Vladimir Putin’s War in Ukraine – Southern Countries Choose Non-alignment.
We can see the return to a logic of blocs: the West against Russia.
Several times postponed, the video conference of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, with the African Union (AU) was finally held on June 20, 2022, behind closed doors, with great discretion. His brief message was received politely but without more by the African leaders. The contrast is striking with the enthusiastic solidarity of the American Congress or the Parliaments of European capitals.
The newfound Western unity in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine goes hand in hand with a relative but very real solitude, which is growing with the duration of the war. From Africa to Asia, passing through Latin America, the camp of countries that do not want to choose between the West and Russia is widening.
The objective of Western economic sanctions is to make Russia a pariah state. But if the Russian economy is “de-Westernizing”, it is not “de-globalizing”, developing its trade with these “non-aligned” countries.
“The world notes the raw reality of the balance of power: when the West seemed all-powerful, it abused its omnipotence (in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya ...). Many countries, without supporting Russian aggression, are not angry that the world is not unipolar and they see this war more as a battle to establish a balance of power in Europe than a battle over principles that everyone else has violated,” analyzes Jean-Marie Guéhenno, former UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations (2000-2008).
While in the North, dissenting voices are rare, in the South they are becoming increasingly numerous in the face of the risk of a food crisis.
“We are not really in the debate of who is right and who is wrong: we simply want to have access to cereals and fertilizers,” recalled the Senegalese President, Macky Sall, in Paris after a meeting with Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of June 2022, in Sochi, as President of the AU.
The countries in between are one of the main targets of Russian diplomatic propaganda. On June 24, 2022, the day the European Council recognized Ukraine and Moldova as candidate countries for entry into the European Union (EU), the Russian president, at a summit with the leaders of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), none of which has taken any sanctions against Moscow, criticized the “selfish actions” of the West and called for the creation of “a truly multipolar system”.
A resolution condemning Russia was voted on 2 March 2022 at the United Nations by 141 countries. Only four states (Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, and Syria) supported Moscow, and 35 abstained, including China and India. On April 7, 2022, only 93 states (out of 193 members) voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council, 24 were against (including China this time), and 58 abstained, including many emerging countries.
They want to make their voices heard in a conflict which, even more than in the past, during the cold war, directly affects them through the soaring prices of wheat or energy and their systemic effects. One could have imagined that the countries of the South, starting with those of Africa, would feel a certain solidarity with Ukraine, the victim of an invasion with colonialist overtones.
This was to underestimate the extent of anti-Western resentment, indignation at what they feel is a double standard, the survival of ties forged during the Soviet era, and the sympathy of their leaders for the conservative themes promoted by Moscow.
The return of a block logic as in the mid-1950s
In the Middle East, even some of the United States' staunchest allies, starting with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are refusing to accept the sanctions and want to keep the channel of communication with Moscow open. Israel is just as cautious.
In Latin America, Putin can count on the support of the vassal regimes of Cuba and Venezuela, but most of the moderate left-wing leaders, in power or opposition, but also some on the right, accuse the United States of being also, or even mainly, responsible for the war.
This return of the blocs brings back the spirit of non-alignment as it was expressed in 1955, at the Bandung conference in Indonesia, at the initiative of President Sukarno and his counterparts, India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, and Ghana's Nkrumah. We are living a kind of Bandung 2 with the same Afro-Asian bloc united in a common refusal to get involved in the conflict between the West and Russia as before between East and West.
There are, however, obvious differences here. The era of great ideological confrontations is over. “Today's non-alignment is rather the recognition that, in a transactional world, national interests are best served by a case-by-case approach that avoids taking hits,” explains Jean-Marie Guéhenno.
These fractures will become apparent at the G20 summit scheduled for November 15-16, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia. The Americans do not want Putin, a full member of this body bringing together the major economic powers, to attend. Indonesian President Joko Widodo has invited him, as has Zelensky.
China and many emerging countries, starting with the BRICS, support Jakarta. Some, like Beijing, are close to Russia; others are less so. But in their eyes, the most important thing is to preserve the functioning of the world economy, even if, in the meantime, the Old Continent is bogged down in the war.
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