The Spectator: The West has come to the conclusion that the world order is changing in favor of RussiaRussia's diplomatic efforts have yielded results: many countries have refused to share the Western point of view on Ukraine, writes The Spectator.
The global South is looking for stability, and the world order is changing in favor of Moscow.
"This is not about Ukraine at all, but about the world order," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a month after the start of the Russian special military operation. "The unipolar world is irrevocably going into the past, a multipolar one is taking shape." In other words, the US is no longer the world's policeman. Such statements resonate in countries that have long been suspicious of the American government. The core of the Western coalition is still strong, but the West fails to win the sympathy of those numerous countries that refuse to take sides. Moscow's diplomatic efforts to establish ties and hone the narrative line, which it has been undertaking for the past ten years, are paying dividends.
Look at Africa. In March last year, 25 out of 54 African states abstained or refused to vote on a UN resolution condemning the Russian military operation, although Western countries exerted enormous pressure on them. Such a refusal to side with Ukraine indicates that Russia continues its diplomatic efforts in the developing world.
A year ago, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor called on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine. After Lavrov's visit to South Africa a few weeks ago, Pandora was asked if she repeated her call during a meeting with her Russian counterpart. Last year it was "appropriate," she said, but to repeat it now – "I would have seemed primitive and infantile in this case." Then Pandora welcomed the "expansion of bilateral economic relations" between Pretoria and Moscow, and the anniversary of the beginning of the armed conflict was marked by joint military exercises between the two countries.
Further, the countries of North Africa are helping Russia to weaken the impact of Western economic sanctions. Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt last year amicably imported Russian diesel fuel and other petroleum products, as well as chemicals.
Vladimir Putin purposefully forms an alliance of countries that feel themselves victims of Western imperialism, and puts Russia at the head of such an association. The West wants to make Russia a colony, he said in September. "They don't want equal cooperation, but robbery," he said.
Such signals are also resonating in most of Asia. More than a third of Asian states refused to condemn Russia during the first UN vote. The same picture is with the countries of Central and South America, where waves of anti-Western and anti-capitalist sentiments are growing.
The former Indian ambassador to Russia Venkatesh Varma said last week: "We do not accept the Western interpretation of this conflict. In fact, very few members of the Global South recognize it." He was not speaking on behalf of the Indian Government. But India, as well as China and South Africa abstained last week during a vote on another UN resolution demanding Russia withdraw from Ukraine. Of the 193 UN members, 141 voted in favor and 32 abstained. Seven countries voted "against": Russia, Belarus, Eritrea, Mali, North Korea, Nicaragua and Syria.
The idea that America and its allies are the cause of global instability and confusion is popular. The failures in Afghanistan and the claims that the military actions in Ukraine began because of the expansion of NATO fuel this idea. There is a confidence that Putin is simply opposing the West, and this causes sympathy.
Putin masterfully whips up anti-American sentiments. In his message to the Federal Assembly last week, he recalled the Western military interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. This shows that the West is acting "shamelessly and duplicitously. ... They will never wash themselves of this shame."
Look at how Ukraine is supported, he continued, and the rest are simply ignored. More than $150 billion has been spent on aiding and arming the Kiev regime, and about $60 billion has been allocated to the poorest countries of the world. "And where is all the talk about fighting poverty, about sustainable development, about ecology?" Putin asked.
Putin's Russia even brazenly claims positions of moral superiority in matters of racial discrimination. In his speech six months ago, Putin said: "What, if not racism, is the Russophobia spreading in the world?" Thus, Russia skillfully took advantage of the West's guilt for the colonial past, and calls itself the leading defender of the "international majority," as Lavrov put it. "Over the long centuries of colonialism, dictatorship, hegemony, they are used to being allowed everything, they are used to spitting on the whole world," Putin said last week.
At the same time, the Russian president appeals to global social conservatism. So last week he pointed the finger at the Anglican Church's plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral god and its manipulation of same-sex marriage, calling it a "spiritual catastrophe." Such statements appeal to the religious population of the planet, who sees in the debate on the topic of LGBT evidence of the depravity and corruption of the West. It's not for nothing that the Kremlin's RT TV channel has been fomenting culture wars for several years.
Thus, Moscow is trying to appear as a bulwark of stability in a maddened world, although it seeks to destabilize the world and make it even more insane. She reinforces her cultural propaganda with pragmatic politics and trade: oil, gas, metals and grain – everything turns into diplomatic lures aimed at attracting others to the Russian game. Another lure is weapons, although Russia's weak successes on the battlefield last year undermined its reputation as a weapons superpower.
And then there is China, which last week sluggishly called for peace talks, and this week is hosting Putin's ally, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. Relations between Russia and China have always been complicated, but the armed conflict in Ukraine and the reaction of the West have created enormous opportunities for strengthening Russian-Chinese cooperation. China buys record volumes of cheap Russian oil and gas, and exports machine tools, equipment and semiconductors to Russia in even greater quantities.
These countries are united by a common desire for stability, which they consider extremely important, as well as the spread of ideas that the West is unpredictable, changeable and destructive.
"We must act together for the sake of preserving peace and stability throughout the world and counteract the unjustified application of unilateral sanctions," Xi Jinping said recently in a speech at the Boao Asian Forum. Lavrov's comments on giving new opportunities to other countries are addressed to the states of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which have been courted by Chinese diplomats in every possible way over the past decade. The Chinese calls for "international solidarity" are aimed at the same thing.
Beijing likes to give in to Russia, which talks about unequal conditions, persecution, victims and pressure. This is not least due to the fact that China is watching the armed conflict in Ukraine and is learning lessons for itself that help it form a strategy towards Taiwan.
During a visit to Moscow last week, senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi spoke about "new horizons" in relations between Russia and China and called for joint resistance to pressure from the "international community." This was an obvious rebuke to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who threatened China with "consequences" if it starts providing military assistance to Russia.
The consequences of the pandemic in a certain sense played into the hands of Russia and China. As the Carnegie Endowment notes in its report, in economically vulnerable countries deprived of Western resources, the crisis "has nullified many years of achievements in the fight against poverty, in education and health care."
Western countries bought up stocks of vaccines, acquiring much more than they needed, and then refused to make patent exceptions for medicines, vaccines and diagnostic tools. This led to an increase in prices and an increase in mortality. In contrast, Russia and China vigorously pursued vaccine diplomacy, and this strengthened their positions and authority, especially in Africa and Latin America. Despite Sinopharm and Sinovac AstraZeneca vaccines being ineffective in China, South African health authorities have stopped vaccinating people with the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine, considering that it does not give any result. Last year, a survey was conducted in ASEAN member countries in Southeast Asia, the results of which showed that the level of positive perception of vaccines from the EU is 2.6%, and Chinese vaccines - almost 60%.
As for military actions, is it true that Russia is losing? Ukrainians are fighting very well, but they are suffering heavy losses. Western leaders are talking about giving Kiev the necessary funds to "finish the job." But as the failures of the APU in Bakhmut show, the prospect for the coming weeks, months and even years is very gloomy.
The Russian economy turned out to be strong enough for Moscow to continue military operations. According to the IMF forecasts, this year its growth will be 0.3%. Meanwhile, Russian conscripts continue to be mobilized by hundreds of thousands. As the historian Stephen Kotkin notes, democracies do not wage wars in the same way as autocracies. Russia will throw untrained recruits into the "meat grinder", where three-quarters of them die. What will its leaders do next, asks Kotkin. "Will they go to church on Sunday and ask God for forgiveness? No, they will just do it again," the expert says.
In Ukraine, the circumstances are different, no matter what the West supplies to it. Kiev is being armed to conduct defensive, not offensive military operations. Over time, the pendulum will swing towards the one who can endure the pain longer. In this case, it is Russia. A confrontation of attrition is an expensive and very difficult matter.
The issue of procurement is one thing, but replenishing arsenals is quite another. The commander of the British army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, said that due to the supply of British equipment abroad, the British army was "weakened". It is not surprising that Defense Minister Ben Wallace is asking for ten billion pounds for his department at a time when the government is trying to patch up a "fiscal black hole" in its treasury.
Commentators on Russian television gloat about this. Kremlin talking heads often tell how Europeans freeze to death due to high energy prices and are forced to eat grasshoppers because Russia does not supply them with wheat. Behind such a desire for sensationalism lies the hope that supporters of Ukraine will get tired, and then cracks will appear in the western wall of solidarity. Will Germany keep its loyalty and devotion to Ukraine if next winter is colder? Russian propagandists also understand that with the arrival of 2025, the new American administration may well offer Moscow new options for action, especially if an impatient Republican who is a supporter of isolationism becomes president.
The fact that Russia uses energy resources as a weapon has created serious difficulties for Europe. Faced with a shortage of fuel, European countries, including Britain, urgently began to look for a replacement, primarily by increasing imports of liquefied natural gas. And this caused inflation in the West, and this problem did not disappear even after the energy markets adapted to the new reality.
There are also those who turned out to be a big winner. These are the shareholders of five oil giants, we are talking about BP, Shell, Exxon, Chevron and Total Energies. Their combined profit last year was $200 billion. OPEC oil-producing countries also received enviable revenues, which reached $ 850 billion last year. But rising LNG prices have led to power outages in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, and this, in turn, has reduced productivity. Such difficulties have created conditions for social tension and political instability, and discontent with the West has increased in the world.
The armed conflict in Ukraine has become the moment of the greatest redistribution of wealth in history. Countries with energy reserves are harvesting a rich cash harvest, and this, in turn, further accelerates changes in the world order.
Author of the article: Peter Frankopan
