Global South Remains Aloof From Ukraine War

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Western responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine are widely seen as a sign of a reinvigorated alliance of democracies against authoritarianism. But in truth, it is really aimed at containing a state that has challenged the status quo and balance of power in Europe.

That poses a direct threat to the interests of the United States, Germany, France, Poland, and the other members of the NATO alliance as well as some of its leading partners in East Asia, such as Japan and South Korea, which rely on the United States to contain the influence of China, another potential challenger to the status quo.

But there has been little consideration of how the Russo-Ukrainian War will change the larger world order. Russia’s invasion doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the long list of nation-states that, while they may otherwise have very little in common, have made a cost-benefit calculation which has led them to conclude that the costs of joining the United States and its allies in a global military-economic campaign against Russia actually outweigh the benefits they could derive from such a policy.

The ongoing Ukraine war has in fact exposed the waning influence of the United States in the vast arc of the world known as the Global South, stretching from Latin America and Africa to South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

Most Global South states, while opposed to the Russian invasion, have not backed the United States on its strategies of sanctioning Russia or seeking a defeat of Moscow. Some have explicitly criticized what they see as Washington’s double standards. Despite the region’s great diversity and heterogeneity, a new nonalignment is emerging in the Global South.

In general, these states wish to leverage their international relationships for their own benefit and not take sides in or support a new cold war between the great powers. Most are unconvinced or alienated by Washington’s rhetoric of “democracy versus autocracy” and the “rules-based international order.”

“That’s not an argument that serious people buy,” stated Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary in February, citing the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, U.S. support for dictatorships during the Cold War, and the Iraq War of 2003 as examples of the U.S. violating those same principles.

Attitudes towards the war in Ukraine are complex and varied in the Global South. NATO’s policies in Ukraine are reinforcing decades of wariness about the Western agenda. So instead of the inevitable global progress toward liberal democracy and market capitalism, democracies now struggle to find allies against autocratic regimes in China, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

There’s been little support for sanctions, much less military aid, from the largest non-western countries, such as India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Brazil. Faced with social disorder and unreliable energy, these countries ignore the edicts of Western-defined “world opinion.”

This refusal to back the West goes back to the principle of nonalignment defined by India’s first Prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who, back in 1957, stated that it was “the natural consequence of an independent nation functioning according to its own rights. After all alignment means being regimented to do something you do not like and thereby giving up certain measures of independent judgement and thinking.”

South Africa in February refused to cancel its naval exercises with Russia and China. This came after Minister of International Relations Naledi Pandor last August accused the West of sometimes taking a patronizing and bullying attitude toward Africa, while she hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. She declared neutrality towards the war and made it clear that South Africa has different views from the U.S. on Ukraine.

South Africa also has not condemned Russia for its annexation of Ukrainian territory. The country is a member of the BRICS bloc, which includes Russia, Brazil, India, and China; the organization plans to eventually incorporate more autocratic countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo last June paid a state visit to Russia in part to plead for peace but also to assure the restoration of the global food supply. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador has condemned NATO’s strategy in Ukraine as “immoral.” Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has criticized the West’s massive military aid to Ukraine and said he would not visit either Russia or Ukraine while the conflict continued.

These nations prefer a multipolar world, with Russia as an independent pole, to give them geostrategic options. In their struggle to develop, they also increasingly see China, not the West, as the key development model. Beijing has already began exporting its economic success story to the rest of the world, without caring much about democracy.

Rather than cut ties with Moscow over the Ukraine invasion, China has increased trade with Russia. Beijing also recently helped re-establish diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, both leading oil exporters.

The West’s penchant for moralizing makes a future world economy centred around China appear increasingly appealing. The Chinese make deals without lectures on the environment and autocracy.

The developing world’s ability to resist autocracy depends on economic growth. The failures of the West to boost the economies of developing countries may be one cause for the global waning of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.