The West Versus the Rest | The Nonaligned World Issue Launch Event
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- Russia’s war in Ukraine has drawn Western allies closer together, but it has not unified the world’s democracies in the way U.S. President Joe Biden might have hoped for when the war began last February. Instead, the last year has highlighted just how differently much of the rest of the world sees not only the war but also the broader global landscape. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, policymakers and scholars from Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia explore the dangers, as well as the new opportunities, that the war and the broader return of great-power conflict present for their countries and regions.
Foreign Affairs invites you to watch Executive Editor Justin Vogt and authors Tim Murithi, Nirupama Rao, and Matias Spektor as they mark the launch of the May/June issue, The Nonaligned World. This conversation originally aired on May 4, 2023.
Additional Resources:
"Order of Oppression" by Tim Murithi
www.foreignaff...
"The Upside of Rivalry" by Nirupama Rao
www.foreignaff...
"In Defense of the Fence Sitters" by Matias Spektor
www.foreignaff...
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere. The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity." - W.B Yeats
Very relevant and poignant quote from a well informed speaker. Thank you for your insight and opinions.
On one side they say the US masks their national interest under the guise of moral superiority that they are often hypocritical about.
But the US also shouldn't tear off the fig leaf of that moral guise because if countries act in their self interest there will be chaos.
So they want institutions like a "global parliament" to keep major powers accountable to moral principles, but they have no apparent objection to India currently working in its own national interest instead of those principles.
I don't think this power balance works unless we're all trying to do better.
Keep it up. Great topic. Thank you!
The war in Iraq is similar to Russia's war in Ukraine in two important aspects. Both started under made up cause(s). And both made the life of millions hell. Then - the two wars are different in several important ways too. U.S. did not annex Iraq, fully or partially. U.S. did not start replacing the population of occupied territories with Americans. U.S. did not steal Iraqi children, sending them to America for local families to adopt. U.S. did indeed remove from power a criminal regime, that started the war in Iran in the 80s, the war in Kuwait in the 90s and for decades made life hell for whole groups in Iraqi society. Russia did (and still does) all of the above to the Ukrainians. And also - kept on lying. The Americans admitted no WMDs were there pretty much right away. Russia keeps on insisting on these, frankly ludicrous concepts of Nazis in Kiev or "We are protecting ourselves", or even "We did not invade Ukraine" nonsense. Literally lie after lie, combined with insistence the World needs to recognize their blatant, cynical lies as equal to objective reality facts.
“Of the 50 countries that freedom house describes as dictatorships, the US provides military aid to 35 out the 50 so the notion that you have a summit of democracies that commits America to promoting democracy stands hollow again and it looks as if - from a global south perspective - this is national interest couched in the language of moral superiority”. Perfectly said.👍
The term "Global South" always leaves the lips of those who use it as of great significance, when in truth it says little, an amorphous gross generalization.
Why is the UK and Tony Blair not mentioned?
Apples and oranges. The US never tried to claim/incorporate Iraqi territory as it's own. So yes, war is bad, but let's not ignore the difference. Don’t want war? Don’t start one.
Very insightful discussion!
The global south should really consult with former Soviet republics. All those Slavic and Turkic people never colonized the world like the western Europeans did, and they themselves were victims of colonialism. That perspective might illuminate the current situation for them. It's perfectly rational to distrust the US, but the enemy of their enemy is NOT their friend.
You should read about the Ottoman and Russian Empires...
I have been trying to find this type of mature, credentialed, informative commentary for 3 or 4 years. Thank you so, so much for restoring my sanity.
Russia's war against Ukraine is a savage war of colonial conquest. Russia has as much right to reconquer Ukraine, as Portugal to reconquer Brazil and Angola; Spain, Mexico and Argentina; France, Algeria and Quebec; Netherlands, Indonesia; Belgium, the Congo; and Britain, India, Nigeria, and New England.
It really isn't comparable when the attacker is an authoritarian state that shoots its own troops and has a disregard for its own people.
What makes Mr Murithi think that climate change will affect all of us equally? Some nations get swallowed up by the sea, some lose significant percentages of their shoreline and nations territory, while others will be mostly fine. Climate change is injust insofar as it hurts regions with hostile climate even more while being only a minor inconvenience for nations that are well of right now.
Certainly the UNSC needs major reforms. Also no matter what academic arguments are presented, from a simple MORAL standpoint, there can be NO tolerance for the brutal destructive invasion of Ukraine, a peaceful country. That should be the lode star. The destruction, brutality and mad kremlin rhetoric is simply unacceptable in any unipolar, multipolar, just HUMAN world.
Focus on what and where all national interests intersect.
In other words, reframe to seek progress.
The real difference between the "west" and those of whom we are critical is the value of the individual, versus the state. Does the state serve the people, or does it indeed hold them in slavery to the state, and it's elite. Indeed, we in the west straddle this line as do many others, but we pay lip service to the idea, that the state is there solely to serve the people. This however is a constant struggle which has been moving in the dangerous direction of wealth concentration through the skewing of the tax tables since 1979, and since the middle 80's by the gerrymandering of congressional districts. These two items are part of a worldwide class war pitting the ultra wealthy against the interests of the masses. There exists a worldwide oligarchy with little loyalty to anything but the continuation of their own wealth, and power. In nearly all states they have manipulated the economies, and taxation such that they hold much of the world in eternal interest only debt slavery. This I believe is the cause of rising hysteria among the poor, and working poor worldwide, and they seek heroes who so often are just demagogues, and populists who prey upon the ignorance of the desperate much like the despotic Donald J. Trump. What we world citizens truly have to fear is concentration of wealth, and a genetic breakaway by the elite, for this would lead to the inevitable mass slaughter of the majority of human beings, who would no longer be seen as such. Search the deepest forests, the highest mountain valleys, or the most remote islands, and you will not find another hominid upon the face of this earth. This indeed we must fear, and it is the authoritarian state aligned solely to it's elites that will first produce this disaster, a most cruel end to a once great species, homo sapiens, sapiens.
I won't defend failures like Iraq. I can admit that there's a degree of hypocrisy with countries that can afford to act hypocritical. And I understand realism as a theory explains a lot of international behavior. But if you expect it to explain _all_ the behavior of Western countries, and if you base all your analysis and planning on the idea that we'll only act on self-interest, you will regularly be surprised and disappointed. It takes genuine myopia to miss the fact that the West really believes this stuff on a massive scale and (most critically) is investing real resources in moving the world closer to that ideal, even if we slide backwards sometimes.
I think history says that any negotiated settlement that does not result from one side or the other admitting defeat will just result in another war down the road.
If we didn't let the warhawks continue the cold war shenanigans after the wall fell then we would have a lot better standing on the world stage, maybe even an overall positive one.
Thank you. Yes, the war in Iraq and in Ukraine both are in violation of the UN charter. Our law makers in the west definitely have selective amnesia. As a US citizen who loves her country, I don’t blame any of the other countries who have chosen to sit this war out. I wish the US would too. Russia is definitely to blame for waging this war, but the US sending weapons is doing nothing but extending the war and pushing us further away from a negotiated settlement.