Two home truths for the US and Europe from Putin’s war on Ukraine
The west cannot brush aside the charge of double standards
Beyond the real and present danger of Vladimir Putin’s aggression, the Ukraine war presents two strategic lessons for the west. The security of the Euro-Atlantic area and the Indo-Pacific are indivisible. And it is way past time for the United States and Europe to pay much closer attention to the preoccupations of the global south.
For much of the past decade Americans and Europeans have been playing a futile game of either-or. It started with Barack Obama’s much-vaunted pivot to Asia. The big threat to the United States, the argument ran in Washington, came from China. It should focus its military power on the Pacific. Europe would have to look after itself.
On the other side of the Atlantic, European nations have fretted about the supposed alternatives of begging the Americans to stay and breaking free with the creation of a serious European Union defence capability. This, the theory holds, would give the continent what the French call “strategic sovereignty”.
These have always been false choices. Whatever their frustrations with European free-riding, the United States cannot afford to abandon its closest allies to an exclusive focus on the western Pacific. And even Emmanuel Macron’s wildest hopes do not extend to a completely autonomous European foreign and security policy.
Never mind. These should now be yesterday’s debates. The “no limits” strategic partnership offered to Putin by China’s Xi Jinping weeks before Russian troops marched into Ukraine should dispel once and for all any notion that the United States can separate its great power rivalry with China from the defence of Europe.
Joe Biden’s characterisation of the post post-cold war order as a contest between democracies and autocracies is overly simplistic. Not long ago, the president was describing Saudi Arabia as a pariah state. Now he plans to travel cap-in-hand to Riyadh to ask Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to boost Saudi oil output. Bin Salman was behind the murder in Istanbul of the journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi. Needs must. The democracies, it now seems, will call on the support of “friendly” autocrats when it suits them.
That hypocrisy aside, Putin’s effort to destroy the European security order has underscored the fact that an American retreat from Nato would be a victory also for Beijing. Both share the view that the best way to weaken the west is to detach the United States from Europe. Xi well understands that such an outcome would undermine decisively American credibility in Asia. If Washington drops Europe, much of the Indo-Pacific will drop the United States.
As for Europe, it should be obvious from the Ukraine war that it badly needs an American security guarantee against a revanchist regime in Moscow. Several European states have contributed to Ukraine’s war effort. The heavy lifting has been done by the United States. Of course, Europeans must do more to defend their own continent. The purpose should be to bind in Washington rather than replace it.
Once the west has stopped talking to itself, it can begin to pay attention to the views of the global south. Only four other members voted with Russia to oppose the UN general assembly’s condemnation of Putin’s aggression, but nations such as India and South Africa stood with China and Iran among the 35 that chose to abstain. More apparent still has been the absence since of support for western sanctions from states long assumed to be in the western “camp”.
This is not to say they support Moscow. Rather it reflects the mistrust within the emerging world of the west’s motives. I have been lucky enough to spend the past few months as a visiting fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance. It draws its graduate students and fellows from every corner of the globe. What’s struck me is that uniform abhorrence of Putin’s aggression is accompanied by deep scepticism about the west’s response.
When Europeans talk loftily about upholding the territorial sovereignty of states and defending a values-based international order, nations in the south ask why they have shown such studied indifference to conflicts and humanitarian crises elsewhere.
The brutal war in Yemen is to all intents and purposes a forgotten conflict in the west. And while European governments congratulate themselves on the welcome they have given to Ukrainian refugees, others recall the treatment most of them meted out to Syrian refugees in 2015. And what is to be said of the European Union’s grubby deals with Libyan warlords to stem the flow of refugees across the Mediterranean?
Then there is the Iraq war. Western politicians can point up the inexactness of the parallel - whatever its malevolent intentions George W Bush’s administration was not seeking to annex Iraq - but they will never shake off the widely-held charge that it was an illegal war.
A measure of hypocrisy is an unfortunate fact of life in international relations. Some now accusing Europe and the United States of double standards doubtless also have more selfish reasons for avoiding an open breach with Moscow. Even a small measure of self-awareness, however, should deliver a salutary warning to rich democracies as to how badly they are losing the argument in the global south.
The Ukraine war has drawn a line under post-cold-war dreams of a world destined to embrace liberal democracy. We are promised instead a new global disorder in which nations that want to hold on to something resembling the present rules-based system will confront a Sino-Russian alliance seeking to overturn it. The west needs friends. It will win them only by paying heed to human tragedies beyond its own borders.
It is always interesting when one starts in the middle of the story, open their eyes and exclaims "why are you shooting at me". I'm innocent! Really? I really think that we need to understand ourselves i.e. the West, and get real.
As a proxy for the West, we can only look to the US of A. Since Bretton Woods, a looong time ago, the US has had the tools of imperialist. Is it imperialist? You decide.
The US can just print money and has done so for a long time now. However, the last escapade might just be its last. We will see.
It will be interesting for all of the hangers on like Canada and Europe when the US has to finally pay its own way. It has been a joke in Canada from the Liberal left, hate those Americans but get the money that slops off the table. You can then claim that job growth was from your policies. Anyway, enough said about that.
You were talking about evil Russia. Well maybe they are but, maybe that is pot calling the soapy but dirty water black. What blasphemy, really now?
Ten years ago, or so, we were all friends, where we not? Russia, USA, Europe and China, but most of all China. Wow, look at them grow. We need to do as they do so we can all have those shiny new trains and houses and roads.
Then came along another shiny object, the great awakening in the Middle East. For America, this was irresistible. Another opportunity to bring freedom into the world. It's been awhile but we need to dust off our old tool box of regime change.
This should be easy, just see who is in the majority (democracy you know) and support them for government. Good old USA, never look at history, just plunge right in. We are starting off with a new slate guys, just forgive and forget. But is seems that the people there were not very eager to have that happen. They remembered how it was the last time those guys were in charge.
You remember in Syria, everybody was the bad guy that wasn't Sunni because, the Sunnis were in the majority. Really, there were many Sunnis that didn't want to go there either, along with every other religious minority.
Civil war, ain't this fun. Send your wives and children away, (read Ukraine now) and let's have a tussle. If you can't win legally, just set up your fighters in the local hospital or kindergarten. Maybe a little false flagging too. And guess what, your own people believed everything they were being fed.
What a neat sandbox to play in, and you can have real people to play with, not your ordinary "digital" on a screen victims.
I am not being very kind to the US, am I? But they had a lot of help and encouragement from Britain, and others. too.
After a while, somebody decided to step in to try to get this problem solved. Russia, our savior??
Not appreciated by the West at all. Now our people must know that "the Soviet Union" is coming back. Beware everyone, we need to bulk up for invasion. That's what those guys do, you know. The Evil Empire reemerges in the name of PUTIN. What an evil monster.
We need a plan. Hmmmm, how about getting rid of that pro Russian guy in the Ukraine and replacing him with someone more amenable. Then a simple message in his ear, "Want NATO membership and you really don't have to deal with your Russian population, just don't sign that deal for the Donbass". You do remember the Garden of Eden and the guy that spoke in Eve's ear. That fruit is tasty. Was it Biden that spoke in ____'s ear?
Interesting scenario eh? What might Russia do? Now Europe is paying dearly for this game.
The reactions of 'non-aligned' nations to the Ukraine invasion has been too little considered and Philip's piece is very timely. All of Europe should be worried that a country like South Africa has not automatically aligned itself with the NATO position and look at itself in the mirror on why there is evidently no immediate political solidarity. Apart from the hypocrisy and post-colonialism which many nations will have pereceived in US-led wars in the middle-east, it strikes me that the lack of solidarity shown during Coronavirus is also important. Rich western countries, with UK being arguably the worst offender, over-ordering vaccines and failing to deliver on promises to vaccinate the world must be fresh in memories. The economic and human toll on South African society has been immense. Looking particular at the UK with its government's assertion of a 'Global Britain' and talk of reviving Commonwealth links is exposed as rank hypocrisy also by politically-motivated cuts to development aid, and then the sight of the most desparate asylum-seekers being subject to the most hostile path to safety, abused as welfare-chasers and even deported without due process. If I were a Nigerian or South African minister, I would find it very difficult to raise a finger to help such a mean-spirited group of rich nations.