NOT choosing sides in a conflict doesn’t have to mean you are confused – it may mean you are the only one who isn’t.

The South African government’s abstention from the United Nations vote condemning Russia for invading Ukraine has attracted much spluttering from the one third of the country which decides what we must think. The voices who think that the West is always best have denounced it for sucking up to Vladimir Putin. The usual chorus of government denouncers have complained that it is failing to send a clear message and is ‘sitting on the fence’.

But refusing to take sides is not an unclear message. In this case, it is the only reaction which squares with democratic principles. This does not mean this country’s foreign policy is clear and coherent. In many cases, including this one, what the officials at the Department of International Relations and Co-operation want is not what government politicians want. Policy often seems to consist of little more than trying to avoid offending everyone (which is impossible and so always risks offending everyone). But, while the government may have the wrong reasons, it has taken the right decision.

Fighting the Wrong War

To explain why, we must remove one source of confusion. Not choosing a side does not mean that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is even vaguely defensible. It violates basic democratic and humane norms. The South African chorus cheering Russia on – the SA Communist Party, sections of the ANC, former President Jacob Zuma – are, to put it as politely as possible, in a time warp.

The Soviet Union which supported the ANC in its fight against apartheid and claimed to be an alternative to the West is no more. Putin and his government are not the torch bearers of Marx and Lenin, they are descendants of the Czars. While many on the left in this country may have swallowed the illusion that the Soviet Union was a socialist state, the current Russian government does not even pretend to be that. It is an authoritarian nationalist regime whose natural allies are white supremacists and ethnic nationalists.

This is why the Russian government worked to get Donald Trump elected and may have tried to influence British voters to support Brexit. It is why Italy’s far-right leader Matteo Salvini was made to feel unwelcome on a recent visit to Poland because he has been photographed wearing a Putin T-shirt. It is also why the invasion of Ukraine was welcomed by American white supremacists (until, in some cases, they were told to change sides) – and the Burmese military junta – and why Nigel Farage, campaigner for Brexit and immigration controls, blamed it on the West. For the SACP and other cheer leaders for the invasion, this crew of anti-democrats is an ‘anti-imperialist’ coalition.

Since the invasion cannot be justified by democratic principle – the vast majority of Ukrainians do not want a government imposed on them by the Russian state – the only credible justification for Russia’s actions is the ‘spheres of influence’ argument which is based on the writings of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the late George Kennan, both of whom were highly influential US government strategists – and which was endorsed by Farage.

The argument is that major powers – in this case, those with nuclear weapons – regard parts of the world as ‘theirs’; they must be satisfied that whoever governs in their back yard is not a threat to them. When the Cold War ended, the West, in this view, made the mistake of allowing many former Soviet bloc countries to join NATO, the Western military alliance. Since NATO members are bound to protect each other, this meant that Russia was surrounded by states which were now in the Western ‘sphere of influence’. It didn’t like this, but could live with it as long as it did not stretch too close to home. The possibility that Ukraine might join NATO and the European Union would, as Kissinger and Kennan warned, be intolerable to Russia, which is why it has acted.

This is a powerful argument – if you believe countries should have ‘spheres of influence’. But democratic principle insists that they should not – people in each state should decide what government they want and to whom it must be allied. This argument is about order, not justice. A democratic foreign policy must stress the rights of people, not those of states. People do not lose their right to decide if they live in Eastern Europe or Latin America.

The Law of the Powerful

So, why then should we not insist that our government join those who have identified with Ukraine in its statements and United Nations votes? Because, sadly, what Russia is doing in Ukraine is not unique: on the contrary, it is depressingly common. And no-one has offered an even vaguely credible argument for why Russia’s invasion differs from other, similar, actions.

Examples of other real or attempted occupations in which civilians are bombed have been cited repeatedly over the past couple of weeks. Obvious cases include the Israeli state’s occupation of Palestinian land – there is little difference between the horrific pictures of suffering in Ukraine and those when Gaza is bombed – Saudi Arabia’s attempt to pacify Yemen by destroying it, the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and bombed Somalia last month. There are many others.

Many voices have pointed out that none have prompted demands that the world unite to punish the perpetrator. Palestine is the most damning case because not only have the countries now demanding action against Russia imposed no sanctions on the Israeli state – they have passed laws punishing those who call for them. Football’s authorities have encouraged people to show support for Ukraine at matches – they punished supporters of the Scottish club Glasgow Celtic for waving Palestinian flags. There is not even consistency in attitudes to the Putin’s Russian: when it bombed Chechnya into submission a couple of decades ago, no-one minded much.

Why demand action on Ukraine and not on any of the others? The only argument which has been offered is deeply offensive – that bombings and occupations are only unacceptable when the victims are white and European (so Putin’s government could bomb Chechnya because most of its people are Muslims). Beyond that, the only reason is that major powers think something should be done about this invasion and not any of the others. It is hard to see why South Africa – or any other country – should support the idea that good and evil in relations between countries is simply what some states think it should be.

International law is at stake too – the United Nations is a source of international law even if it lacks the teeth to enforce it. If any country’s legal system was based on the principle that a crime is what some powerful people decide at any given time it is, we would not take it seriously. This country was governed until 1994 by one set of laws for some people and another for everyone else – people died fighting for laws which apply equally to all. Why should this country take sides to support an international legal order in which there is no principle, only power, because the law is what some states say it is?

To point this out is not ‘whataboutism’, which claims that it is fine for one country to violate rights and break rules because others do too. It is to insist that no state should ever do this and so we need one international law which everyone obeys.

This may become crucial in the years ahead. It is increasingly likely that the world faces a new Cold War between a bloc led by the West and one led by Russia and China. This gives the game away about the first Cold War. It was portrayed as a battle between ‘socialism and capitalism’ or ‘the free world and communism’, depending on which side you were. But the socialist bloc no longer exists yet again a Cold War is developing. This suggests strongly that the last Cold War was really a battle between two empires who needed to prettify their desire for power by claiming that it was about big ideas.

During that Cold War many states insisted that they would not join either power bloc and so they formed the non-aligned movement. The principle that states who care about people should not support power blocs is as relevant today as it was then. The world needs a new non-aligned movement because democracy, to repeat, is about the right of people to govern themselves, not the right of states to force them into a bloc.

But South Africa cannot commit itself to non-alignment if it remains part of a BRICS alliance which includes two nuclear armed powers who will be leading one of the blocs. If the country wants to continue making democratic choices, it needs to choose not BRICS but a non-aligned alliance with other countries who do not want to be bullied by the powerful.

Written by Professor Steven Friedman, a research professor at the University of Johannesburg

This article was first published by the Democracy Development Program