ANALYSIS: The West and the Rest Are Split on Russia

Map displaying the countries that have placed sanctions on Russia following its 2014 annexation of Crimea and 2022 invasion of Ukraine. (Wikipedia)

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, drawing the ire of much of the world. On March 2, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/1, which criticized the invasion and called for Russia to end its assault. 141 countries voted in favor while just five, including Russia, voted against it. 35 countries abstained. Western officials and media sources hailed the vote as an unprecedented show of international support for Ukraine.

But it’s worth noting that those forty countries that did not support the resolution represent nearly half of the world’s population; one vote does not tell the whole story. 

The resolution is, of course, a purely symbolic statement that affects neither Russia nor Ukraine. A far more telling, and striking, map is that of who is taking part in the international sanctions regime placed on Russia, which has had a devastating effect on its economy. This picture illustrates a stark divide in the world: On one side, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, and Australia are the major governments that have chosen to economically isolate Russia.

But that leaves more than 150 countries that have chosen to keep normal ties with Russia. Some of the world’s most populous and most economically important countries, particularly from the “Global South,” have chosen to sit on the sidelines, including India, Brazil, China, South Africa, Mexico, and Egypt. Even richer U.S. allies including Israel or Saudi Arabia have abstained from sanctions, suggesting that the economic consequences of imposing sanctions are not the only factor at play in their decisions. 

Many have claimed that Russia’s conflict with Ukraine represents a new era of international relations, perhaps even heralding a new Cold War against Russia, and perhaps China. China’s neutrality, meanwhile, has been interpreted by many Western officials, think tanks, and media sources as a tacit endorsement of Russia, especially considering that the two countries committed to a “no limits” partnership just weeks before the war. 

President Biden has claimed that he is rallying “the international community” to his side, and that “the world” is against Russia. Yet, the truth is that the West stands largely alone in its standoff with President Vladimir Putin. In a similar dynamic to the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement, many countries–in particular those of South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa–do not wish to be drawn into great power games, especially if a multipolar world order is about to emerge.

India, Neutral

One country that has received particular attention about its stance on Russia, especially by U.S. commentators, is India, the world’s largest democracy. Despite Biden’s framing of the conflict as a fight to save democracy, India has remained steadfast in its neutrality over the conflict, voting to abstain at both the UN Security Council—of which India is currently a rotating member—and General Assembly resolutions on Russia, though it did underline in its statement that all member nations should respect the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.”

Many were surprised that India did not side with other U.S. allies on the votes, especially considering its deepening security cooperation with the U.S. as well as Japan and Australia through the Quad grouping. In a hearing on U.S. policy towards India in early March, Senator Chris Murphy called India’s abstentions “puzzling” and “troubling.” 

But the country’s decision is not at all surprising given India’s history of strong ties with Russia. The ties date back to India’s independence in 1947, after which it set up large-scale economic and security linkages with the Soviet Union despite an official non-aligned stance in the Cold War. During the 1971 war with Pakistan, where the U.S. supported India’s arch-rival, the Soviet Union provided crucial support for India both in the UN Security Council and through deploying its fleet in the Bay of Bengal to deter U.S. naval forces already placed there. 

While Americans are largely unaware of the U.S. role in this war, Indians have not forgotten how Russia’s predecessor state helped them in their hour of need. But perhaps most crucially to the modern context, Russia remains India’s largest supplier of military arms and equipment. From 2017-2021, 46% of India’s major arms imports originated from Russia. Nearly all of its 3,500 tanks are either Russian-made or designed, along with 4 out of 10 of its destroyer ships and 8 out of 14 of its nuclear-powered submarines. Russia supplies everything from ammunition to spare parts, whereas U.S. defense cooperation with India is still much more limited.

It is with these weapons that India has defended itself against Chinese incursions in the Himalayas. India sees good relations with Russia as crucial leverage against future tension with China, and is likely highly worried by Western efforts to treat both as a unified axis.  

India also had the additional weight of needing to rescue over 18,000 students, mostly medical students, from Ukraine. India has vigorously engaged both Ukraine and Russia to open up humanitarian corridors for its nationals; Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directly called Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the early days of the war himself. India’s neutral stance may even allow it to serve as a mediator for eventual peace discussions, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently suggested. 

In the meantime, however, India and Russia have attempted to work out a rupee-ruble trading arrangement to allow normal trade relations to continue in the midst of sanctions on dollar and euro transactions with Russia. As Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar noted recently, this move is difficult for the West to criticize, considering European countries have not sanctioned their own imports of Russian oil and gas, and have instead increased their energy imports by 15% in the month of March compared to February. 

In South Asia, India is not alone in choosing to engage with Russia on mostly normal terms: Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka also all abstained from the UNGA resolution, owing to their own security and energy ties to Russia. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan himself visited Russia on the day of the invasion, in an effort to diversify the country’s foreign relations. 

Overall though, India’s stance should serve as a wakeup call for the United States: While India is a willing partner of the U.S. against China, it will not easily sacrifice its historical and contemporary Russia ties, and will instead seek to chart an independent foreign policy path. 

Latin America, Resentful

Almost all of Latin America, save the overtly anti-American countries like Nicaragua and Cuba, voted with the U.S. against Russia. But the perspectives of its leaders are highly complex. Like Imran Khan, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Argentine President Alberto Fernández visited Russia in early February and met with Vladimir Putin. Bolsonaro himself has even declined to personally condemn Putin, despite the official stance of Brazil at the UN.

As Fernández suggested during his meeting with Putin, where he said that Argentina has to stop being “so dependent on the [IMF] and the United States and has to open up to other places,” the desire for independence appears to be a key factor behind Brazil and Argentina’s actions. Though many commentators have criticized Russia for treating Ukraine as part of its inalienable sphere of influence, others have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of the United States, considering it has treated Latin America as its own sphere of influence since it promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, which has been invoked by U.S. officials as recently as 2019.

The disagreements have even reached the US border: In early March, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico declined to impose sanctions on Russia, saying that Mexico wants “to have good relations with all the governments in the world.”

Mexico has clear economic benefits to keeping up normal relations with Russia: Russian oil company Lukoil announced just before López Obrador’s words that it had completed its acquisition of a 50% stake in a Mexican offshore oil project. In these cases and others, material and ideological incentives together have encouraged Latin American leaders to slightly distance their countries from the domineering influence of the United States. 

Africa and the Middle East, Conflicted

Meanwhile, America’s normally steadfast Middle Eastern allies—Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—are continuing the rebellious approach of Latin America. All four voted to support the UN resolution, yet none have signed onto sanctions. 

Israel has tried to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett making a secret visit to Russia last month. With large populations of both Russian and Ukrainian Jews, Israel’s leadership has good reason to take a middle ground in the conflict, and Israel could prove an important neutral territory for a final negotiated settlement between the two warring parties. Additionally, Russian military presence in volatile Syria, especially its control of the country’s airspace, is critical for Israel’s security. Though Israel’s foreign minister did recently condemn alleged Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, the words are unlikely to presage major economic actions against Russia.

The reactions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, on the other hand, are likely an unfortunate consequence of the Biden administration’s previous foreign policy. As part of an attempt to pivot to Asia, the U.S. under Biden has de-emphasized its Middle Eastern partners and sought to return to the Iran nuclear deal, despite the deal’s unpopularity among both Israel and the U.S.’s Arab allies. Biden has also sought to recalibrate relations with Saudi Arabia and ostracize its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), over his role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

In return, MBS has refused to take calls from Biden, and Saudi Arabia has even made the shocking move of considering pricing its oil in Chinese yuan rather than US dollars, which would dramatically weaken the dollar’s global power. It is entirely possible that such discussions are simply Saudi’s way of voicing their displeasure of Biden’s treatment of its crown prince, but the fault lines are clear. But, more importantly, the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s refusals to join the U.S.-led sanctions regime poses a headache to the West’s strategy. Dubai, for instance, may become a haven for Russian oligarchs and their assets. 

But the positions of America’s Middle East allies are less of an issue compared to Africa’s stance on the conflict, which appears to be the continent most ambivalent over Russia’s invasion: On the UN vote, 24 out of 54 countries declined to condemn Russia, including 16 abstentions and one outright opposition from Eritrea.

This posture is largely the result of Russia’s outreach to the continent, particularly in its military assistance and its agricultural exports. Both Russia and Ukraine are major global exporters of wheat, with regions like Eastern Africa receiving nearly 90% of its imported wheat from those countries. On the military side, Russian mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group, a paramilitary group often considered an arm of the Russian state, have reportedly been involved in conflicts in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali. An elite squad of the Wagner Group even makes up the current CAR president’s personal security detail. 

As another sign of Russia’s reach, in 2019, President Putin co-hosted a Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi alongside Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and 43 heads of state attended. Despite being a close U.S. ally, Egypt is also a large weapons and agricultural importer from Russia, which it receives more than three-quarters of its wheat from; President el-Sisi notably called Putin a few days after the UN vote to clarify why Egypt voted the way it did.

Perhaps the most significant abstention was from South Africa, long seen as the continent’s most influential country. The country also refused to impose sanctions, and in its parliament President Cyril Ramaphosa even argued that NATO’s eastward expansion was a primary cause of the war. Similarly to India, South Africa’s Russia ties date back to Soviet times. The USSR provided critical assistance to the anti-apartheid movement during the country’s decades of white rule, and South Africa’s leaders do not seem willing to jettison relations with such an important partner. 

U.S. attitudes towards Africa’s stance on Russia may further inflame resentment. Speaking to the media late March, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the US has “to do additional work to help these countries to understand the impact of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine.” Africans have called these comments patronizing, even arrogant, towards the continent. These signs do not bode well for the restoration of American global leadership. 

The New World Order?

The simple truth is that the world is not as united against Russia as the United States wishes it were. This division emerges partially from the relative decline of U.S. power, as new powers like China rise and the world fragments into a multipolar order of competing blocs. 

For instance, on March 23, in the midst of intense isolation from the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Moscow with representatives of the BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS is not the most coherent organization, considering the intense internal rivalry between India and China, but, nonetheless, they consist of some of the world’s most important emerging economies. The fact that BRICS is continuing normal meetings suggests its members’ desire to challenge the international dominance of the United States and the West. 

Seen from the lens of BRICS, the motivations of nominal U.S. allies like Brazil and India become clearer. BRICS has already attempted to accelerate the de-dollarization of the global financial system, and has built its own development bank, the New Development Bank, to supply aid to Global South countries where the World Bank and other U.S.-led development banks might refuse. BRICS may even be trying to pave over its differences to strengthen the unity of its bloc, as evidenced by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s recent visit to India where he proclaimed that “if China and India speak with one voice, the whole world will listen.”

But while the BRICS may be trying to contest the West’s power—or, at the very least, provide an alternative—many of the abstaining countries’ orientations emerge simply from their lack of trust in the West and its criticism of Russia’s “unprovoked and unjustified” war. With the West’s moral authority so corroded over its own violations of international law, from the Iraq War to the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, the rest of the world may see bright hypocrisy in its words. They see no reason to follow the West’s sanctions plans and risk blowback to their own economies or security interests. Even if countries are disturbed by Russia’s actions, they may see the U.S. as no better. 

In fact, the rest of the world may fear the future wrath of the West’s financial power against their own countries. The U.S. has, after all, already economically isolated Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran. Actions like the freezing of Russia’s reserves and Biden’s suggestion of a goal of regime change in Russia may increase the Global South’s sense of a West out of control. 

Overall, the tepid reaction of the world to the West’s punishment of Russia suggests the fitful beginnings of a multipolar era. Whether through formal arrangements like BRICS or informally through the UN, Global South countries are increasingly recognizing the benefits of taking their own paths, separate from any one hegemon.

This process is a worrying trend for the West, which may see unintended consequences of its harsh Russia sanctions down the line, as the world seeks to diversify its assets away from dollars and euros. The United States will have to adjust to a paradigm where it is no longer the sole power, able to always dictate terms in its own best interest. 

How this transition will end is unclear. Perhaps there may not be an officially new Non-Aligned Movement, but with the rise of China, and countries like India close behind, the redivision of the world will only accelerate from here.