Writing in Foreign Affairs, UK Labour party figure David Miliband says that while the Ukraine war has united the West, it’s not the case for the rest of the world. Here is a summary of what he says:
At the beginning of the war, the UN General Assembly voted 141 to 5, with 47 absences or abstentions, to condemn the Russian invasion. But most non-European countries that voted to condemn the invasion did not follow up with economic sanctions.
According to the Economist, two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that are officially neutral or supportive of Russia. These countries include several notable democracies, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.
Many developing countries see the war in Ukraine and the West’s rivalry with China as distracting from urgent issues such as debt, climate change, and the effects of the pandemic.
Realpolitik has played a part in determining the positions of certain countries on the Ukraine conflict. India has traditionally been dependent on Russia for military supplies. The Wagner paramilitary company—the Russian mercenary organization now active in Ukraine—has worked with governments in western and central Africa to support their security and survival.
But there are also other factors. Some countries contest the Western narrative about the causes of the war. For example, although Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has described the invasion as a “mistake,” he has supported arguments that genuine Russian concerns were ignored.
Critics point to the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to claim that hypocrisy, not principle, is driving the West. U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen, which spawned a humanitarian crisis in that country, is evidence of double standards when it comes to concern for civilians.
It is argued that the West has shown far more compassion for the victims of war in Ukraine than for the victims of wars elsewhere. The UN appeal for humanitarian aid for Ukraine has been 80 to 90 percent funded. Meanwhile, the UN’s 2022 appeals for people caught in crises in Ethiopia, Syria, and Yemen have been barely half funded.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was massively off track in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which member states set with great fanfare in 2015.
In 2018, four out of five fragile and conflict-ridden states were failing on SDG measures. World Bank figures for 2020 show that people born in those places were ten times more likely to end up poor as those born in stable countries, and the gap was growing.
Since then, because of protracted conflicts, the climate crisis, and the pandemic, more than 100 million people are currently fleeing for their lives from warfare or disaster. The UN reports that 350 million people today are in humanitarian need, compared with 81 million people ten years ago.
More than 600 million Africans lack access to electricity.
The UN Development Program reports that 25 developing countries are spending over 20 percent of government revenues on debt servicing, with 54 countries suffering from severe debt problems. And the unequal access to vaccines to combat the pandemic—a gulf especially glaring during the early phases of the vaccine rollout in 2021—has become a poster child for empty promises.
The climate crisis is the global risk that looms largest and presents the greatest test of the sincerity of Western countries’ solidarity with the rest of the world. Wealthy countries need to spend trillions of dollars to decarbonize their economies, but they also need to support low-carbon development in poor countries and pay for the inevitable costs of adaptation to climate change already foreshadowed by current levels of global warming.
To defend the rule of law, Western countries must abide by it and subscribe to it. The U.S. condemnation of Chinese breaches of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea—with respect to China’s military installations on islands in the South China Sea, for example—would be far more persuasive if the United States ratified the convention. And although U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made a powerful call for the prosecution of war crimes in Ukraine, it would have been much more effective had the United States ratified the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court in 1998.
Critics and adversaries of Western powers relentlessly cite these double standards. And it is not hard to see why.
The demands from a variety of countries for a new deal at the international level are in many cases reasonable. Addressing them with urgency and in good faith is essential to building a global order that is satisfactory to liberal democratic states and their citizens.