In October 2022, about eight months after the war in Ukraine started, the University of Cambridge in the UK harmonized surveys conducted in 137 countries on their attitudes to the West and to Russia and China.
The results in the studywhile not free from margin of error, are robust enough to be taken seriously.
These are:
- For the 6.3 billion people who live outside the Western world, 66 percent feel positively about Russia and 70 percent positively about China, and,
- Among the 66 percent who think positively of Russia, the distribution is 75 percent in South Asia, 68 percent in Francophone Africa and 62 percent in Southeast Asia.
- Public opinion about Russia remains positive in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
Sentiments of this nature have caused some anger, surprise and even anger in the West. It is hard for them to believe that two-thirds of the world’s population does not side with the West.
What are some of the reasons for this? I think there are five reasons explained in this short essay.
1. The Global South does not believe that the West understands or empathizes with their problems.
India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, summed it up succinctly in a recent interview: “Europe needs to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” He refers to the many challenges that developing countries face whether they are dealing with the aftermath of the pandemic, the high cost of debt service, the climate crisis that is ravaging their lives, the pain of poverty, food shortages, drought and high energy. prices. The West has barely paid lip service to the Global South about many of these problems. Yet the West is insisting that the Global South join it in sanctioning Russia.
The Covid pandemic is a perfect example – despite repeated pleas from the Global South to share intellectual property rights on the vaccines, with the goal of saving lives, no Western nation was willing to do so. Africa is to this day the most unvaccinated continent in the world. Africa had the ability to manufacture the vaccines but without the intellectual property they could not do so.
But help came from Russia, China and India. Algeria launched a vaccination program in January 2021 after receiving its first batch of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Egypt started vaccinating after it received China’s Sinopharm vaccine around the same time. South Africa procured one million doses of AstraZeneca from the Serum Institute of India. In Argentina, Sputnik became the backbone of their vaccine program. All this happened while the West used its financial resources to buy millions of doses in advance, often destroying them when they became obsolete. The message to the Global South was clear – your problems are your problems, they are not our problems.
2. History matters: Who stood where during colonialism and after independence?
Many countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia see the war in Ukraine through a different lens than the West. Many of them see their former colonial powers regrouped as members of the Western alliance. The countries that have sanctioned Russia are either members of the European Union and NATO or America’s closest allies in the Asia-Pacific region. However, many countries in Asia and almost all countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America have tried to remain on good terms with both Russia and the West and to avoid sanctions against Russia. Could it be because they remember their history at the receiving end of Western colonial policies, a trauma that they still live with but that the West has mostly forgotten?
Nelson Mandela often said that it was the Soviet Union’s support, both moral and material, that helped inspire South Africans to overthrow the apartheid regime. It is because of this that Russia is still seen in a positive light by many African countries. And once independence came for these countries, it was the Soviet Union that supported them even though it had limited resources itself. The Aswan Dam in Egypt which took 11 years to build, from 1960 to 1971, was designed by the Moscow-based Hydro Project Institute and was largely financed by the Soviet Union. The Bhilai Steel Plant in India, one of the first major infrastructure projects in a newly independent India, was established by the Soviet Union in 1959. Other countries also benefited from the support of the former Soviet Union, both politically and economically, including Ghana, Mali, Sudan, Angola, Benin, Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique.
On February 18, 2023, at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Uganda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jeje Odongo, had this to say: “We were colonized and forgave those who colonized us. Now the colonizers are asking us to be enemies of Russia, which never colonized us. Is that fair? Not for us. Their enemies are their enemies. Our friends are our friends.”
Rightly or wrongly, today’s Russia is seen by many countries in the Global South as an ideological successor to the former Soviet Union. These countries have a long memory that makes them see Russia in a slightly different light. Given history, can we blame them?
3. The war in Ukraine is seen by the Global South as primarily about the future of Europe rather than the future of the whole world.
The history of the Cold War has taught developing countries that being embroiled in great power conflicts generates few benefits for them but carries enormous risks. And they see Ukraine’s proxy war as a war that is more about the future of European security than the future of the whole world. Moreover, the war is seen by the Global South as an expensive distraction from the most pressing issues with which they are concerned. These include higher fuel prices, food prices, higher debt servicing costs and more inflation, all of which have been exacerbated by the Western sanctions imposed on Russia.
A recent study published by Nature Energy says that up to 140 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty due to the higher energy prices that have come about in the past year.
Rising energy prices not only directly affect energy bills, but also put upward price pressure on all supply chains and consumer goods, including food and other necessities. This hurts the developing countries even more than it hurts the West.
The West can sustain the war “for as long as it takes” because they have the financial resources and capital markets to do so. But the Global South does not have the same luxury. A war for the future of European security has the potential to destroy security throughout the world.
The Global South is also concerned that the West is not pursuing negotiations that could bring this war to an early end. There were missed opportunities in December 2021 when Russia proposed revised security treaties for Europe that could have prevented the war and were rejected by the West. The April 2022 peace talks in Istanbul were also rejected by the West in part to “weaken” Russia. And now the whole world has to pay the price for an invasion that the Western media likes to call “unprovoked” and that could have been avoided.
4. The world economy is no longer American-dominated or Western and the Global South has other options.
Several countries in the Global South increasingly see their future tied to countries that are no longer in the Western sphere of influence. Whether this is their perception of how the balance of power is shifting away from the West, or wishful thinking as part of their colonial legacy, let’s look at some metrics that might be relevant.
The United States’ share of global output declined from 21 percent in 1991 to 15 percent in 2021, while China’s share rose from 4 percent to 19 percent over the same period. China is the largest trading partner for most of the world, and its GDP in purchasing power parity already exceeds that of the United States. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa) had a combined GDP in 2021 of $42 trillion compared to $41 trillion in the G7. Their population of 3.2 billion is more than 4.5 times the combined population of the G7 countries of 700 million.
BRICS does not impose sanctions on Russia, nor does it supply weapons to the opposing side. While Russia is the largest supplier of energy and food grains to the Global South, China remains the largest supplier of financing and infrastructure projects to them through the Belt and Road Initiative. And now Russia and China are closer than ever before because of the war. What does it all mean for developing countries?
This means that in terms of financing, food, energy and infrastructure, the Global South must rely more on China and Russia than on the West. The Global South is also seeing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization expand, more countries want to join BRICS and many countries now trade in currencies that move them away from the dollar, the euro or the West. They also see deindustrialization taking place in some countries in Europe due to higher energy costs, along with higher inflation. This shows quite clearly an economic vulnerability in the West that was not so apparent before the war. With developing countries having an obligation to put the interests of their own citizens first, is it any wonder that they see their future more tied to countries that are not Western or American-dominated?
5. The “rules-based international order” lacks credibility and is in decline.
The “rules-based international order” is a concept seen by many countries in the Global South as a concept designed by the West and unilaterally imposed on other countries. Few if any non-Western countries have ever signed this order. The South is not against a rules-based order, but rather against the current content of these rules as conceived by the West.
But one must also ask, does the rules-based international order also apply to the West?
For decades now, for many in the Global South, the West is seen as having had its way with the world without regard for anyone else’s views. Several countries were invaded at will, most without Security Council authorization. These include the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Under what “rules” were these countries attacked or devastated, and were these wars provoked or unprovoked? Julian Assange is languishing in prison, and Ed Snowden is in exile, for having the courage (or perhaps the audacity) to reveal the truth behind these actions.
The sanctions imposed by the West on over 40 countries are causing considerable hardship and suffering. Under what international law or “rules-based order” did the West use its economic power to impose these sanctions? Why are Afghanistan’s assets still frozen in Western banks while the country faces famine and starvation? Why is the Venezuelan gold still being held hostage in the UK while the people of Venezuela are living on a subsistence level? And if Sy Hersh’s disclosure is true, under what “rules-based regime” did the West destroy the Nord Stream pipelines?
It appears to be a paradigm shift taking place away from a Western-dominated world and into a more multipolar world. And the war in Ukraine has made the differences or chasms that are part of this paradigm shift clearer. Partly because of their own history, and partly because of emerging economic realities, the Global South sees a multipolar world as a preferred outcome where their voices are more likely to be heard.
President Kennedy concluded his 1963 American University Address with the following words: “We must do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just. We are not helpless in the face of that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must work for a strategy of peace.”
That peace strategy was the challenge before us in 1963 and it is still a challenge for us today. And the voices for peace, including those of the Global South, must be heard.
Krishen Mehta is a member of the board of American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA), and a Senior Global Justice Fellow at Yale University. This article is distributed by Globe-trotter in collaboration with ACURA.
Source: sn.dk