The maps speak for themselves. And also the numbers. And it is with one and the other in hand that when seeing how each country on the globe is positioned in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the surprise comes: Moscow does not come off so badly...
The experts agree. And when explaining why, there is already talk of a change of era.
Because seen on the map, the East is shown to be mostly inclined in favor of Moscow. The West, almost in parallel, is positioned against Russia. Once again, Africa acts here as a prominent place of disputed transition.
Further on, the image, in detail, changes: those who position themselves against Russia are the ones who concentrate more than two thirds of the world's wealth, as compiled by The Economist and published by Vanguardia Dossier. They are basically western countries. Conversely, those who are pro-Russia, leaning towards the Russian side or those who, despite the serious situation in Ukraine, remain neutral, for their part, bring together almost two thirds of the world's population.
More: the Wilson Center in Washington, founded by the US Congress, emphasizes that the countries that have gone from words to deeds and have imposed sanctions on Russia barely represent 16% of the entire world population. They produce 61% of global wealth.
Translation: the globe condemns the war but most take no action against it.
And that is why war, from a global and historical perspective, thus takes on another meaning, asserts Mira Milosevich, a specialist in international politics at the Elcano Royal Institute. “The West has won the cold war but has lost the peace. When the war ends the world will no longer be the same. It goes from a security policy to a defense policy and goes towards two blocs, the Western one and the rest, although this is never so black or white – look at Trump in the US, Orbán in Hungary or Poland – nor will it to be it in the style of the cold war, because the economic interdependence is greater”, he emphasizes.
New powers like China and India and others for now more regional like Brazil and Turkey, repeat one and the other, have increased their influence. Quite the opposite of what is being debated from the Western context itself: its relative decline.
Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations, formerly in the US State Department, summarizes it this way for La Vanguardia: “I don't think it's fair to say that these countries support Russia or its invasion. It is fairer to point out that they are neutral and that means that they don't really care much about what happens in distant lands and that calls from the West to support the world order mean less than nothing to those who feel that it, imposed by the West, is on them. has oppressed for a long time. The Ukrainian war, regardless of the outcome, will accelerate this erosion. He has shown that the hegemony of the West has become increasingly hollow. But the war did not start the erosion nor was the war necessary for that erosion to continue.
The neutrals, in fact, include emerging powers such as Brazil, India, South Africa and almost all the states of the Arabian peninsula.
And among the emerging countries, for example, France is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and India is not when India has more than twenty times its population, a larger economy and an equivalent nuclear arsenal.
“The West, in these years, has been naive and lost credibility through its own mistakes –continues Milosevich– such as thinking that including China in the World Trade Organization would democratize it. Or wanting to impose democracy after a war, like in the Middle East. It's stupid. History is full of historical experiences that say that when the defeated are integrated, peace is lasting, and the current international order is the expansion to the East since the 1990s after World War II. It has not been modified. Neither Russia nor China, now revisionists and revanchists, has been integrated. Russia was left on the periphery without a voice or a vote. But beware, the only person responsible for the war is whoever makes it: Russia ”, he concludes.
Napoleon's France or Japan and Germany after World War II would serve as examples of success here. On the contrary, of failure, Germany after the First World War, which led to Hitler.
“The West likes to think of the world order as a consensual creation of humanity intended to preserve peace and stability but in reality it is a Western creation whose existence has always depended on Western power and supports Western interests. It is therefore not surprising that the order is supported by the haves and less so by the have-nots,” adds Shapiro.
And Beijing and Moscow, in parallel, also look abroad and develop alternative discourses based on historical colonialism, treating these countries as partners and not as ex-colonies and without asking to take democratizing steps or anything. It is your strategy. And it is effective, as demonstrated by the Russian expansion in Africa or China.
Although there are also practical reasons, analysts agree, because some depend on Moscow economically or militarily (such as China, Algeria, South Africa and some Latin American countries), others diplomatically (such as Israel, in the face of arrangements in the Syrian war and the talks about the Iranian nuclear program), or because several consider that it is a European war and it is better not to be affected by, for example, the shortage of Russian fertilizers, so basic in a sensitive area such as food.
In perspective, analysts draw Ukraine not as a full stop but as a more dramatic point of friction in the change in the international order. But not the only one. Another was taken up by the economic analyst and best seller Nouriel Roubini in a recent interview in this newspaper: “On October 7, the export of high-end semiconductors to China was restricted, a technological war to prevent it from developing them. Before World War II, the US banned the export of scrap metal and oil to Japan. They attacked Pearl Harbor."
If the war for another international order had already started before Ukraine, now the sides are drawn more and more clearly on the map.
