The West’s Failure to Court The Global South

Zubin Rekhi

This is not the 19th century anymore: Europe’s wars aren’t the world’s wars. America no longer holds enough sway to just snap its fingers and expect the rest of the world to do its bidding.

On September 20, 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron took the podium at the United Nations General Assembly with an air of moral superiority that may remind some of George W. Bush’s famous ultimatum speech announcing America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. As Bush did 20 years earlier, Macron invoked shallow allusions to “liberty” and “the free world’s responsibility” without questioning any assumptions that formed the basis for those allusions. “Those who remain silent today, despite themselves or secretly with a certain complicity, are serving the cause of a new imperialism, a contemporary cynicism that is destroying the world order,” he said, seemingly staring world leaders — from China, India, and other countries in the Global South — in the eye. Never mind that the “old imperialism” that forms the basis of our current international system is manifesting in new and horrifying ways, with climate change’s disproportionate impact on poor countries added to the picture. Never mind the contemporary cynicism that forms the basis for predatory institutions that are still self-serving and dominated by the West, such as the World Bank. Never mind even rationalizing why the current “world order” as it stands is worth preserving.

To be sure, there are clear distinctions between the Iraq War and the RussiaUkraine War: Putin is indisputably an oppressive despot who flagrantly disregarded international law by invading a sovereign country whose leader and spirit should be upheld as an archetype for democratic countries. My qualms are not with the West’s benevolent intentions in supporting Ukraine and Zelensky but rather with the rhetoric, outdated notions, and false assumptions underlying their outreach in mustering support for Ukraine throughout the Global South. This piece aims to both expose the West’s fallacies in courting developing countries as well as the consequence of the West’s clumsy outreach – strengthening a burgeoning pro-Russia movement.

The aftermath of COVID-19 and the increasing impacts of climate change in the developing world means that the Global South is no longer reaping the benefits of globalization that it once was. The growing middle class in middle-income countries is now shrinking because of inflation. Economic growth in developing countries is declining due to the post-COVID-19 slowdown: The World Bank predicted that the developing world will only experience 3.4% GDP growth in 2022, compared to 6.6% in 2021 and an average of 4.8% from 2011 to 2019. The poorest countries are experiencing an unprecedented reckoning with debt accumulated over years of loose borrowing. The UN Development Program estimates that 54 countries, containing over half of the world’s population, need immediate debt relief.

And that’s not even accounting for the most immediate problems facing the Global South in the immediate aftermath of COVID and the Russia-Ukraine conflict: the shortage of key commodities, such as energy and food supplies. Yes, Russian oil mainly went to rich Western European countries, such as Germany, before the war broke out. But when Russian oil and gas is sanctioned by Western countries, supply drops globally and prices shoot up for everyone — including poor countries. In this environment of otherwise high global oil prices, Global South countries that disavow Western sanctions, such as India, can receive extremely discounted oil from Russia, selling at almost $30 less per gallon than alternatives. Governments in parts of the world are faced with the choice of buying Russian oil they need to heat homes, turn on lights, and keep factories and offices running, or bringing their countries to a standstill.

Food insecurity has rapidly increased worldwide over the last five years. The negative effects of climate change on crop harvests, combined with inflation and supply chain shutdowns during COVID, had already raised the price of staples for the world’s most vulnerable. When the

war broke out, people in these most vulnerable countries immediately saw their plates shrink: Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of the world’s wheat and barley. The result of this confluence of factors is an estimated 23.9% rise in staple food prices in sub-Saharan Africa. Acute hunger has increased by 17% globally and to over 10% in every country in Africa except Tanzania and Algeria. In many countries, there are more people who go to sleep at night without taking care of their children’s hunger than there are people who have the “luxury” of nourishing a healthy family. In Pakistan, after a flood destroyed significant portions of the country’s agricultural lands and storehouses, the country’s capacity to feed itself has been eviscerated for years into the foreseeable future.

We need to replace our counterproductive strategy with one that acknowledges the problem – that the West currently lacks moral credibility – and then works to build moral credibility in places where America is still seen as a malignant imperial power.

In such a dire situation, it’s ridiculous to expect governments, many of which often can’t feed most of their citizens or provide them with reasonable levels of gas to power their cars or homes, to take the moral high ground in a conflict situated thousands of miles from their borders. America’s and the West’s assertions of possessing the moral high ground ring hollow in countries where Western-induced climate change is destroying people’s ways of life. In the view of the Global South’s leaders, Putin can be tolerated just like the U.S. tolerated the Shah, Pinochet, or the Saudi Crown Prince, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is deemed as acceptable as America’s role in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Serbia, or even Vietnam. If anything, Global South leaders are more justified in their opposition to sanctioning Russia than America was in its foreign policy because they are simply trying to provide their people with necessities rather than taking part in some “Great Game”-esque foreign policy.

When one-third of Pakistan, the fifth-most populous country on Earth, was under water, how much press coverage did it get? Compare Western coverage of Pakistan to that of the Ukraine War and it’s easier to understand why so many people feel excluded by the West’s moral absolutism over the war in Ukraine. This is not the 20th century anymore: Europe’s wars aren’t the world’s wars. America no longer holds enough sway to just snap its fingers and expect the rest of the world to do its bidding. Leaders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are tired of being forced to make the toughest sacrifices necessary for supporting the West’s latest geopolitical effort as America’s and Europe’s subordinates. And unless America addresses these concerns, the Global South is only going to shift further in Russia’s favor.

We already see signs of this pro-Russia movement taking full form. Russia’s partners aren’t just global outliers like North Korea or repressive anti-Western, authoritarian regimes like China. South Africa has already taken part in military exercises with Russia’s military, in addition to harboring sanctioned ships filled with ammunition. India imports significant amounts of cheap Russian oil and has now even taken a first step towards denting nearly universal dollar dominance (the practice of paying for oil internationally in U.S. dollars). India also imports significant amounts of Russian ammunition — $13 billion worth, to be exact. The United Arab Emirates continues to harbor Russian oligarchs and their wealth, which was formerly situated in Britain and Western Europe.

The real sign of the success of Russia’s America’s and the West’s assertions of possessing the moral high ground ring hollow in countries where Western-induced climate change is destroying people’s ways of feeding themselves or staying alive.

burgeoning movement isn’t just that it has convinced governments in the Global South to prop up the Kremlin but also that it has convinced the masses in developing countries that its propaganda has currency. Russian propaganda finds fertile ground with a disaffected audience that increasingly feels Western-driven globalization is no longer improving their standard of living and that Russian grain, oil, and arms are a necessity. Harnessing a massive pre-existing network of Russia Television (RT) networks, including RT en Español (which has more followers than CNN’s Spanish edition), Russia unleashes a torrent of propaganda, including conspiracy theories about Ukrainian “biolabs” and “denazification.” Additionally, content moderation on social media platforms in these countries is far more difficult because Big Tech firms serve English-speaking audiences first. Even when Russian State accounts are taken down from Twitter or Facebook, government and diplomatic officials can parrot Putin’s line on their personal accounts.

Right now, many people in the developing world still only support Russia out of necessity rather than out of sympathy for its absurd claims of “denazification.” But as the war drags onto its second year, pushing developing countries into even more dire straits, Russia will find increasingly fertile ground for parroting its claims among populations that are difficult to protect from misinformation. Unless the West figures out how to address the Global South’s concerns over declining economic growth, food insecurity, and energy, the waiting game may soon turn in Russia’s favor. If the West keeps invoking claims of moral absolutism and continues to express an inadequate understanding of how dire the situation has become outside its borders, global support for a burgeoning pro-Russia movement may push this conflict in Putin’s favor. We need to replace our counterproductive strategy with one that acknowledges the problem: The West currently lacks moral credibility, and the U.S. must work to build moral credibility in places where America is still seen as a malignant imperial power.

This starts with reforming international institutions to give the Global South a seat at the table in global governance. The UN Security Council needs to be expanded to include India, Brazil, and other emerging Global South actors as permanent members. The World Bank desperately needs an appointee that is diverse not because of their immigrant background but because they are not American endorsed, breaking the cycle of never-ending American appointees that tilt policy in favor of the West. The IMF needs to increase the Global South’s representation at the tables where predatory neoliberal policies are made: America accounts for 16% of the IMF’s

voting share, meaning that all non-American-endorsed policies that require supermajorities of 85% are dead on arrival. And instead of morally discounting Chinese aid programs in developing countries as inherently predatory, we need to recognize that they benefit vulnerable populations in those areas of the world America deems too unimportant to woo.

These are just the beginning of the list of demands and unless the West bothers to acknowledge them, the Global South will continue to use the Russia-Ukraine War to drive a wedge with the Global North. As they do so, the West’s claims of moral absolutism will continue to counterproductively provoke leaders in the Global South to increasingly side with Russia.

Zubin Rekhi ‘26 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at r.zubin@wustl.edu.