The Global South Opposes the War in Ukraine
Vijay Prashad
SINCE the Russian military entered Ukraine, there have been six United Nations General Assembly resolutions about the ensuing war (ES-11/1 to ES-11/6). The voting record of the Global South countries, particularly the 54 African states, on these resolutions is notable. In only one resolution, which was about the referendum held in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts (ES-11/4), did most African states (thirty of them) vote against Russia, with 24 states abstaining (none voted for the legality of the Russian referendum). The original BRICS states were divided on this resolution as well, with Brazil voting for it, Russia voting against it, and China, India, and South Africa abstaining on the vote. The key issue in this resolution was the principal of territorial integrity, which is a precious issue for most post-colonial states. Otherwise, the African states, like many states in Asia and Latin America, have either abstained on these votes to condemn Russia or have voted against these resolutions. It provides a flavour of the mood in the Global South regarding this European conflict, which has increased food and fuel price inflation in the Global South, but which is not seen through the eyes of Washington or Brussels. The new mood in the Global South is to see this conflict in terms of the national interests of the different states in the South and not to succumb, as the Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar put it, to the ‘NATO mentality’.
The phrase ‘NATO mentality’ requires some assessment. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was created in 1949 as a security pact for the states of North America and Europe. The raison d’être of NATO was provided by the existence of the Soviet Union and the communist states in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist state system in Europe essentially ended the necessity for NATO. But, NATO persisted, including becoming more and more active in what it calls ‘out of area operations’, such as in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Libya (2011). In 2006, the former US representation to NATO Ivo Daalder wrote in Foreign Affairs that ‘with little fanfare’ NATO ‘has gone global’. This ‘Global NATO’ adjusted itself from being a security pact in Europe to becoming the world’s policeman, with the ambition to prevent the emergence of rising powers (such as China and Russia) and to use military force if necessary to accomplish this aim. The ‘NATO mentality’, Jaishankar’s phrase, refers to this combination of a Western desire to prevent any other sources of power from emerging in the world and to do so by the exercise of the overwhelming NATO military apparatus (NATO Plus states account for 75 per cent of the share of world military spending, while China accounts for 10 per cent and Russia for 4 per cent).
Why has the Global South decided not to join Washington and Brussels in condemning Russia and why has the Global South increasingly decided to reject the NATO mentality? These two questions deserve serious answers. The views below come from a close reading of the statements made during the six votes at the UN General Assembly, as well as a reading of the main speeches made by leaders of the Global South on the Ukraine war, and from conversations with diplomats at the United Nations.
NO CONDEMNATION FOR RUSSIA
There has been no significant condemnation of Russia from the Global South for at least two sets of reasons:
- Material considerations. Since the Western sanctions against Russia curtailed its ability to sell energy to Europe, Russia has discounted its energy and sold it in larger numbers to the Global South states. Such an economic opportunity is difficult for countries to ignore at a time of heightened global inflation. At the same time, both Russia and China have increased their trade and investment in the Global South, whose countries are rapidly becoming oriented to the dynamic Asian economic boom and away from the economic austerity of the north Atlantic states.
- Emotional considerations. Global South states have made it clear that they remember when the Soviet Union backed their attempts at national liberation, and their attempts to build a development agenda during times of immense difficulty. Although these states know that Russia today is not the USSR of the past, there remains an emotional attachment to the Russian people for their solidarity. In contrast, there is a deep well of frustration with the neo-colonial economic structures (manifested through the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment policies) and with the colonial attitudes toward the poorer nations (as illustrated during the pandemic with the West’s vaccine hoarding mentality). European states welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms, while they enforced a policy that allowed Global South refugees to drown in the Mediterranean Sea; this hypocrisy underlined a growing consensus in the Global South against Western arrogance and racism.
Finally, there is a fundamental disagreement about the history of this conflict, a disagreement that maps onto older colonial and neo-colonial wars and their justifications. For centuries, the colonial and neo-colonial powers have said that they have conquered African, Asian, and Latin American countries to spread civilisation, and that when Western countries have been brutal it is only because of the brutality of those whom they have been forced to fight. This old colonial logic has been rejected by at least three generations of scholarship in the countries of the Global South. Even if the details are little known, there is widespread understanding of the fact that NATO has redesigned itself as a global policeman and is instigating conflicts from Eastern Europe to the South China Sea. NATO’s belligerence is now well-documented and understood (most recently in a book by the German parliamentarian Sevim Dagdelen called NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance, published originally in German, but available in English from LeftWord Books in New Delhi). That is why it is not difficult for the countries of the Global South to accept the view that it was NATO’s eastward advance toward Russia’s border, and it was the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from arms control treaties, that pushed the Russians to the wall. Most people in the Global South see Russia as a defensive power, rather than an offensive power, and they see this war in Ukraine as a defensive war and not a war for territorial expansion.
NO NATO MENTALITY
In March 2024, a NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s subcommittee put forward a report on NATO and the Global South. Drafted by the Lithuanian lawmaker Audronius Azubalis, the report made the case that the war in Ukraine ‘has shattered the entrenched binary view of international politics: arguably, the countries of the Global South have demonstrated their agency and even their ambition to be peers with the traditional global powers’. This is a fair assessment. Azubalis -- who had been Lithuania’s foreign minister (2010-12) and comes from its right-wing Homeland Union Party – highlighted the need for the West to more forthrightly engage with the Global South countries, since – his report argued - the absence of the West in these debates has opened ‘opportunities for malign actors, particularly Russia and China, which are vying for leadership in the Global South’. NATO cannot expect the countries of the Global South to ‘abandon their hedging policies and cut their ties with Moscow or Beijing completely’, the report argues. What NATO countries must do, however, is to approach the Global South ‘not from a patronising position of a higher moral ground, but rather focusing on pragmatic cooperation in areas that genuinely concern these countries, including food security, job creation, healthcare, etc.’
What is fundamentally interesting about Azubalis’ report is that it acknowledges the reality of the NATO mentality, rooted in the patronising higher moral ground plus devastating military might, and then asks if it were possible for the NATO states to operate like the Chinese and Russians. But, this is an utterly idealistic proposition since the countries of the Global North have long regarded cooperation to build up areas of health care and food security to benefit the mass of people as anachronistic, and have adopted the policy of encouragement of austerity and export-oriented growth instead. To pivot to a more developmentalist perspective is simply not going to be easy for the Global North states, which means that it will be difficult to avoid the NATO mentality (patronising lectures and murderous wars). Azubalis’s report reveals the great conundrum for the NATO states, and shows clearly why the countries of the Global South want to avoid entanglement with the NATO project if this means that they have to break with the opportunities provided by BRICS and other BRICS related developments.
THE CALL FOR PEACE
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2023, Namibia’s Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila was asked about her country’s decision to abstain on UNGA resolution ES-11/5 to condemn Russia for the war in Ukraine. Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, an economist who has been in post since 2018, did not flinch. ‘We are promoting a peaceful resolution of that conflict’, she said, ‘so that the entire world and all the resources of the world can be focused on improving the conditions of people around the world, instead of being spent on acquiring weapons, killing people, and actually creating hostilities’. The money being poured into arms, she continued, ‘could be better utilised to promote development in Ukraine, in Africa, in Asia, in other places, in Europe itself, where many people are experiencing hardships’.
What Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said here has been said in one way or another by leaders from Asia to Latin America. This is the general view from the Global South – the war, which should never have started, should end now. All conflicts end with negotiations and so will this one, and rather than prolong the conflict – so that it might result in a dangerous escalation that drags NATO countries into frontal confrontation with Russia – it must be brought to an end now. This urgency of negotiations was publicly stated by China, which published a set of principles to re-start the process of negotiations, and by several Global South leaders (led by President Lula of Brazil). In each of these statements, it has been made clear that Russia welcomes the call for dialogue, while Ukraine – under immense pressure from the West – rejects any such call.
What is said with great force from the Global South is that this war in Ukraine is NATO’s war, that NATO is recklessly willing to escalate the war with Russia, and that only immediate negotiations are acceptable.
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