Don’t blame the West if the Global South goes its way

Try getting your head around the magnitude of American power in 1955. America had established Bretton Woods and NATO. It revived Japan and Western Europe. This led to mass culture (Hollywood, Elvis Presley) and high art (abstract expressionism, Saul Bellow). It contained a monstrous share of global production. It had visionary leaders like Dwight Eisenhower.

and it couldn’t stop half of the world going your way. As the Cold War solidified around them, the non-aligned countries met that year in Bandung, Indonesia. If the West, under its most powerful and best leadership, could not charm, inspire, reason or intimidate them into its fold, who can blame it for failing to do so now?

Quite a few, it seems. The West is losing “rest”, I keep reading, especially on the question of Ukraine. There are two problems here. Firstly, in order to lose something, it is necessary to get it once. when was that? Second, these countries have their own agency. It also includes the power to be wrong.

Basically here is the unshakable belief that, if something is wrong with the world, America and its allies are to blame. This allows Western progressives to feel their favorite emotion: ostentatious guilt. This opens the door to their favorite and perhaps only idea: financial transfers, whether in the form of aid or infrastructure investment or debt relief. His self-criticism has a veneer of humility. But nothing can be more patriotic than this. The thing about guilt is that it assumes it has ultimate control over things.

Although the West has secularized, a biblical belief lives on: that there is virtue in suffering. To be wrong is to be right. This idea needs to be countered at every point. That a nation is poor does not make its worldview true. That it was done cruelly in the past does not make its decision on a different subject valid for later human life. (Any more than the test of Christ validates the gospel.)

It’s possible that the “Global South”—all of us who weren’t born there take neoclassicism seriously—is wrong about Ukraine. Morally wrong, because the war is a matter of imperial conquest, which the former colonies claim to be opposing. Strategically wrong, as projecting Russia as an alternative patron to the US would not achieve much. (If Washington is high-handed, try Moscow.) Above all, wrong at liberty, The fence-sitters on Ukraine were not put there by America. Even America cannot attract them.

You don’t have to agree that the Global South is wrong. The point is, what does the West mean? These are independent states. Among them are the largest country on earth (India), resource superpowers (Gulf states) and perhaps the strongest military in the Southern Hemisphere (Brazil). Poor in the Bandung era, many are now middle income. The West, meanwhile, has a declining share of world production.

In much of the world, the West feigns sanity. Let us break down that vague complaint into specifics. Russia can place countries in its economic and military orbit without being bound by moral bonds. For example, it does not ask them to undertake internal liberal reforms. Are these words something that critics of the West think it should match? If so, then it is not a shameful thought. (The Cold War was not won by moral outrage.) But it would be nice if someone explained it. At this point, much is hidden behind the evasive waffle about the need for “engagement.”

West Is (Since 1945 – As giver of aid, receiver of immigrants, as underwriter of security – since 1945. If it fails to garner support for its stand on Ukraine, many things are working. One is a deep resentment of the West’s colonial past. Another cold (and again valid) calculation is: a strong Russia and a poor China. Allows countries to drive a tough deal with the US. Yet a distant third is ambiguous about events. “If neither wants to, two can’t fight”president of brazil, Regarding Ukraine, he must have believed was an insight. The rest, I fear, is bad faith, often from global South elites whose mistrust of the West discounts London real estate, Paris luxe retail and American universities.

The West must keep knocking against this wall of dogma. But it must also accept that other countries can make mistakes of their own free will and without any persuasion. Non-alignment in the Cold War was not such a wise bet in the end. This prompted several governments to adopt quasi-socialist policies that took decades to undo. As far as South-South solidarity is concerned, many of the countries that participated in Bandung would later go to war with each other. How guilty is the West of allowing this to happen.

janan.ganesh@ft.com