The “Global South” Won’t Join Biden’s “Global Coalition”

The more the West insists on imposing its “rules-based order” and war policy on the entire world, the faster resistance is growing, not only in the superpowers of China and Russia, but especially in what is known as the “Global South”. That reality can no longer be ignored, even by certain bulwarks of the western establishment. To give just a few examples:

• The two-day meeting of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in India ended on Feb. 25 without a joint communique, due to disagreement over whether to include a condemnation of Russia for the “invasion” of Ukraine, as demanded by the U.S., while India (which has not condemned Moscow) wanted to use neutral terminology such as “crisis” or “challenge” to refer to the situation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi insisted from the opening of the meeting that the focus be on the need to provide food, energy, industry, water, health care and the rest for “those most vulnerable” around the world. He did not mention Ukraine in a way to allow it to be used as a diversion.
• While 143 nations voted for a UN Resolution to condemn Russia’s annexation of territory in Ukraine, only 33 have joined the U.S. and NATO in imposing sanctions against Russia. Those figures are highlighted in a Washington Post article of Feb. 22 titled “A Global Divide on the Ukraine War Is Deepening”. The author, Liz Sly, provides anecdotal evidence from people from India, Egypt, and South Africa, that explains why there is no support for the efforts to isolate Russia in the Global South. The world is “not united behind the U.S,” she concludes, the “effort to isolate Putin has failed.”
• The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has issued a new study, which recognizes that while the West may be more consolidated than ever behind the Cold War policy, and the primacy of the fight “between democracy and authoritarianism”, the “paradox is that this newfound unity is coinciding with the emergence of a post-Western world. The West has not disintegrated, but its consolidation has come at a moment when other powers will not simply do as it wishes.” The very neo-conservative Washington Post reported on the study in an article by Ishaan Tharoor, titled “Biden Rallies the West, but What About the Rest?”.
• The Economist, alias the voice of the City of London, is very concerned that China’s peace plan for Ukraine will be widely supported by the non western world. On Feb. 20, several days before that plan was released, its editorial blasted Beijing’s position under the headline: “If China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war” (a direct quote of President Zelenskyy). It states that “China’s argument that countries should focus on economic growth and poverty alleviation rather than human rights gets some traction in parts of the developing world. So does China’s portrayal of the war as the latest example of Western-inspired global disorder, sending food and energy prices higher.”