Why the West needs to focus on preventing impunity rather than promoting democracy
Great Britain and France will convene major international conferences this week. The first, in London, will try to attract support for Ukraine. The second, in Paris, will focus on international financing for countries and communities affected by extreme poverty and climate change. The risk is that the conferences will not unite the world, but divide it even more.
The war in Ukraine has united the West in a massive effort: economic, military and humanitarian aid to the country now exceeds $150 billion, most of which has come from America, and that’s not including support for the 8 million Ukrainian refugees in Europe. There are good reasons for this. Russia’s invasion is a gross violation of international law, as are its attacks on civilian infrastructure. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the international order depends on the results of this conflict.
But the West’s large-scale reactions in Ukraine highlight its inability to step up in the face of other global crises. The danger is that this gap is widening, and so is the trust deficit between the West and the rest of the world. Worse, it is growing at a time of increasing global challenges, such as a 20% jump in the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide in 2022 to an all-time high of 110 million, as noted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Even before COVID-19, the world deviated significantly from achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2018, four out of five fragile and conflict-affected states did not implement Sustainable Development Goals measures. Since then, as a result of prolonged conflicts, the climate crisis and the pandemic, the situation has only worsened.
The UN reports that 340 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance today, up from 81 million a decade ago. The global economic consequences of covid and the war in Ukraine, in particular the increase in interest rates to curb inflation, will exacerbate existing problems. According to the United Nations Development Program, 25 developing countries spend more than 20% of public revenues on debt service.
These growing needs and the inability to adequately address them are the context of the global split regarding Ukraine. Few countries defend the invasion, but many believe that the West is not a reliable friend. Almost two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries that are officially neutral or support Russia. These include several well-known democracies such as Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa.
This trust deficit is rooted in the failure to manage globalization in a fair way. Three groups of issues need to be resolved.
First, there is a desperate need for greater equity in global risk management. Pandemics are a good example because unequal access to covid vaccines has been emblematic of the West’s empty promises. So is support for refugees, most of whom are in poor countries. In both cases, crises lead to increased inequality, as richer countries fend for themselves and poorer countries bear the brunt.
The climate crisis is the biggest test of the sincerity of the West’s solidarity with the rest of the world. Rich countries must spend trillions of dollars to decarbonize their economies, but they must also do much more to support low-carbon development and poor countries’ adaptation to climate change. For example, Somalia receives less than $1 per person per year for climate adaptation, despite being at the forefront of climate change.
International financial institutions play an important role. There is a funding gap: for example, only 5% of the World Bank’s climate finance has gone to the ten most climate-vulnerable countries. There is also a delivery gap. In unstable and conflict-affected states, the usual model of grants and loans to governments needs to be supplemented with new mechanisms that will allow communities without a government or mired in conflict to access international finance. Since Western countries are major shareholders of international institutions, they should work harder to promote these reforms.
The second group of problems concerns the lack of influence of developing countries on international institutions. Many countries rightly resent the unbalanced nature of global power in major institutions. One glaring example is that the European Union has observer status at the G20, while the African Union, which represents over a billion people, does not. It is more difficult to correct the balance of power in the UN Security Council, as well as between the Security Council and the UN General Assembly.
Finally, narrative matters. The prevailing Western framing of the war in Ukraine—as an emblem of the contest between democracy and autocracy—was not an effective way to recruit supporters. While it is true that Ukrainians are fighting for their democracy as well as their sovereignty, for the rest of the world the invasion is above all a fundamental violation of international law. While democracy is under attack in many parts of the free world, the greatest danger is the impunity that spreads throughout the international system. Western governments should reframe the Ukrainian conflict as a conflict between the rule of law and impunity, or between law and anarchy, and not as a conflict between democracy and autocracy.
This correctly positions the war in Ukraine among a number of other global problems where power imbalances lead to impunity. This will expand the potential coalition of support. And it would affect China at the weakest point of its policy, since China claims to support a rules-based international system.
Framing global challenges in terms of impunity versus accountability reflects the multidimensional nature of the abuse of power in the international system much more accurately than the dualism of democracy and autocracy. The global order is changing, and checks on the abuse of power—the so-called “countervailing power”—must be strengthened in a variety of contexts, both democratic and autocratic.
The war in Europe is of great importance. But the transatlantic alliance must demonstrate that it understands that war is only one of a series of global challenges, and it must also take action against others.