Global South and western divergence on Russia's war in Ukraine: implications for world order

Abstract

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there has been much commentary about divergence between the responses of the global South and prevailing western views of this war as a blatant violation of constitutive principles of world order.¹ There has been less discussion about this contrast representing a democratic divide. Yet the adoption of a studiously ‘non-aligned’ stance by some of the world's largest democracies (such as India, Indonesia and Brazil) throws into question the framing of the war as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, as favoured by former United States president Joe Biden.²

This article highlights the importance of acknowledging the differences and affinities in the international behaviour of democracies which are obscured in dichotomous generalizations about the global South and North. It challenges the reification of this deceptive dichotomy and instead assesses the merits of John Ikenberry's alternative categorization of the current competition to shape world order as an interaction between ‘Three Worlds’: the global West, the global East and the global South.³ The article also queries the related idea that there is a unitary liberal international order in place for the global South or others to challenge. This part of the argument uses Alastair Iain Johnston's understanding of international order ‘as the emergent property of the interactions of multiple state and nonstate actors … rather than a single, U.S.-dominated liberal order’.⁴

The article then examines how divergent responses to Russia's war against Ukraine illustrate the relative efficacy of Ikenberry's and Johnston's respective schemas to explain competition about the current world order(s). It focuses on why those responses represent a democratic divide as much as any other cleavage by outlining general global West and East responses and then analysing responses by selected global South democracies. In evaluating this democratic divide, the article draws on Andrew Moravcsik's ‘new liberalism’ regarding the foundational role of state preferences in international relations and how they drive a perpetually shifting balance of affinities and disagreements between (and within) democracies, wherever they may be located.⁵

The final section of the article discusses how identifying democratic divides and interrogating deceptive dichotomies is of relevance both for scholars and policy-makers. The article concludes that responses to the Russian war against Ukraine exemplify how shifting state preferences largely account for convergence and/or divergence in democracies' responses to issues in different domains of world order(s), and that these responses thereby challenge the notion of a systemic North/South dichotomy in approaches to a purported liberal international order. Acknowledging democratic divides and avoiding deceptive dichotomies is thus a critical first step in guiding more effective policy responses to such cases as the Ukrainian conflict and in refining scholarly conceptualization of the drivers of international competition (and cooperation) in a multipolar world.

A deceptive dichotomy: the global South versus the global North (or West)

The ‘global South’ is a malleable term understood differently in different contexts at different times by different people (ranging from scholars and policy-makers to journalists and lay persons). It carries the limitations of any loosely geographical term that is based on describing parts of the world in relation to each other in ways derived from historically Eurocentric perspectives, such as the West, the Far East or the Middle East. Although it originated earlier,⁶ the term gained increasing prominence after the end of the Cold War when the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) rendered anachronistic references to a ‘Third World’ of non-aligned countries positioned between the ideologically competing blocs of the American-led First World and a Soviet-led Second World.⁷ Instead, relative economic development became a more compelling rationale for distinguishing between a wealthier group of countries mainly located in the northern hemisphere and a poorer group to the south, notwithstanding anomalies associated with this blunt dichotomous division, such as the murky place of parts of the former Second World in the formulation.⁸

Nevertheless, the term has gathered sufficient momentum to become a widely used proxy for the Group of 77 (G77), which first brought together an assortment of developing states in 1964 to promote shared economic interests and greater influence within the United Nations and which now encompasses 134 countries.⁹ In addition to widespread allusions to the global South in policy and media circles, the use of the term has soared in scholarly discourse to such an extent that it has been described as a ‘booming meta category’.¹⁰

Yet it is difficult to discern a coherent North/South distinction either in economic terms or geographically.¹¹ Intuitively, wealthy states such as Qatar and Brunei should be part of the North, but they are included alongside their poorer neighbours as part of the global South. Geographically, Australia and New Zealand are in the southern hemisphere, while India lies completely in the northern.¹² China's rise as one of the world's two largest economies has further complicated the distinction, throwing into doubt the global South's economic subordination.

The framing of a North/South dichotomy in political terms is even more problematic because global ideological divides—especially between democracies and autocracies—do not run along those lines.¹³ The ‘global South’ encompasses diverse forms of domestic political order, ranging from fully fledged democracies to various forms of autocracy, including communism and theocracy. Moreover, states can shift from one category of domestic political order to another, as occurred on a massive scale when the USSR collapsed. There is also the irony that, depending on definitions, both Russia and Ukraine are technically in the global South,¹⁴ potentially implying that global South positions on the war range from supporting one fellow global South state over another to being ‘neutral’ in an intra-South conflict.¹⁵ Such ironies have prompted arguments that the notion of a global South has outlived its usefulness.¹⁶ However, the popularity of the term suggests it may be premature to retire it outright, especially if it can be repurposed in more nuanced ways.¹⁷

There has, in fact, been scholarly advocacy concerning the benefits of such a repurposing.¹⁸ The departure point for this work must acknowledge that a fixed North–South binary framing makes no sense. However, it may be argued on a macro level that, as occurred during the Cold War, a broadly tripartite division has emerged among states. Ikenberry, a leading liberal scholar of international relations, has recently made this case in an article categorizing the current competition to shape international order as an interaction between ‘Three Worlds’: the global West, the global East and the global South, which ‘might best be seen as informal, constructed and evolving global factions, and not as fixed or formal political entities’.¹⁹ While these blocs are looser groupings than in the Cold War, there has been a recently visible tightening within the western world—which the rise of China has helped to consolidate, as has Russian aggression towards Ukraine. Forms of partnership between China and Russia (and a few other states such as North Korea and Iran) have also intensified, even if in largely transactional ways. Moreover, while not ideologically united as they were in the early Cold War, China and Russia both appear to be more systemic challengers to the West in various spheres, resulting in competition that has some echoes of the Cold War, albeit with twenty-first-century characteristics.²⁰ Then there is the global South, which is not a coherent, united bloc but a diverse group of states, most of which are both aligned and at odds with the East and the West in different ways at different times in different domains of the global order. Ikenberry describes this grouping as ‘an amorphous and diverse coalition of states with a wide range of ideologies and agendas … [which] is also defined by its collective aspirations for development, voice and status’.²¹

Ikenberry's schema is not impervious to challenges. A key one relates to opting for the nomenclature of ‘West’, ‘East’ and ‘South’ to summarize his categories of analysis, with limited acknowledgement that these terms are loaded with contested geographical, cultural, political, economic and historical understandings—about what defines them as meaningful overall groupings and about the criteria that determine membership of each one. While this challenge has already been discussed with respect to the global South, it is worth briefly commenting on how it applies to Ikenberry's other two ‘worlds’.

The idea of a global East is open to critique as being based on possibly temporary alignments of interests, which could change because of domestic political shifts—as occurred dramatically in the case of the USSR.²² Nor does Ikenberry spell out how many states other than China and Russia constitute this grouping, which raises at least two additional problems.²³ While calling China ‘eastern’ is commonplace, it seems odd that Ikenberry consigns most of its geographically and culturally contiguous neighbours either to the global West or the global South. Similarly, designating Russia as part of a global East understates its Eurasian character and the reality that most of its people are ethnically European and live west of the Urals.

The global West is also not entirely coherent and cohesive, whether in geographic and cultural terms or in political behaviour. For instance, Ikenberry's inclusion of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan in this grouping, but not China, suggests he is using domestic political and geopolitical criteria to define its membership, but he excludes most of Asia's largest democracies (such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines), which he categorizes as part of the global South. Arguably, the term ‘West Plus’ might better describe the inclusion of selected Asian democracies in his schema. Moreover, in political terms, even states of what might be considered the core ‘global West’ have not been fully united on the Ukraine conflict, as illustrated by the ambivalent stances on support for Kyiv taken by Viktor Orbán's Hungary or by elements in the US Republican Party—as well as rifts with democratic allies during the first administration of Donald Trump. Even under Biden's democracy-focused administration, a 2024 study concluded that, despite renewed convergence ‘between European and U.S. policymakers on democracy support … transatlantic coordination in this domain remains partial at best’.²⁴

Nevertheless, despite its imperfections (especially regarding nomenclature), Ikenberry's trichotomy is superior to a binary North/South distinction, not least by accentuating that the global South is a loose grouping of countries that (intentionally) do not fit into either the tightening West or an emerging illiberal East—and are not consistently aligned with either. In his schema, Ukraine appears as an aspirant member of the global West in conflict with a leading global East power, thereby avoiding the misleading depiction of them both as global South states. Ikenberry's trifold formulation also allows consideration of the kinds of world order that may be in contention and the extent to which there is a prevailing liberal order that is being challenged not only by the global East but also by the global South. Its principal advantage therefore lies in offering a more persuasive, shorthand way to analyse general patterns of international competition and cooperation than the North/South dichotomy, which is why this article will continue to reference Ikenberry's categorization while acknowledging that it is not a comprehensive substitute for the more detailed analysis of state preferences also discussed in the following sections.

Another deceptive dichotomy: the global South and an illusory liberal order

An assumption implicit in some popular and scholarly narratives about a rising global South is that states in this category aspire to overturn an American-led liberal international order. A typical example is depiction of the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa ‘as a champion of the developing world and challenger to the so-called liberal democratic order’.²⁵ The extent and character of the global South's challenge are often not elaborated, but rest on arguments about shared interests in transcending past colonial inequities, redressing systemic inequality between North and South and critiquing the hypocritical inconsistency of the West in adhering to the rules of its own liberal international order.²⁶

There are two major deficiencies in this deceptively dichotomous portrayal of a rising South arrayed against a liberal international order forged and dominated by the West. The more fundamental of these is that it is questionable if there is, or ever has been, an overarching liberal international order in place globally.²⁷ The second is that the global South is not posing an intentionally unified and systemic challenge to this putative liberal international order or across all domains of world order as currently constituted.²⁸

As mentioned above, Johnston provides a useful corrective to the first deficiency with his perspective on international order ‘as the emergent property of the interactions of multiple state and nonstate actors … [which] yields a world of multiple orders in different domains (e.g., military, human rights, trade, the environment, and information), rather than a single, U.S.-dominated liberal order’.²⁹ While he invokes this conceptualization to debunk the contention that China is systematically challenging a prevailing liberal world order, it applies equally to the supposed challenge by the global South. As Johnston notes, several different orders have been constructed—and continue to be reshaped—through the international interaction of state and non-state actors, for example around national sovereignty and territoriality, international trade, international financial regimes, environmental management, international law, international information flows or military affairs. While these domains overlap in some respects, there is no universally agreed set of rules that defines an international order based distinctively on liberal principles and values. Given the absence of an overarching ‘liberal’ and western-dominated order, neither China nor the global South are opposed to the entirety of what currently may pass for a ‘world order’. Nor do they collectively promote a comprehensive alternative order (such as the socialist world order formerly championed by the USSR). For instance, a constitutive principle of the current world order (embodied in the very name of the United Nations) is that of national sovereignty, based on universal recognition in the modern era of the principle of nationhood to define states and legitimize their participation in international affairs. In one sense, this could be seen historically as a ‘liberal’ foundation of world order, yet an illiberal China is avowedly one of the greatest champions of this principle. A key question which then arises is whether China or global South states are challenging a whole order that is liberal or if they are primarily challenging the power positions of some states in that ‘order’ and questioning the universal application of certain liberal principles, such as human rights.

Just as Johnston demonstrates that China has been selectively contesting and accommodating different aspects of order in different domains, it may be argued even more forcefully that global South nations are doing so, but in more diverse ways depending on shifting state preferences that are domestically grounded but interactively constrained and empowered in the international arena.³⁰ China, of course, is a unitary state ruled by a communist party, with coherent views on its positioning in various domains of world order. In contrast, to elaborate on the second point mentioned above—the global South's supposed challenge to a liberal international order—this grouping comprises a substantial majority of the world's nation-states (with the irony that the G77 now has 134 members). It is hardly surprising that these states do not have a unified position even on specific domains of order, such as human rights, given the diversity of countries, cultures and political systems included in the global South. Thus, they have not developed an agreed collective agenda or a vision for a new, non-liberal world order. In fact, the democracies among them regularly proclaim attachment to liberal principles—and even criticize the global West for not consistently upholding those principles.³¹ The fact is that there is a difference between wanting a seat at the table and wanting a new table.

The case of Russia's war against Ukraine serves to underline these arguments about diversity and the misleading assertion of a mounting challenge to a prevailing liberal world order. It also illustrates key drivers of varying global South responses. In analysing these drivers, the next section of the article draws on Moravcsik's ‘new liberalism’ regarding the primacy of interacting state preferences in international relations.

A democratic divide: divergent responses of global South and western democracies to the invasion of Ukraine

This section begins by outlining western responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with brief comments on the positions of the global East (highlighting the transactional character of this ‘world’). After then summarizing global South responses in general terms, it examines how and why leading global South democracies have diverged from their western counterparts, despite sharing ‘liberal’ principles (unlike Ikenberry's global East or some other global South states). While creating a democratic divide, the actions of these large democracies are not attributable to distinctive qualities of ‘global South-ness’, but stem from other calculations that may apply equally to western democracies—in terms of pragmatic assessments of national interests shaped by domestically driven preferences in international context.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the widespread expectation not only in Moscow but even among western nations was that it would achieve a quick victory.³² For various reasons, Ukraine defied the odds and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, became an overnight hero—at least in the West. Even as Zelensky was first rallying his citizens' defiant response to the Russian aggression, states of the global West were quick to express solidarity in multiple ways. As well as denouncing Russian actions at the UN, they began providing military and humanitarian support and issued targeted sanctions. Neighbouring states, most notably Poland, welcomed millions of temporarily displaced Ukrainians.³³ The United States was unwavering as Ukraine's most crucial backer, with President Joe Biden casting the conflict as representative of a wider competition between democracy and autocracy. More distantly located global West states like Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea were equally robust in their responses. New Zealand even deviated from its policy of only backing UN-authorized sanctions by passing a Russian Sanctions Act.³⁴

This unified response, catalysing the global West, was partly based on a set of shared values that led these states to view the Russian action as a blatant violation of basic principles of international law, especially respect for national sovereignty—compounded by credible evidence of serious war crimes that prompted the International Criminal Court's indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.³⁵ Concerns about Russian violations of international norms and laws were reinforced by security concerns for many western states, especially those located nearest to Russia. Such concerns explain why Sweden and Finland moved to join NATO.³⁶ Asian members of the global West were concerned by the implications for their own region of such a precedent, with Taiwan especially conscious of the symbolism of claiming military action was justified to expunge the independence of an entity that did not merit its own statehood.³⁷

Initially, the two major global East powers did not demonstrate a similarly unbounded solidarity. While not condemning Russia's invasion, China abstained during early votes at the UN General Assembly and expressed respect for Ukraine's territorial integrity, as well as mooting a possible ‘peace plan’ and partially complying with American sanctions. China, however, has increasingly gravitated to Russia's side in the spirit of the two powers' ‘no limits friendship’ and has concurred with the Russian regime that the war was provoked by NATO enlargement.³⁸ China has also taken advantage of western sanctions to become the largest importer of cheap Russian crude oil.³⁹ At the same time, it has been providing Russia with componentry for weapons and dual-use technology, often through third countries.⁴⁰ Clearly, China's response has reflected the pursuit of national interests in the context of geopolitical competition with the West,⁴¹ but it is less apparent how exactly that represents a challenge to principles of a liberal world order. While creatively eliding its usually firm support for national sovereignty, China has continued to reaffirm the importance of that principle.⁴²

Ironically, even in Russia's case it could be argued that the war has been driven principally by the character of Putin's regime,⁴³ but (contrary to western views) with the intent of affirming its own perspective on national sovereignty rather than challenging this constitutive principle of international order per se.⁴⁴ That is why Putin justified the invasion with suggestions that Ukraine is not a nation, is led by a ‘Nazi’ regime and threatens ethnic Russian minorities.⁴⁵ Unless international order is primarily based on factors denounced by Putin, such as gay rights and disrespect for ‘traditional’ culture, then it is hard to see how Russia's war represents an outright assault on liberal international order or even democracy—especially since some of his assertions echo those of right-wing leaders in the United States and Europe. Moreover, even if he does so for performative reasons, Putin does not style himself as an autocrat but as a democratic leader, who was re-elected as president by over 80 per cent of those voting in the 2024 presidential elections. In effect, Russia is not overtly challenging principles underpinning the current international order, but western domination of that order.

If western states came together more cohesively and the global East responded transactionally, much of the global South did not see the war in the same terms as either.⁴⁶ Very few states supported Russia—but over 40 states abstained or opposed UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion, and 50 later voted against expelling Russia from the Human Rights Council.⁴⁷ Contrary to Biden's binary depiction of the war as a case of democracy versus autocracy, the largest global South democracies did not align themselves with western democracies, especially when it came to supporting sanctions. The reasons for this democratic divide can be illustrated by examining the positions of three leading global South democracies: India, Indonesia and Brazil.

India, the world's largest democracy, abstained on UN votes condemning Russia and adopted ‘a studied public neutrality toward Russia’, which some in India even likened to ‘a subtle pro-Moscow position’.⁴⁸ Like China, India has since benefited from cheap Russian oil, helping Russia to compensate for the loss of European markets by becoming its second largest oil export market after China, with imports from Russia rising from under two per cent of India's crude oil imports by volume before 2022 to 40 per cent by 2024.⁴⁹ However, India has not contested principles upheld by the West in the case of Ukraine, but rather has acted on pragmatic calculations of its national interests, ‘driven fundamentally by its concerns vis-à-vis China and Pakistan’.⁵⁰ Those apprehensions about the risk of closer Russian relations with Pakistan and China were far more prominent than its approval of the invasion in India's reluctance to jeopardize longstanding links with Russia. In this context, it is worth recalling that even today Indo-Russian relations are grounded in historically deep and wide forms of political, economic and military cooperation that date back to the Soviet era.⁵¹ Notwithstanding this important contextual factor, India has not only provided humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, but has expressed its commitment to ‘international law, [the] UN Charter and respect for [the] territorial sovereignty and sovereignty of states’, as stated by Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in March 2022 in a parliamentary debate on Ukraine.⁵² While geopolitics and historic ties to Russia have trumped solidarity with a fellow democracy in substantive terms, India has nevertheless rhetorically affirmed the importance of a rules-based order as stressed by the global West and has not directly backed Russia in the ways that China has. Despite its sustained engagement with Russia in materially beneficial ways, it has also maintained ties with Ukraine and stressed the imperative of ending the human cost of the war.

Like India, Indonesia—the world's third largest democracy—has taken a different stance from its western counterparts. Indonesia voted for early UN resolutions condemning the Russian invasion but later abstained in the vote to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. It has not joined western sanctions, arguing they were counterproductive, but has been among those seeking to advance peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, with then-president Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) travelling to both countries in June 2022. While he suggested Indonesia could be a ‘bridge of peace’ between them,⁵³ his trip was driven equally by concerns about the war's disruptive impact on supply chains, especially involving wheat from Ukraine and fertilizer from Russia, on both of which Indonesia depends. More recently, in April 2024 Indonesia's former defence minister and president-elect Prabowo Subianto, who had previously proposed a peace plan in a personal capacity, wrote an opinion piece in The Economist charging western countries with double standards in their responses to the war in Ukraine and to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. He noted that in both cases he was calling for a ceasefire, to end the loss of innocent civilian lives.⁵⁴ In general, Indonesia's stance has reflected a longstanding combination of non-alignment in geopolitical terms and a primary focus on its internal development and immediate region, leading to a notably transactional approach to the Ukraine conflict driven by ‘the primacy of domestic interests’.⁵⁵ But, as with India, there is no clear intent to side with Russia or to question key principles of either an overall ‘liberal order’ or specific domains of order.

Non-alignment has also loomed large in the response to the war on the part of Brazil, the largest Latin American democracy. Like Indonesia, Brazil voted with western countries at the UN to condemn the Russian invasion but has not participated in sanctions. Instead, like Prabowo, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has positioned himself and his country as a peacemaker, urging the immediate end of the conflict.⁵⁶ As Ikenberry and others have argued, this stance avoids risking economic and other links with China and Russia, meaning that

Brazil does not need to tie its future to either the global West or the global East, but can capitalize on its own ‘fence-sitting’ to pursue economic ties wherever they are most remunerative, while using this non-aligned position to enhance its global position and influence.⁵⁷

Like those of India and Indonesia, Brazil's response illustrates the influence of national interest and geopolitics on a large global South democracy but does not demonstrate an evident desire to challenge fundamental principles in any domain of world order—especially at the constitutive level of national sovereignty, which is the key principle that Russia is charged with violating.

These three cases highlight the primacy of national interests,⁵⁸ rather than transcendent principles of global South-ness (other than nominal non-alignment with the global East or West). They also reflect the character of these states as democracies, with no indications that large numbers of citizens have disagreed with their leaders on this issue. Moreover, all three governments took care not to endorse Russia's invasion, notwithstanding arguably tortuous justifications that laid them open to charges of hypocrisy for not fully upholding national sovereignty. But hypocrisy is an abundant commodity in international affairs and certainly not confined to the global South. In general terms, the three states' responses did not manifest any transformative vision for a non-liberal order—unlike the global East, although even for Russia and China that alternative vision is limited in scope and lacks the ideological impetus that characterized the Cold War.

What ultimately mattered most for these global South democracies were state preferences shaped by dominant social groups in each country in interaction with a set of international pressures and opportunities. This pattern aligns precisely with the theoretical framework of Moravcsik's ‘new liberalism’.⁵⁹ His approach complements that of Ikenberry by providing a general explanation for why different states act in different ways at different times in different international contexts—something about which realist theory is generally agnostic. Moravcsik argues that what matters most is what states want, which is determined by shifting state preferences driven by dominant social groups in each state in interaction with a fluctuating international context. This liberal emphasis on the substantive content of ‘what’ states want contrasts with realism's essential preoccupation with ‘how’ states pursue their preferences in an anarchic environment shaped by shifting balances of capabilities.⁶⁰ By focusing on preferences, scholars can understand why states have taken specific stances and why there is no clear-cut division between autocracies and democracies on this issue, rather a spectrum of responses. Just as parallel state preferences explain western unity, so the diversity of global South responses and the democratic divide with the West reflect state preferences that are not necessarily opposed but are not completely aligned.

This approach also suggests that rather than maintaining fixed positions on Ukraine or other dimensions of world order, the West may not remain united. Just as India's position currently diverges from those of western democracies, the position of the United States has shifted dramatically during the first months of the second Trump administration. Does that mean the US is now attacking the very order it purportedly created and nominally leads? Or do its recent actions more likely represent a selective challenge in certain domains of world order—just like Hungary's has been?⁶¹

By examining the three largest global South democracies' responses to the war in Ukraine, this section has illustrated a democratic divide that is as marked as any North/South distinction. It also confirms that the pragmatic pursuit of distinct national interests has been more to the fore than moralism or ideology in the global South's divergence from the West.⁶² Finally, the case of Ukraine underscores that global South states are not necessarily seeking change in all aspects of global order, but are interested in having more influence in domains dominated by both the West and the East.

Democratic affinities as a bridge between the global South and West

There is another consideration that flows from bringing Moravcsik's approach to bear on global South divergence on Ukraine. Just as competing state preferences may lead to conflict, ideational and representational affinities between democracies may bring possible convergence. On the surface, these affinities have not been prominent in the case of the war in Ukraine. But, despite prioritizing material interests and their own geopolitical concerns in not toeing the western line (as well as playing to domestic constituencies), the three largest global South democracies and many smaller ones have not aligned closely with Russia, unlike China. Nor have they challenged key principles of the constitutive world order.

Ironically, charges of hypocrisy directed against the West, such as those expressed by Prabowo in his Economist opinion piece, reflect shared assumptions among democracies about the importance of adhering consistently to a ‘rules-based’ order. Similarly, the prevalence within robust democracies of internal debate and press freedom makes possible solidarity between like-minded civil society groups across global South and West societies, in spheres ranging from women's rights and environmental activism to foreign policy issues. The ever-present possibility in democracies of peaceful transitions of government based on the shifting views of voters creates opportunities for greater or lesser affinity as well as divergence between democracies wherever they are located, as illustrated by the enhanced relations between Poland and the European Commission following the 2023 parliamentary elections, which resulted in former European Council President Donald Tusk becoming Poland's prime minister.⁶³

Potential affinities between democracies also create more general opportunities for western engagement with the global South. For instance, as Suzanne Nossel argues, reform of the UN Security Council to include a greater voice for global South states is an obvious area in which to leverage such opportunities.⁶⁴ Whatever shape such reform may take, knowing that the three most populous global South countries are democracies should encourage western states to support them playing a greater role in the Security Council's deliberations—something that could prove challenging for the more autocratic global East. More generally, it is imperative for western democracies to understand that countries like India are driven more by domestically driven state preferences in their stances than as representatives of a global South juxtaposed against a supposed liberal world order.

Although beyond the scope of this article, the significance of affinities between democracies in different domains of world order deserves more attention. While the democratic divide highlighted in this article underlines the oversimplification of Joe Biden's ‘democracy versus autocracy’ formula, his contention is not completely without merit—especially in terms of shared interests, values and systems of representation that differentiate both global South and western democracies from global East autocracies. According to Ikenberry, democracies thereby retain ‘polity advantages’ because ‘they have unusual capacities to affiliate and cooperate with each other, and their open societies seem to make them more dynamic and adaptable’.⁶⁵ In contrast, Daniel Drezner contends that factors such as rising populism may have attenuated this ‘democratic advantage’.⁶⁶ Consequently, determining the precise importance and limitations of affinities between democracies, wherever they may be located, requires further research, in both scholarly and policy-orientated terms.

Conclusion: debunking deceptive dichotomies and deciphering democratic divides

By analysing global South divergence from the West in responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this article has underscored the fallacy of dichotomizing a North/South divide in relation to a purported liberal world order. Contrary to Biden's assertion, it also queries a supposed universal divide between democracy and autocracy. Instead, it has argued that there are divides of different sorts, such as the one between western and global South democracies in relation to Ukraine, but that they are driven by national interests reflecting distinctive state preferences more than by membership of a coherent grouping.

These arguments carry implications for both scholars and policy-makers. First, they raise questions about how best to conceptualize general lines of competition and cooperation in contemporary international relations, in terms of both groupings and challenges to world order(s). Second, by emphasizing the primacy of preferences as drivers of state behaviour in the international arena, they remind western policy-makers of the need to understand the diversity of preferences among global South states if they are to leverage democratic affinities more effectively.

On the first of these points, Ikenberry's schema reframing the three worlds of the Cold War makes considerable sense for now, as broadly illustrated by responses to the war in Ukraine. But, just as the end of the Cold War rendered the distinction between those earlier three worlds meaningless, so too could changes in state preferences combine with shifting balances of relations between states and non-state actors to reconfigure distinctions between today's three worlds. For instance, Singapore describes itself as ‘an active member of the G77’,⁶⁷ but adopted positions on the war in Ukraine that aligned much more closely with the global West than those of most global South states.⁶⁸ Ikenberry's trichotomy is thus open to challenge in various ways, especially in terms of nomenclature. Nevertheless, it is more persuasive than a North/South dichotomy as a conceptual starting-point for addressing the scholarly conundrum of how to generalize credibly about patterns of interstate competition and cooperation in an increasingly complex multipolar world.

Just as a simplistic North/South dichotomy makes little sense, scholars and policy-makers also need to rethink equally simplistic notions of a prevailing liberal world order and the rising challenges it purportedly faces. As Johnston contends with respect to China, there are few examples today of states wishing to create an entirely new world order, in part because an overarching liberal order does not exist. Rather, there are different forms of order in different domains that states accept and challenge in different ways, amply demonstrated not only by China but by the US during the term of the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021—and even more so during the early months of the second Trump administration. Policy-makers (and scholars) therefore need to avoid rhetorical allusions to a unitary liberal world order when references to more specific domains of world order would bring greater clarity about what exactly is being defended and/or challenged by individual powers or different groupings of states.

In doing so, they would be well advised to bear in mind Moravcsik's central contention that the views of states towards diverse aspects of order are driven by ever-shifting preferences as constrained and/or facilitated in the international context, which in turn determines what kind of ‘world’ states— including those in the global South—associate themselves with, and for how long. In that sense, it is important to note that membership of groupings such as those captured in Ikenberry's ‘Three Worlds’ are shaped more by endogenous than exogenous factors. As recently as 35 years ago, scholars and policy-makers alike were referencing a First, Second and Third World. Yet much of that Second World has since joined an expanded global West because of changed state preferences reflecting domestic shifts in politically dominant social groups, made possible by more democratic systems of representation once those states were no longer under the thrall of the USSR. Ukraine stood on the cusp of following such a path prior to the Russian invasion.⁶⁹

Similarly, the responses to the Russian invasion surveyed in this article show the limitations of generalizations about broad groupings when compared to explaining the state preferences which have shaped those responses. The cases of India, Indonesia and Brazil not only demonstrate the inaccuracy of Biden's framing of the Ukraine conflict as an example of autocracy versus democracy in the international context, but also question its wisdom. Instead, they offer a lesson to policy-makers in western democracies that, rather than bemoaning perceived deficiencies in the stances of global South democracies, they need to display the tolerance of diverse views that is an avowed hallmark of democracies. Only by acknowledging the factors behind the varying preferences of these states will it be possible to develop more creative strategies for bridging diplomatic divergence between western and global South democracies.

By building on insights from Ikenberry, Johnston and Moravcsik, this article has explained why the democratic divide between global South and global West responses to the war in Ukraine does not represent a systemic challenge to a much-referenced, but far from all-embracing, liberal international order. It has thereby highlighted why scholars and policy-makers need to be wary of deceptive dichotomies and to focus instead on addressing the diversity of cleavages and affinities (including among and within democracies) that are reshaping competition in the contemporary world order(s).

Footnotes

Author notes