The Global South rejects pressure to side with the West against Russia

6 min read VIJAY PRASHAD

VIJAY PRASHAD

New Delhi

The United States came to the G20 meeting in Bengaluru, India, with a simple slogan. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at the February 2023 summit that G20 countries should condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and should adhere to US sanctions against Russia. However, it became clear that India, the G20 chair, was not prepared to conform to the US agenda. Indian officials claimed that the G20 is not a political meeting, but a meeting to discuss economic issues. They contested the use of the word “war” to describe the invasion, preferring to call it a “crisis” and a “challenge.” France and Germany have rejected this project if it does not condemn Russia.

As in Indonesia during the previous year's summit, the 20 G2023 leaders are again ignoring Western pressure to isolate Russia, as the big developing countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa ) are unwilling to budge on their practical view that Russia's isolation endangers the world.

The next two G20 summits will take place in Brazil (2024) and South Africa (2025), signaling to the West that the G20 platform will not be easily subservient to the Western vision of world affairs.

Most of the leaders of the G20 countries travelled to Bengaluru directly from Germany, where they had attended the Munich Security Conference. On the first day of the Munich conference, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “shocked by how much credibility we are losing in the Global South.” The “we” in Macron’s statement was the Western states, led by the United States.

What is the evidence for this loss of credibility? Few of the states in the Global South have been willing to participate in isolating Russia, including voting for Western resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly. Not all states that have refused to join the West are “anti-Western” in a political sense. Many of them – including the Indian government – are guided by practical considerations, such as discounted energy prices in Russia and assets sold at a discount by Western companies leaving the lucrative Russian energy sector. Whether because they are fed up with Western pressure or because they see economic opportunities in their relationship with Russia, more and more countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have evaded pressure from Washington to break their ties with Russia. It is this rejection and evasion that led Macron to make his forceful declaration of being “shocked” by the West’s loss of credibility.

At a roundtable discussion on February 18 at the Munich Security Conference, three leaders from Africa and Asia developed the argument for why they are unhappy with the war in Ukraine and the pressure campaign on them to break ties with Russia. Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira, who earlier in the day condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, urged the various parties to the conflict to “build the possibility of a solution. We cannot continue to talk only about war.”

Western states have sent billions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine to prolong a war that must be ended before it gets out of control. The West has blocked negotiations since the possibility of an interim agreement between Russia and Ukraine arose in March 2022. Endless war talk by Western politicians and Ukraine's weaponization prompted Russia's withdrawal on February 21 of 2023 of the New START Treaty, which -with the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019- puts an end to the nuclear arms control regime.

Vieira’s comment about the need to “build the possibility of a solution” is shared by all developing countries, which do not see endless war as beneficial to the planet. As Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez said on the same panel: “We do not want to continue discussing who will be the winner or loser of a war. We are all losers and, in the end, it is humanity that loses everything.”

The most forceful statement in Munich came from Namibia’s Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila. “We are promoting a peaceful resolution of that conflict” in Ukraine, 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 rather than being spent on acquiring weapons, killing people and actually creating hostilities.” Asked why Namibia had abstained in the UN vote on the war, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said: “Our focus is on solving the problem … not on assigning blame.” The money used to buy weapons, she said, “could be better used to promote development in Ukraine, in Africa, in Asia, elsewhere, in Europe itself, where many people are suffering.” A Chinese plan for peace in Ukraine – built on the principles of the 1955 Bandung Conference – absorbs the points made by these leaders from the Global South.

European leaders have turned a deaf ear to the arguments put forward by people like Kuugongelwa-Amadhila. The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, had already shot himself in the foot with his unsavory remarks in October 2022: “Europe is a garden. The rest of the world is a jungle. And the jungle could invade the garden… Europeans have to engage much more with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us.” At the Munich Security Conference in February 2023, Borrell – who is of Spanish origin – said he shared Macron’s “sentiment” that the West had to “preserve or even rebuild a trust-based cooperation with many of the so-called countries of the South.” The countries of the South, Borrell said, “accuse us of [a] double standard” when it comes to fighting imperialism, a stance that “we must discredit.”

A series of reports published by major Western financial houses echo the concerns of people like Borrell. BlackRock notes that we are entering “a fragmented world with competing blocs,” while Credit Suisse points to the “deep and persistent fractures” that have opened up in the world order. Credit Suisse’s assessment of these “fractures” describes them accurately: “The global West (Western developed countries and allies) has drifted away from the global East (China, Russia and allies) in terms of core strategic interests, while the global South (Brazil, Russia, India and China and most developing countries) is reorganizing to pursue its own interests.”

This reorganization is now manifested in the Global South's refusal to bend the knee to Washington.