War in Ukraine defining new world order, says thinktank
Poll reveals west more united but gulf growing with countries such as India that do not subscribe to post-cold war view
Jon Henley Europe correspondent
Almost a year after Russia’s war against Ukraine
started, it has united the west, according to a 15-country survey – but
exposed a widening gulf with the rest of the world that is defining the
contours of a future global order.
The study,
by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank, surveyed
opinions in nine EU member states, including France, Germany and Poland,
and in Britain and the US, as well as China, Russia, India and Turkey.
It
revealed sharp geographical differences in attitudes to the war,
democracy and the global balance of power, the authors said, suggesting
Russia’s aggression may be a historic turning point marking the
emergence of a “post-western” world order.
“The
paradox of the Ukraine war is that the west is both more united, and
less influential in the world, than ever before,” said Mark Leonard, the
thinktank’s director and a co-author of the report, based on polling
carried out last month.
Timothy Garton Ash, a
professor of European studies at Oxford University, who also worked on
the study, called the findings “extremely sobering”. The survey showed
the war had given the transatlantic west unity and purpose, he said.
However, it had “utterly failed to persuade major powers of the rest, such as China, India
and Turkey”. The lesson was clear: “We urgently need a new narrative
that is actually persuasive to countries like India, the world’s largest
democracy.”
The survey showed western views of
Russia had hardened in the past year. Large majorities in Britain
(77%), the US (71%) and the nine EU states (65%) regarded Russia as an
“adversary”, with which their country was in conflict, or in competition
as a “rival”.
On
the other hand, just 14% in the US, 15% in the nine EU states surveyed
and 8% in Britain viewed Russia as an “ally” who shared their interests,
or a “necessary partner”. Western respondents were equally negative in
how they described Russia.
Asked to pick two
out of 10 proposed descriptions, in the US 45% and 41% respectively of
survey respondents chose “aggressive” and “untrustworthy”, along with
48% and 30% in the nine EU countries and 57% and 49% in Britain.
Across
the nine EU countries polled, an average of 55% of people favoured
continuing sanctions against Moscow even at the expense of economic
pain.
Compared with a similar poll last summer,
moreover, Russia’s war against Ukraine was now seen by more people in
the western alliance as a fight for democracy and their own security –
and as a war not just in, but on, Europe, ECFR said.
In
the US, 36% of respondents said support for Ukraine was driven mostly
by the need to defend American democracy, whereas the prevailing view in
the UK (44%) and among the EU nine (45%) was that backing Ukraine was
about defending their own security.
More
people in Europe (44% in Britain, 38% in the EU nine) believed Ukraine
should retake all its territory, even at the cost of a longer war, and
fewer (22% and 30%) wanted the war to stop as soon as possible, even if
that meant Ukraine ceding land to Russia.
Responses
from the non-western countries surveyed, however, were very different.
Large numbers of people in China (76%), India (77%) and Turkey (73%),
for example, said they felt Russia was “stronger” or “as strong” as
before the war. They saw Moscow as a strategic “ally” and “necessary
partner” of their country (79%, 79%, 69%).
Similarly,
many more (41% in China, 48% in Turkey and 54% in India) wanted the war
to end as soon as possible, even if that meant Ukraine ceding
territory, while just 23%, 27%, and 30% thought Ukraine should regain
its land even at the cost of a longer conflict.
There
was a great deal more scepticism, too, about the west’s motives. Fewer
than a quarter of those polled in China and Turkey, for example, and
only 15% in Russia, believed the west was supporting Ukraine to defend
its own security or democracy.
Almost
two-thirds of Russian respondents (64%) said the US was an “adversary”,
with 51% and 46% saying the same of the EU and UK. In China, 43%
perceived the US as a rival, 40% said the same of the UK, and 34% of the
EU.
Ukraine's frontline: trench warfare, drones and defending a ghost town – video
Many
outside the west predicted the US-led liberal order would cede global
dominance over the next decade, with the west predicted to become just
one global power among several. Only 7% in Russia and 6% in China
predicted it would be dominant 10 years from now.
In
Europe and the US, however, many (29% in Britain, 28% in the EU nine,
and 26% in the US) foresaw a new bipolar world of two blocs led by the
US and China, whereas there were signs that emerging powers saw the
future in more multipolar terms.
In India, for
example, 87% of respondents said they regarded the US as an “ally” or
“partner”, while 82% felt the same about the EU, 79% about Russia and
Britain, and 59% about Turkey. Only China was seen as a “rival” or
“adversary” (75%).
“Many
people in the west see the coming international order as the return of a
cold war-type bipolarity between west and east, democracy and
authoritarianism,” the study’s authors said. “But people in those
countries see themselves very differently.”
The
west will have to live, they said, with “hostile dictatorships such as
China and Russia”, but also with independent powers such as India and
Turkey. These do not “represent some new third bloc” or even share a
common ideology, but nor are they “content to adjust to the whims and
plans of the superpowers”.
Rather than
expecting them to support “western efforts to defend the fading
post-cold war order, we need to be ready to partner with them in
building a new one”.