Democracy vs Autocracy Is the Wrong Framing for the War in Ukraine
On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, amid the cacophony of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he heard the “sound of a new Iron Curtain” falling across Europe. That message resounded loudly in Washington and across Europe, where ever since the West has framed the war in ideological terms: Autocratic Russia, they explain, is waging a brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine, because the latter aspired to follow the Western model of liberal democracy. As such, the world must help Ukraine to defend itself—or risk imperiling the entire “free world.”
This strategic narrative has been very effective in mobilizing the United States, European Union and other like-minded democracies, drawing as it does on national memories of the ideological confrontations and wars of the 20th century. It appeals to liberal values that are deeply embedded within the U.S. and Europe, infusing the West with greater unity and purpose.
But elsewhere in the world, it has fallen flat. The majority of the world’s countries have chosen to sit on the fence in the Russia-Ukraine war; in fact, most of the world’s population is represented by governments that opposed or abstained from the three U.N. resolution votes rebuking the Kremlin’s aggression. Aside from the U.S., Canada, the EU and a handful of countries in Asia, very few have joined the sanctions regime against Russia. And Moscow has used this fact to fuel its own propagandistic claims.
As the war continues, then, the West needs a new strategic communications strategy. Instead of appealing to values, it needs to make the hard-nosed realist case for why other countries need to stand up to Russian military aggression—one that recasts Russian aggression as a violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity, undermining global stability.
The West’s Strategic Narrative Falls Flat
The notion that the world is currently divided over Ukraine, with autocracies on one side and democracies on the other, is a myth. The most populous democracy in the world—India—has refused either to condemn or sanction Russia, and it is not the only democratic holdout: South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and others are also toeing neutral lines.
Indeed, looking at the way countries have split, the critical fault line is not between democracies and autocracies, or even between the East and West, but between Global North and Global South. Developing countries have proved reluctant to back the West. In March, the Gulf states rebuffed U.S. calls for them to increase oil production to offset the price hikes resulting from the invasion. Most African countries refused to condemn Russia at the United Nations, and many Southeast Asian and Latin American countries have grown increasingly ambivalent to events in Ukraine. Indonesia, for example, has refused to exclude Russia from the G-20 Summit it will host in November, although it did extend an invitation to Ukraine.
Why are these governments wary of taking sides? To some extent, these choices are explainable from a hard-nosed, realpolitik perspective. After all, many of them import plenty of Russian weapons, fertilizer and oil, and some also depend on Moscow’s diplomatic support. But the West’s tone-deaf messaging shares the blame. The “autocracy versus democracy” framing has been a poor basis for building a broad global coalition, seeming out of touch with the rest of the world.
Instead of appealing to values, the West needs to make the hard-nosed realist case for why other countries need to stand up to Russian military aggression.
The fact is that the bloc of democratic nations is not all that large. According to the University of Gothenburg’s Varieties of Democracy, or V-Dem, project, the level of global democracy is at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War. Today, there are fewer healthy democracies than autocracies globally, with today’s 34 liberal democracies accounting for only 13 percent of the world’s population. And many of the countries the West might hope to get on its side—major G-20 countries like Brazil, India and Turkey, and key regional powers like Bangladesh and the Philippines—have been steadily “autocratizing,” according to the V-Dem project.
Put simply, the West’s strategic narrative has an arithmetic problem. Far from making Putin a “pariah on the international stage,” as Biden vowed to do shortly after the invasion, the autocracy-democracy framing has reduced the effectiveness of economic and financial sanctions. To be sure, it has successfully mobilized the “democratic cooperative network” first imagined in 2019 by Antony Blinken—now the U.S. secretary of state—and Robert Kagan. But while many major North American, European and Asian democracies have imposed stringent sanctions against Russia, many of the largest economies—including China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia—have refused to join in.
A small number of likeminded countries may perceive supporting Ukraine as an extension of defending their own rights and freedoms—but appeals to democratic ideals have narrowed the threat perceptions of others. Most of the world’s countries have no innate commitment to the defense of democracy and freedom; to them, what’s happening in Ukraine might seem like nothing more than a distant European war.
“We do not consider that [this war] concerns us,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the week after Russia’s invasion. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni similarly asserted a few weeks later, “We do not want to be involved in this and stayed out. … Don’t threaten me, and I will not threaten you.”
Outside the West’s Echo Chamber
Framing the war as symbolic of the eternal struggle between “good states” and “bad states” also opens the West up to charges of hypocrisy and double standards. Many governments harbor deep resentments toward the West, particularly the United States, for the trail of violence and regional instability it left in the wake of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
In a speech hailed in the West, Martin Kimani, Kenya’s ambassador to the United Nations, urged Russia to reconsider its war with Ukraine, invoking Africa’s colonial past to warn against the dangers of stoking the “embers of dead empires.” But Kimani also issued a thinly veiled criticism of the United States and its Western allies, condemning “the trend—in the last few decades—of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching International Law with little regard.”
The charge of double standards has been helped little by the contrast between the warm welcome Ukrainian refugees have received across Europe and the hostility shown to Syrian refugees in 2015. Reports that Ukrainian border guards mistreated African nationals attempting to flee the violence only reinforced perceptions of Western racism. Many have asked why the war in Ukraine has elicited greater moral outrage than, say, the human tragedies playing out in Yemen, the West Bank and elsewhere.
Russian propaganda has gained traction by exploiting these criticisms, reportedly teaming up with local media organizations and social media influencers to push a narrative that the U.S. and its allies are to blame for the Ukraine war. They have also blamed the West’s economic sanctions—rather than the war itself—for disrupting global wheat and fertilizer supplies and triggering a global food crisis. And working with Russia, China has echoed this narrative. Early in the crisis, its government reportedly issued an official directive warning media not to report information “disadvantageous to Russia or sympathetic to the West.”
Russia and China’s anti-Western narrative casts Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine as an effort to “end the U.S. quest to dominate the world” and replace it with a “multipolar, just democratic world order.” It plays to widespread, anti-Western, anti-imperialist sentiments and recasts the war as a global struggle between a bullying West and the rest of the world.
And that narrative resonates. “The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in Parliament in mid-March, echoing the Russian justification for the war.
By refusing to condemn Russia for denying Ukrainian statehood, these countries are in fact asserting their own sovereignty. Public admonishments of neutrality from Western officials like U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will if anything be counterproductive.
What Is the Alternative?
To build a global consensus against Russian aggression, the West should instead focus its narratives on Russia’s violations of sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity. As the organizing principle of the Westphalian international system, state sovereignty is a universal norm and may resonate better with states unmoved by appeals to democracy.
Singapore, for instance, has sharply criticized Russia’s military aggression and imposed tough unilateral sanctions on Russian banks and crypto in the early days of the war. The Singaporean narrative of the war emphasizes Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. On the day of the invasion, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made this clear with a firm statement noting that “Singapore strongly condemns any unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country under any pretext.”
For Singapore, which V-Dem classifies as an “electoral autocracy,” this is a simple case of national interests. As Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong explained in an op-ed last month, the Russian invasion “is bad for every country, but especially for small states like Singapore. Our security, our very existence, depend on the international rule of law.”
The West should learn from this example. Appealing to national interests, rather than values, would be a more effective foundation for assembling an international coalition in opposition to Russian aggression. “I think if we talk about sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity,” Lee advised, “a lot of countries can come along.”
Framing the war in these terms would prompt countries to reconsider the strategic implications of allowing Russia to redraw boundaries. What kind of precedent would it set for them, if they were to find themselves in Ukraine’s position? A strategic narrative like this would also draw attention to the hypocrisy of Beijing’s diplomatic position in supporting Russia, which directly contradicts China’s long policy of noninterference into the domestic affairs of other countries.
Going forward, the West’s public diplomacy will need to actively deconstruct the idea that the war in Ukraine is a matter of West versus East. While Zelenskyy’s impassioned addresses to the U.S. Congress and European parliaments may help to sustain public support in Washington and Europe, other communications need to be more carefully tailored to appeal to a wider audience. In an interview with the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency, for example, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba emphasized the repercussions of the war on global stability and security, rather than shared values. U.S. and European diplomats should likewise strongly emphasize Russia’s violations of the U.N. Charter and the imperialist dimension of Russian aggression in their messaging to other countries and regional organizations.
The worsening global food crisis also offers an opportunity—albeit a tragic one. The West should highlight initiatives to address the food crisis as part of a broad coalition of countries and should frame these as examples of cooperative problem-solving and the pursuit of mutual interests. In eschewing ideological language, this approach promises a more effective way to engage countries that have refrained from taking a side in the conflict, but may be more open to addressing the humanitarian challenge if they are not forced to choose between Russia and the West.
To this end, the West should prioritize four main points in its strategic communications. First, it needs to counter the Russian narrative that the food crisis is the result of Western sanctions against Russia. Instead, it should emphasize that fertilizer, food and seed are exempt from the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries.
Second, it should lay the blame for the shortages squarely on Russia, stressing that the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and its shelling of grain-export facilities and steel plants have prevented tens of millions of tons of grain exports from reaching the countries and populations most at risk. Indeed, some Western officials have already used language like this.
“Sanctions aren’t blocking Black Sea ports, trapping ships filled with food, and destroying Ukrainian roads and railways; Russia is,” Blinken told the U.N. Security Council last month. “Sanctions are not emptying Ukrainian grain silos and stealing Ukrainian farm equipment; Russia is.” This address may well have helped the West’s cause already, but it is in dire need of amplification, especially in statements to the general public.
Going forward, the West’s public diplomacy will need to actively deconstruct the idea that the war in Ukraine is a matter of West versus East.
Third, the West should emphasize that it is doing all it can to ensure the flow of these goods, even engaging directly with Putin, as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attempted last month in discussions to reopen the port of Odessa. While these talks so far have led nowhere, they have demonstrated the West’s willingness to address the worsening food crisis, while drawing attention to Russia’s use of the blockade as a form of “blackmail”—to use Blinken’s word—to win some sanctions relief.
Finally, the West should underscore its commitment to support the most vulnerable countries in addressing the global food crisis. There are already several related policy initiatives and actions underway, such as the United States’ “Call to Action” at the United Nations; France’s Food and Agriculture Resilience Mission with the EU, G-7 and African Union; Germany’s Global Alliance for Food Security, also at the G-7; and last week’s region-focused Mediterranean Ministerial Dialogue on the Food Security Crisis.
To be sure, the West will still be open to charges of double-standards, but it can mitigate such criticisms with robust action. Responding collectively and with the same vigor to the global hunger crisis as it did to the Ukraine conflict would be a powerful antidote. International finance institutions—including G-20 countries—should also work with the International Monetary Fund to reallocate loans to low-income countries, so they can afford the near record-high food prices.
Then, to reduce prices, the U.S. and EU should consider temporarily suspending mandates for biodiesel fuel, which would free up supplies of palm and soybean oil, as well as corn. Countries with major holding reserves, including India and the U.S., should also consider releasing grain stocks onto international markets to mitigate the effects of price increases.
Finally, and most importantly, Western countries should seize this moment to be better partners to countries in the Global South, shifting away from a model of Western donation to one of mutually beneficial cooperation. The West’s COVID-19 vaccine donations to poorer countries, for instance, have followed the traditional aid and charity-based model, but some in the Global South have expressed resentment over this one-sided approach, which arguably prioritizes Western patents and profits over health. If Western countries instead shared proprietary information on vaccines, they could be produced locally at far cheaper rates.
The global food crisis could be a chance to course correct and “decolonize aid” by recognizing countries in the Global South as full agents and equal partners in the West’s strategic narrative. Furthermore, the United States and European countries should consider investing more heavily in Africa’s agricultural sector, sharing technology to help the continent fulfill its potential as a wheat producer. Above all, there must be a close alignment between rhetoric and action.
Framing the narrative as West versus East or democracy versus autocracy misses the point: What concerns us all today is a choice between the use of force for political gain and a respect for international law. The countries of the Global South might regard the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a distant one, but its implications for the rules-based order and global stability will affect them, too. The West must engage them more effectively.
Kelly A. Grieco is a resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She can be found on Twitter at @ka_grieco.
Marie Jourdain is a visiting fellow from the French Ministry of Defense at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. She can be found on Twitter at @MarieJourdain10.