Too Quiet

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Weather Eye

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Why are most countries not taking = sides in the Ukraine war? Richard Gowan on history, geogra= phy, and non-Western strategies for a changing global order.

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Bacila Vlad

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As news organizations arou= nd the world followed the Wagner Group’s mutiny in Russia on= June 24, the United States and Ukraine held a meeting on the war in Copenh= agen with a group of regional powers—including Brazil, India, South A= frica, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Before the meeting, U.S. National Security= Advisor Jake Sullivan said he’d push for greater support for Kyiv. T= he other states in attendance had yet to impose sanctions on Moscow or prov= ide military aid to Ukraine—apart from Turkey, which had sold it some= drones.

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Yet the neutrality of these countr= ies is actually the most common approach to the war outside the West, despite 141 UN m= ember states voting last year to reprimand Russia for its invasion. The lis= t of capitals sanctioning Russia or arming Ukraine includes none from Afric= a, one from the Middle East, one from Central and South America, and three = from Asia. Altogether, these countries represent two-thirds of the global p= opulation. Why are they staying non-aligned?

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Richard Gowan is = the UN director for the international nonprofit Crisis Group. For Gowan, it= ’s a question with a lot of different answers, depending on where you= look. The incentives of non-Western states vary by country and region, and= they’ve changed over the course of the war. Some non-Western leaders= maintain a historical resentment of Western colonialism, for example, or a= more contemporary opposition to sanctions as a tool of diplomacy. But more= broadly, as Gowan sees it, these countries are hedging for strategic reaso= ns—to pursue specific foreign-policy goals or to manage critical unce= rtainties, like where U.S.-China competition is going or who’ll win n= ext year’s American presidential election. More broadly still, they&r= squo;re hedging against the uncertainty of a changing international order&m= dash;which could end up either distributing power widely around the world o= r dividing it in a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing.

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Michael Bluhm: Ho= w do you interpret the non-alignment of the majority of the world’s c= ountries?

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Richard Gowan: Th= ere’s a consensus now that this is hedging behavior—but despite= how widespread it is, it’s striking that there isn’t a single = set of explanations for it.

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For example, even China, which see= ms very close to Russia, is walking a fine line—solidifying its relationship with Mo= scow without throwing in its lot with Russia altogether. China’s inte= rest here is in gaining leverage over Russia.

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India is also hedging, deepening e= conomic ties with Russia by buying far more Russian oil than it used to&mda= sh;but mainly to keep Moscow from aligning against New Delhi in its conflic= ts with Beijing. China is getting closer to Russia, so that means strategic= reasons for India having to stay close to Russia, too. As you can imagine,= the geopolitical incentives here are very complicated.

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Bluhm: When we spoke in Apri= l of 2022, most non-Western countries were already hedging. Do you see thei= r incentives having changed since then?

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Gowan: I see two = things having changed. First, the conflict in Ukraine is turning into a lon= g war. In 2022, a lot of countries were hedging on the assumption that the = conflict would end fairly quickly. These countries were torn: On a moral le= vel, they sympathized with Ukraine, and they were convinced that Moscow had= breached the UN Charter by invading a sovereign state. But they also figur= ed Moscow was going to win the war.

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It’s a different situation n= ow. Many non-Western countries are worried today about a potential Russian = defeat. Brazil has articulated a fear that a peace deal could humiliate Rus= sia and cause long-term, destabilizing effects.

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So non-Western countries are now t= rying to adapt to a long war—that Russia could lose. One symptom of t= hat adaptation is that many non-Western countries are launching peace initi= atives, which they weren’t seriously doing last year.

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The West’s attitude toward n= on-Western hedging behavior has changed, as well. Especially in the first m= onths of the war, Western countries took a very moralistic line, condemning= countries that weren’t fully backing Ukraine. European governments e= ven hinted that they could cut off development aid to countries that sat on= the fence.

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But, having tried and failed sever= al times to get the fence-sitters on Ukraine’s side, Western countrie= s see this quite differently today. The U.S. and the Europeans are now send= ing out the message that they can live with other countries hedging. It was= evident in the incredibly positive welcome that U.S. President Joe Biden r= ecently gave Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington—there = was a clear message that the U.S. was going to ignore India not supporting = the West on Ukraine, because the U.S. needs India to balance China.

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The Biden administration has also = been warm toward Brazilian President Luis InácioLula da Silva since = he took office, even though Lula has irritated the U.S. by moving Brazil cl= oser to Russia in some ways. But from a U.S. perspective, it’s better= to have Lula hedging on a European war from afar than to have former Presi= dent Jair Bolsonaro threatening to bring an end to democracy in Brazil.

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Western countries have sent out si= gnals to major non-Western players that there’ll be no real cost for = hedging—and that’s now going to be part of what’s shaping= their behavior.

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Sander Crombach

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More from Richard Gowan at The= Signal:

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“A lot of non-Wester= n countries have a deep-seated suspicion about the U.S. and EU san= ctions. The U.S. has been using sanctions as a foreign-policy tool more, as= it uses its military power less. That worries a lot of countries. Fewer th= an 4 percent of the states in the world were subjected to sanctions imposed= by the U.S., the EU, or the UN in the early 1960s. Today, that number&rsqu= o;s risen to 27 percent. Nearly a third of the world is under sanctions now= . So they aren’t just a concern for Russia; it’s a much broader= thing. A lot of people outside the West thought that the Americans and Eur= opeans were being weaselly about the issue. Western countries were creating= exemptions to the sanctions for their own economic advantage while demandi= ng others join the sanctions in full. The ones on Russian diamond exports, = for example, were limited because Belgium has a huge diamond trade and didn= ’t want to see it strangled.”

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“Last year, official= s around the world were hedging by both condemning Russia&rsq= uo;s aggression and preparing for a world where Russia wins the war. They s= aw it as necessary to balance those demands. But now, as the war draws out,= states see other reasons to hedge—and other things to hedge on. One = important condition is the very rapid deterioration in relations between th= e U.S. and China, despite the Biden administration’s recent efforts to slow t= hat slide. Policy makers around the world aren’t only hedging over ho= w far to go in supporting the U.S. or Russia; they’re also trying to = maintain some flexibility and independence in the context of a possible con= flict in the Pacific between Washington and Beijing. The other strategic ph= enomenon behind the global hedging pattern is the potential re-election of = Donald Trump. Many countries want to work with the Biden administration but= worry about what would happen if Trump, or a Trump-like alternative, were = to win in 2024—and start ripping up the international rulebook. So th= ey’re hedging over Ukraine, the Asia-Pacific, and U.S. domestic polit= ics. There are lots of good strategic reasons for them to keep their option= s open right now.”

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“The governments of = non-Western countries tend overwhelmingly to see the war as a peri= od of risk but also of opportunity. Western diplomats have been working to = get non-Western support for Kyiv, which has given non-Western countries a c= hance to lay out more clearly their own concerns about the state of the int= ernational system and what they want out of it. As a result, Western countr= ies are indicating they’re willing to consider changes to the way int= ernational institutions work, in order to recognize the interests of the no= n-Western world. Biden has been talking about the need for UN Security Coun= cil reform, to give states like India and Brazil a greater say over interna= tional peace and security. The Europeans are talking about rewriting the ru= les that govern how the International Monetary Fund and World Bank lend mon= ey to poor countries, to make it easier for poor countries to get financing= . That’s partially a response to many poor countries being trapped in= a very serious debt crisis. But it’s also because policy makers in W= estern capitals realize they need to revise the rules of international coop= eration if they’re going to maintain some goodwill with non-Western p= owers.”

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