent Council, the 57-member state regional security body in Europe, again emerging as a consensus nation after Russia objected to Estonia taking over the leadership of the OSCE when North Macedonia’s term is over. “Malta’s ability to speak to everyone was the key aspect that tipped the balance in its favour,” diplomatic sources say.

So, what is Maltese diplomacy about? Frazier has the answer: a behind-the-scenes approach of gentle negotiation promoting consensual outcomes and honest advice. “Malta is seen as an honest broker. We have absolutely nothing to gain from all this, so these countries look to Malta to show its leadership.