Moscow's special military operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine has clearly shown that the West makes a bid for Russia's utter defeat to oust it from the world arena. That was once again confirmed by G7 foreign ministers who met in Germany last week. They particularly approved the sixth package of EU sanctions against Russia, indefinite assistance ˗ including military aid ˗ to Ukraine, and the return to Kiev of all the territories it lost during the special operation. By the way, the summit saw G7 urge China to abstain from helping Russia in its aggressive war or circumventing sanctions.
Notably, the West’s aggressive actions against Russia are not limited to G7 members alone. Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reports that the United States, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Singapore have agreed to create a new global data exchange structure shut off to Russia and China. The new system will be used to exchange information, including with countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum.
According to the outlet, the rules of APEC’s cross-border confidentiality are planned to be revised. Some countries are concerned about exchanging personal data, as Russia and China are also members of the forum. Later on, the new information exchange structure may engage some non-APEC countries, namely Brazil and the United Kingdom. This will allow for creating a system to transmit various data similar to the one already functioning in the European Union.
An analysis of recent events suggests that the United States has arranged a genuine anti-Russian crusade, going way beyond countries of the collective West. The American Foreign Policy (FP) magazine notes: " In the beginning, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine appeared to be an ideal rationale for U.S. President Joe Biden’s global democracy campaign." Western-style democracy, sure thing.
For example, delivering a major speech in Poland earlier this year, US leader said Ukraine was now “on the front lines in the perennial struggle for democracy and freedom.” But Washington’s recent efforts to frame the conflict as a titanic worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy have yielded no meaningful results. And the key reason for this, as FP notes, is that the United States itself has become a "badly broken democracy."
Indeed, the way Washington presents its confrontation with Russia does not let it win over most of our world. It’s not even about global giants like China and India, with a population of almost three billion people, who uphold neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict and refuse to condemn Moscow’s special operation. Apart from America’s Western European allies and long-time partners, such as Japan, most of the world simply refuses to join its banners in combating Russia. And there are several reasons for that.
First of all, most of these countries either aren’t democracies or are so deeply flawed as democracies that they’re less than inspired by the rhetoric. Secondly, in the eyes of much of the world, the United States being a country that’s doing the preaching is such a badly broken democracy that ought to heal itself first.
These problems were evident at last week’s US-ASEAN summit in Washington. Most of the ten Southeast Asian countries have trumpeted neutrality in the struggle between Russia and the West. And Indonesia, a leading ASEAN member, has even invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to join the November G20 summit it will host in Bali.
The White House makes little secret of its intention to involve ASEAN in the sanctions war against Moscow. This was particularly stated by US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell. According to him, the United States expects to have sway over ASEAN’s stance on Russia and Ukraine. "We acknowledge that there are differences of view. This is partly due to some of these countries’ relations with Moscow. I think residents of Southeast Asia are seeking to be cautious," he said. Mr. Campbell was not miles from the truth, as head of the White House failed to poison the ASEAN member states’ minds against Russia.
No wonder the Sunday edition of Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper called the US-ASEAN summit a "major missed opportunity", with President Biden falling short of offering leaders of the regional bloc specific cooperation areas or convincing them to condemn Russia for its ongoing special operation in Ukraine.
Please note that numerous countries of the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America, and Africa have joined ASEAN in its stance. They oppose the idea of isolating Russia as a major oil and gas supplier from the world system, as the so-called undeveloped countries aren’t also immune to sanctions against Moscow. By the way, the only ASEAN member state to have imposed those is Singapore.
As we can see, all the US attempts to create a powerful anti-Russian coalition worldwide are a complete failure.
