How the West’s world order lost wider trust

To begin with, consider how the duality has changed the balance of reputation and moral high ground in the favour of the so-called Global South. The duality has come to be seen as the clearest proof yet of the argument that Western universal values are either false claims or, more sinisterly, a cover for practising global dominance. Western universalism claims that all humans are equal in worth, but the picture that emerges when the responses to scenes of suffering from Gaza and Ukraine are juxtaposed is of an unequal humanity.

In previous instances, when the notion of Western hypocrisy gained salience, the references usually tended to be about past actions. When Western governments and leaders spoke of democracy, human rights and rules-based behaviour in the rest of the world, the world reminded them of European colonialism, America’s support for dictatorships across continents, and the military interventions that toppled regimes in West Asia, violating the sovereignty of non-Western countries.

However, since these were references to actions past, and the past is a foreign country, the criticism tended to be less effective. Reality today is quite different.

The West’s absolute support for Israel is an old story. Neither is it inconsistent with the historical record of several Western powers of practising and supporting apartheid, land grab, ethnic cleansing and denial of sovereignty to non-Western peoples. But the reason why this absolute support has today become a glaring affront is because it can be contrasted, in real time, with the Western framing of the Ukraine war. It is the duality between what the West says about Ukraine and what it does vis-à-vis Gaza that gives strength to the hypocrisy charge. In the face of non-Western indifference to the Ukraine war, the West has called upon the Global South to support its efforts to restore the rules-based order. But in the same historical moment, its policy in West Asia violates those rules and, worse, disregards the outrage of the non-Western world.

This contrast is making the Global South appear more coherent than it is. And the longer it holds for, the clearer three patterns become.

First, the reversal of the European effort to be perceived differently to the US in the eyes of the wider world. While dependent on the US for its security, Europe has been trying over the past 30 years to change its external identity. Global decolonisation, end of the Soviet influence and a contrast with America’s unilateralism allowed Europe to position itself as a more appealing form of the West — open, multilateralist, commercial, benign, and willing to make amends for colonial wrongs.

The support for Israeli excesses in Palestine by Europe’s leading powers has undermined those efforts. Germany’s policy has been particularly disheartening. With little colonial burden and a deep understanding of what ethnic cleansing and genocide actually mean, it could have upheld Western universalism by extending the “never again” commitment to the Palestinians. Deep social repentance had given it a unique moral status to determine and call out genocidal behaviour. But its refusal to acknowledge the human harm being carried out in Gaza illustrates a country’s failure to transform its guilt into a motivation for a truly radical universal morality, as Ashoka attempted after the Kalinga war. It is an opportunity missed.

Second, the West’s claim to be the defender of a rules-based international order has lost even its rhetorical utility, but it is the damage to the basic infrastructure of that order — the United Nations (UN) system — produced by this duality that is truly disconcerting. Seduced by the drama and glamour of geopolitics, international relations commentators often ignore the UN’s critical role in keeping world politics less antagonistic and dysfunctional and somewhat decent too. The contrast between Western stances on the two wars at the Security Council and the International Criminal Court arrest warrants of the leaders prosecuting the two wars has undermined the UN system. This is also ironic because the ideas underlying the UN system come in large parts from the European Enlightenment.

Finally, as it has discredited the Western vision of the world order, the duality has made it easy for non-Western powers to position themselves as builders of an alternative and more desirable international order, which gives to their attempts to balance American power the appearance of a higher purpose. Think of China and Russia concerting with Iran and North Korea to check American power and influence across Eurasia. This is classic geopolitics, run-of-the-mill stuff. Now think of Moscow and Beijing working with other powers who are otherwise not interested in balancing the West — India, Brazil, Turkey and the likes — and throw the Brics and the popular sentiments in the non-West into the mix. To many, it feels like a better world is in the making. But it’s too early to tell.

Atul Mishra teaches international affairs at the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR. The views expressed are personal

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