The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a brutal attack on a sovereign nation. The military assault challenged Ukraine's right to craft an independent foreign policy without considering Moscow's security concerns, to align its economy with the European Union, and to pursue policies of national interest in Europe and the Black Sea region. This forum analyzes the unexpected responses from the Global South when the United States, most member states of the European Union, and G7 partners such as Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Korea, as well as New Zealand, Singapore, and Australia (Collective West?) called for international solidarity against Russian aggression yet did not receive it from many countries in the Global South (a newer designation for postcolonial economies, whether north or south of the equator, that were typically called “Third World” or “developing” during the Cold War).Footnote 1
The unanticipated reactions of the Global South to this war have both immediate causes and a much deeper context connected to the histories of Cold War international relations since 1945 (and even before then).Footnote 2 While historical patterns can and have been repeatedly broken, it is still critical to frame the events both within the newer histories of globalization and the US-dominated unipolar world after the fall of communism (including transnational flows of capital, goods, and people, and the spread of a rules-based liberal international order), and an older understanding of Cold War rivalries between the United States and the USSR in the bi-polar era that preceded it. The attempts of the non-aligned countries to preserve their sovereignty and develop their economies by navigating between superpowers during the 1950s and 1960s are central to the new visions of multipolarity that now challenge the post-1991 global order.
In the early days of the invasion, and even in the weeks before, when Russian troops were massing on the eastern border of Ukraine, the west moved very quickly to provide extensive military aid to Ukraine. The United States created comprehensive and wide-ranging economic sanctions to strangle Russian exports and constrain their access to capital markets. Russia's sovereign wealth funds invested in western nations were frozen, as were the accounts of Russian oligarchs who lost possession of their mansions and yachts almost overnight. Finally, the US engaged in vigorous diplomatic outreach to assemble a coalition of like-minded nations, especially in the Global South, home to the majority of the world's population and the fastest-growing economies such as China, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and South Africa. Ukraine's supporters believed that these countries would cease the importation of Russian goods, abide by the economic sanctions that were imposed on Russia, provide resources for the Ukrainian military effort, and most importantly, denounce the Russian invasion in multiple world forums, including the United Nations. After all, since most of the nations in the Global South had gained independence from empires in western Europe and Japan in the aftermath of World War II, was it that far-fetched to assume that they would automatically sympathize with the plight of a recently freed Ukraine, and condemn Russian imperial aggression? Also, surely the west was not wrong in assuming that the survival of a democratic Ukraine, ruled by the recently elected Volodymyr Zelensky, would matter to postcolonial nations across the globe?
As it turned out, countries in the Global South (a highly inaccurate descriptor, yet one that is being used universally) had other ideas about how to resolve what many prefer to call the Russia-Ukraine war.Footnote 3 Most countries in the Global South have called for a negotiated peace settlement and an immediate ceasefire in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Some like South Africa and Bangladesh abstained from condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the UN. Others like Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the UAE subverted economic sanctions and provided Russia with goods and materials sourced from western corporations at an epic scale.Footnote 4 North Korea and Iran provided Moscow with military goods and weapons, including ammunition and drones. China, a key economic partner for the US and the G7 for more than two decades, and India, a rising world power, probably did the most to blunt the power of the G-7 coalition against Russia. Trade between Russia and China soared to stratospheric levels as Chinese brands have replaced western ones in the Russian market, especially in key technology sectors like semiconductors and the automotive industry. China has displayed a huge appetite for cheap Russian oil and gas. India was equally quick to flout western economic sanctions and pushed back vociferously against the threats of economic consequences. Not only did India, a member of the Quad network in the Indo-Pacific that is led by the US, increase purchases of Russian oil, but they also took this opportunity to sell refined Russian crude and other petroleum products such as diesel back to European countries.Footnote 5 Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which belong to OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), have helped the Russian economy by cutting oil production and keeping global prices high. Some like China have even condemned the west for prolonging the conflict by arming Ukraine with advanced weapons systems. China has also echoed Russian talking points that the invitation to Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union threatened Russia's national sovereignty and is the real reason for the war.Footnote 6
The idea for this Slavic Review Forum was born at a moment of stalled global communication and mutual incomprehension. In addition to introducing the individual articles, we will provide two major findings based on an extensive review of policy papers, academic articles, and newspaper editorials from the countries in the Global South about the war, as well as Russian outreach and propaganda to the Global South. Despite what appears to be widespread support for the Russian position in the present conflict, in reality, the picture is much more complicated. Many nations in the Global South are trying to preserve the hard-won economic gains of the last three decades in a globalized world market. They are also increasingly vocal about their right to an independent foreign policy and sympathetic to Russian arguments about the rights of “civilization states” to operate based on their national interests and distinct cultural identities. Perhaps it is an opportune moment to rethink the binary framing of the west and the rest and advance a more complex picture of world politics.
At the same time, it is very important to remember that in terms of economic relations, the continuation of trade with Russia despite the existence of western sanctions should not be interpreted as support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These are policies born out of deep economic necessity, caused by the sharp rise in rates of poverty and indebtedness in many parts of the Global South. Russia is a major exporter of food products (wheat, corn, sunflower oil), fertilizer, fossil fuels (as well as components for the nuclear power industry), and armaments. Too many countries in the Global South have suffered terribly from the rising food and fuel prices since 2021. This has been compounded by the significant spike in global interest rates that restricts the ability of poorer nations to borrow funds to subsidize food and fuel price increases. Pakistan, a country that has reportedly sold ammunition and ordnance to Ukraine, has recently signed agreements to buy cheap Russian oil and gas.Footnote 7 Since early 2021, the country has been in the grip of rampant inflation that has devastated large sections of the population. Consumer prices have risen in Pakistan by almost thirty percent, leading to widespread hunger and poverty. Meanwhile, neighboring India has kept inflation below six percent due in large part to the cheap and abundant imports of Russian fuel and fertilizer.
While the European Union has disbursed hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize fuel prices for angry citizens at home, many of the countries in the Global South are simply unable to afford the largesse of rich nations. The western media and academia have been silent for the most part on the devastating impact that inflation has had on everyday lives in the Global South. As a result, these countries see the Russian-Ukrainian war primarily as a European conflict. They wonder why they should suffer from a further fall in already low living standards to support democracy in Europe.Footnote 8 They would like western countries to pay attention to important issues such as poverty alleviation, economic development, the building of strong local food systems, effects of climate change, and debt relief, issues that have been raised repeatedly at the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in Johannesburg in August 2023 and the G-20 summit in New Delhi in October 2023. As Dr. Jaishankar, the external affairs minister of India explained in 2022, “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems.”Footnote 9
While a few countries in the Global South such as South Africa and Egypt are dependent on armaments and food from Russia, many more have prospered greatly from key aspects of western-led globalization in the last three decades.Footnote 10 Offshoring of industrial manufacturing that has hollowed out large sections of the middle class in western nations has greatly increased the GDP of nations such as South Korea, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, Thailand, and Malaysia, among others. The strong stock market performances in Asian countries are helped in large part by western investments. Finally, countries in the Global South have restructured their economies on the path of western capitalist development, including China, even though it claims to have created a superior model with socialist and indigenous characteristics. The Global South benefits from maintaining strong relations with the west, Russia, and China. As a result, they are extremely receptive to the Russian calls for a multipolar world order that Kathryn Stoner outlines in her essay. They want to move beyond the binary and often overtly moral framings of global problems. Instead of reflexively supporting either Russia or the west, many countries want to create a multilateral system of international relations, and reform the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other global institutions so that they provide a genuine forum for the concerns of the Global South. Saudi Arabia, a country with extensive military and economic ties with the US and Europe, is a case in point. Prince Mohammad bin Salman hosted Vladimir Putin in person in December 2023, effectively flouting western efforts to brand Putin as an international pariah who could be arrested while traveling abroad. Until very recently, Mohammad bin Salman was also deemed an international pariah after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. However, after the sharp rise in global oil prices in the aftermath of the Russian invasion in 2022, the west has, for pragmatic reasons, resumed normal ties with the kingdom.
Russian calls for a multipolar global world order, deployed extensively since 2012 in multiple languages, forums, and media, are embedded in a set of ideas about the nation, family, and the individual. At home, the Putin administration celebrates the civilizational and religious foundation of the Russian state and upholds conservative cultural values related to the family, gender, sexuality, and religion. Textbooks emphasize the duties and responsibilities that come with citizenship and belonging, as opposed to an emphasis on individual rights.Footnote 11 These national affirmations are coupled with an anti-democratic and populist development model and authoritarian male leadership. Not all of these ideas resonate in the Global South and even in Russia, since young populations everywhere are increasingly drawn to western ideas about freedom, consumerism, self-expression, gender equality, and sexual liberty. But Russian arguments about the importance of maintaining the civilizational base that precedes the formal nation-state in the face of western hegemony have proved persuasive in both democratic and non-democratic countries such as Israel, India, Turkey, China, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia, among others. We also see conservative parties in the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and the US, among others, use terms such as cultural identity (Greco-Roman heritage), religious values and ethics (Judeo-Christian), the nuclear family, and heteronormative sexuality in political contests. Here our analysis augments Stoner's, as she does not pinpoint a “particular ideology or developmental model” that Russia is offering to the Global South.
The Russian state has deployed the concept of the civilization state in its news and propaganda outreach throughout the Global South. Scholars and ideologues affiliated with the Putin administration have updated the definition of the civilization state as an enduring political entity that predates the modern nation and is based on distinctive strands of culture.Footnote 12 They argue that the state is more than a Lockean contract between the ruler and the ruled, in which the elected representatives advance the life, liberty, and property of the people. The civilization state is built around a sacred and emotionally resonant set of symbols that citizens of different ethnicities can cohere around either willingly, or assimilate to nominally in order to preserve a strong center. Contrary to Samuel Huntington's predictions about the clash of civilizations, Russian scholars do not see the existence of distinct civilization states in the world leading inevitably to international conflict. Instead, they argue that the western promotion of the rules-based liberal order and the one-size-fits-all globalization since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 has created international tensions, wars, and conflicts. Russia spends considerable resources to channel and articulate individual points of frustration in the Global South into a coherent set of anti-western discourses and political groupings.Footnote 13 The concept of the civilization state is an important analytical and propaganda tool in this regard.
The definition of the civilization state contains an in-built critique of neoliberal globalization and the attempts to impose a western-led rules-based liberal order. However, the flexibility of the concept means that it can be used by countries to cover a multitude of sins. In defense of one's “civilization state,” governments have restricted the speech of democratic activists, censored their political opponents, and promoted the religion of dominant majority groups. When called out for these “transgressions,” countries in the Global South have often expressed their aggravation about constant “lectures” from the west about democratic backsliding, press freedom rankings, and the protection of minority rights. Not surprisingly, some may prefer the nonjudgmental philosophy inherent in the Russian concept of the civilization state (minorities may disagree) which is more useful to strong nationalist leaders than the rights-based liberal model of the nation-state. However, we argue that it would be wrong to see this preference for political flexibility in international relations interpreted as a rejection of the west. Western science and technology, capital, markets, military goods, consumer culture, academia, and even its vocabulary of rights, freedom, and democracy continue to be very important for most countries in the Global South. The Russian model of autocratic governance, even if it is followed, is rarely invoked as a matter of pride. And even Russian propagandists, for all their recent talk about a complete pivot to Asia, sometimes acknowledge the Christian and western roots of their civilization.Footnote 14
The essays in our forum sketch out some of the many complexities of world politics related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This forum appears in a hybrid format; two essays by Thomas Loyd and Katherine Stoner appear here in print. In addition, there is an online forum featuring short contributions from David C. Engerman and Sandeep Bhardwaj on India, Chia Yin Hsu on China, Mark N. Katz on the Middle East, and, Daniela Vieira Secches on Brazil. These contributions can be found at https://aseees.org/slavicreview/discussion/ukraine-war-global-south/.
Katherine Stoner's essay in this journal issue provides a broad overview of some of the most crucial reasons for the disjuncture between the Collective West's expectations and the Global South's responses to the war. Stoner points to the Global South's preference for a multipolar world to a unipolar one shaped by US domination, Russia's diplomatic and aid campaign to win influence in certain areas of the Global South over the past two years, and the perception that the war in Ukraine does not affect the Global South politically or economically. Mark Katz's blog essay on the Middle East provides concrete examples of these phenomena, explaining how the actions of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE are shaped by their more local concerns about Iran. The US's opposition to the occupation of Ukraine also raises particular skepticism among Muslim nations due to US support for Israel despite its occupation of Palestinian territory.
Other analysts take a more granular and local approach. Thomas Loyd's essay in this journal argues that the South African response to the war in Ukraine cannot be understood without understanding the “bonds of historic friendship” between the ANC leadership and the Soviet Union and their shared rejection of western imperialism. Loyd combines his analysis of historic friendship with an examination of more recent economic and political relations between South Africa and Russia, and the appeal of Russia's idea of multipolarity to South Africans seeking to combat western dominance. Daniela Secches argues in her blog essay for a continuity in Brazilian foreign policy toward Russia and Ukraine from 2014 to the present, one that emphasizes pragmatic neutrality, peaceful dispute resolution, and an opposition to isolating the conflicting parties in the international system. Secches sees Brazil as maintaining a more neutral policy than does Stoner, while both acknowledge Brazilian dependence on imported Russian fertilizer and other economic ties. David Engerman and Sandeep Bhardwaj, in their blog essay, trace the India-Russia relationship over seven decades, noting the importance of balancing “two triangular relationships: India-Russia-west on the one hand and India-Russia-China on another.” Chia Yin Hsu points out that China claims a stance of “neutrality” while blaming the US, NATO, and a “Cold War mentality” for the conflict. She ties China's responses to the early days of the third-worldist movement and the Bandung Conference ideal of non-alignment. Historical precedents create pathways for these relationships which are ever-shifting.
Taken together, these essays show that the Global South's support of Russia over Ukraine is based on multiple factors: traditional Cold War relationships, post-Soviet economic and military ties, interdependence, national political traditions, new possibilities for multipolar geopolitics, and regional balances of power. These complexities make it clear that the binary of “supporting the west’’ or “supporting Russia” is a false one for most nations in the Global South. We conclude with a modest recommendation. As historians, we take pride in the unparalleled knowledge that academia and foreign policy institutions in the west have accumulated about Russia. However, we acknowledge that we need to widen our analytical frame when we study Russian history and foreign relations and factor in the depth and breadth of its successful diplomatic, military, and cultural outreach in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The published studies of Russian and Soviet-era relationships in the Global South provide an excellent place to start creating new bibliographies and syllabi and rethink our course assignments.Footnote 15 This forum builds on the massive intellectual bedrock of the “Russia and the west” paradigm that has sustained our field for over a century, but argues that relying on it alone constrains our academic analyses and foreign policy choices in the current moment. The articles explore the significance of Russia's network of multilateral alliances that span the globe and include pockets of support in Europe and the US. We hope that the print and online articles in this issue will help diverse audiences understand the global flashpoints and emerging geopolitical patterns that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has dramatically revealed.
