Questão 25 - FUNORTE 2024

Developing World Sees Double Standard in West’s Actions in Gaza and Ukraine

Neil MacFarquhar

 

    For 20 months, the Biden administration has attempted to stake out the moral high ground against Russia, condemning its brutal war on Ukraine for indiscriminately killing civilians. The argument resonated in much of the West, but less so in other parts of the world, which viewed the war as more of a great-power conflict and declined to participate in sanctions or otherwise isolate Russia.

    Now, as Israel bombards the Gaza Strip, killing more than 4,300 people since Oct. 7, the Biden administration’s unwavering support risks creating new headwinds in its efforts to win over global public opinion.

    Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, President Biden tied American support for Ukraine and Israel together, describing both nations as democracies fighting enemies determined to “completely annihilate” them. Russia invaded and seeks to annex Ukraine, while Hamas, the group that controls Gaza and denies Israel’s right to exist, staged a terrorist attack that killed at least 1,400 people in southern Israel.

    Increasingly, the Middle East region is emerging as a renewed front in the struggle for influence in the Global South — the collective name for the developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America — pitting the West against Russia and China.

    “The war in the Middle East will drive a growing wedge between the West and countries like Brazil or Indonesia, key swing states of the Global South,” said Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk assessment organization. “That will make international cooperation on Ukraine, like sanctions enforcement on Russia, even harder.”

    When the war in Ukraine first broke out, Palestinians were elated by the tough stance taken by Western capitals against one country occupying another’s land, said Nour Odeh, a Ramallah-based Palestinian political commentator. “But it seems that occupation is only bad if the guys who are not on your side are doing it.”

    In some ways the Gaza conflict has been a boon to the Kremlin, knocking the spotlight off the Ukraine war and burnishing Russia’s image in the Middle East and Global South. In recent years, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has sought to restore some of the Soviet Union’s lost influence in the Middle East, intervening militarily in civil wars in Syria and Libya. He has greatly strengthened ties with Iran, a country which Israel considers a national security threat.

    China has also been seeking to expand its influence in the Middle East, having recently mediated a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore relations. Russia and China have refused to condemn Hamas. They have instead criticized Israeli treatment of Palestinians, especially its decision to cut off water and electricity to Gaza and the civilian death toll there. They have called for international mediation and a cease-fire before Israel considers that its war has fully begun.

    The Palestinian cause has long thrived in the Global South, so the Gaza war has only added to resentments in Africa, Asia and Latin America that the West is treating Ukraine as a special case because it is a European war. They denounce the money spent on arming Ukraine while international development goals are ignored.

    There is a perception that the West “cares more about Ukrainian refugees, about Ukrainian civilians suffering, than we do when they are suffering in Yemen, in Gaza, in Sudan, in Syria,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based Eurasia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    That helps illustrate why the West has failed to woo countries like India and Turkey into supporting sanctions against Russia. Given the situation in Gaza, that effort is unlikely to succeed any time soon.

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Source: The New York Times, 23/10/2023

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