The Russian invasion of Ukraine, described by NATO and Western countries as an unjustifiable aggression against the principles of international order, monopolizes the agenda of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), an informal defense and security forum that will bring together fifty heads of state and government, as well as many ministers of the branch, in the Bavarian capital from tomorrow, Friday until Sunday.
A key aspect that the organizers highlight, as the first anniversary of the war approaches, is the need for the West to correct some of its attitudes in order to attract some countries from the so-called global South, which -despite the vote at the time in the assembly of the UN – have been reluctant to clearly condemn Russian aggression and rebuff Moscow with economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.
The underlying reason, argues the annual report of the MSC prior to the conference, is that in several emerging countries there is discontent with a world order that often does not benefit them, and that is profitable for the West. “If we do not address the resentment felt by countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia towards the international order, which has not always served their interests, we will have a hard time winning over the undecided as allies in defending fundamental norms and principles,” writes the German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, president of the MSC.
In some countries the war in Ukraine is perceived as a conflict between Europeans, serious above all because of its consequences in the rise in food prices in the world. Very recently, on January 30, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Brasilia that Brazil would not supply Ukraine with arms or ammunition. “If one doesn’t want to fight, two can’t fight,” Lula asserted, assigning Ukraine a role in the Russian invasion.
Among the grievances of the global South to be corrected, the document lists: agricultural, energy, commercial and financial policies to be able to participate in the global economy for which they pay a high cost; failed promises to improve infrastructure to boost competitiveness; or the overload that the fight against the climate crisis supposes for the poorest countries, which also happen to be the most affected by global warming.
The war launched by Russia against Ukraine constitutes “the most flagrant attack against the rule-based order,” argues diplomat Heusgen, noting that unprovoked aggression has led to a war in which the crimes committed are not collateral but part of the war. Russian strategy. “In the future, will there be an order where the force of law dominates or an order where the law of the strongest prevails?” Heusgen wondered in a recent meeting with foreign correspondents in Berlin.
The 176-page report identifies a revisionist narrative by Russian Vladimir Putin, backed in its own way by China, which has some resonance with countries in the global South unhappy with the status quo. Putin’s narrative defends that a Russian victory would liquidate the international order “dictated by the West, especially by the United States” since the end of World War II, and would open a new multipolar international order, which would be “a new authoritarian multilateralism”. in the words of the report.
However, according to the statistics handled by the MSC text, the discontent with the international order expressed by some African, Asian and Latin American countries does not carry with it a desire for Russia or China to gain global influence or support for what the report called autocratic revisionism. “You could paraphrase Winston Churchill’s line that democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others,” said Sophie Eisentraut, MSC’s director of research and publications. For many, the current world order is the worst there is, barring all other possible orders.”
