South and West.. a new deal
The Global South has suddenly appeared in Europe, offering to make peace amid the worst conflagration on the continent since World War II. And I’m talking about the mission of the leaders of seven African countries led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The leaders first visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, then his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The declared goal of the delegation was to mediate between the warring factions. And Ramaphosa did his best to sound optimistic. But Zelensky and Putin leave no doubt that African peace plans have little chance of success. Ramaphosa is among a number of leaders in the Global South who have raised eyebrows in Kiev and the West.
His country has so far remained clearly neutral in the Russian-Ukrainian “conflict”, as Ramaphosa insists on calling it, much to Zelensky’s chagrin. South Africa abstained from voting on two United Nations resolutions last year condemning the Russian military operation. In the first, 35 countries chose not to participate in the vote, and in the second time, 58 countries did not participate in the vote. South Africa is accused of secretly supplying weapons to Russia, which it denies, but a bipartisan group of US lawmakers has demanded that the White House punish it by moving a major trade conference elsewhere in Africa.
How should the “West” deal with the “South” in the broader geopolitical conflicts of our time? In any case, the West will need the rest of the countries because it is not only facing Russia. The West may use its economic power to coerce or persuade the countries of the South to stand by it and punish these countries when they do not comply. This means listening to the concerns of the South and addressing them. One way to explain the South’s continued neutrality in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, as well as in the confrontation between the United States and China, is old-fashioned realism. When the world is multipolar, it is not clear who will have power in the future. So the best strategy for many countries is to hedge. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, has ties between Washington, Moscow and Beijing. The biggest snag is the cynicism in the Global South about the Western invocation of the “rules-based order” to be defended in Ukraine. Not many countries in the Southern Hemisphere were at the table when the rules were put in place. The victors in World War II are the ones who laid the foundations of the United Nations and the Security Council and for them, at a time when those powers were still controlling large sectors in Africa and Asia.
And if the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China or Russia do not like a resolution in the Security Council, they veto it. The ten non-permanent members of the Council cannot do this, and only two or three of those may be Africans anyway. In this system, the Western powers still wage war whenever they want, as happened with Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, for example. They usually don’t care about the consequences as long as those wars only affect the Global South. The list of Western hypocrisy is long, so people in the South are wondering: why should they defend the rules-based order when the United States refuses to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ? And why should they heed the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court if America does not recognize this court?
North Americans and Europeans may have greater sympathy for Ukrainian refugees and victims than for Sudanese or Tutsis. As the Indian External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar,” in a widely circulated phrase, the West tends to “the mentality that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” So the West should offer a new deal to the South, part of which should be reform of the United Nations. And the five permanent members of the Security Council must give up their veto power. It is not right for two medium-sized European countries to have two permanent seats while countries with huge populations like Indonesia or India do not have that. The most visible component of the new global agreement concerns climate change.
Western countries, led by the United States, bear disproportionate historical responsibility for greenhouse gases, but the global south bears a large share of the consequences, from droughts and famines to floods and migrations. So rich western countries should take seriously the financing of climate change adaptation in the south. The West must recognize that much of global politics today is unfair and that the South must be listened to and carried in the ship. Let the West stop preaching and start listening to the South.
Former Editor-in-Chief of the German magazine Handelsblatt Global.
Published by special arrangement with The Washington Post Leasing and Syndication Service.
#South #West. #deal