What Ukraine and NATO mean for the Global South

Source: Shannon Stapleton, Reuters

In the last week, US policy towards NATO, Ukraine, and Russia has essentially taken a U-turn. It started with Vice President Vance excoriating Europeans in a major speech at the Munich Security Council and escalated to President Trump claiming that Ukraine started the war with Russia, calling its President Zelensky a dictator, and shaking down Ukraine for minerals. European NATO members (Ukraine is not one) have understood all this to mean that if they ever come under attack, they can’t count on the US to follow through on NATO’s mutual defense pact.

The people most directly affected by this, of course, are Ukrainians. But the war in Ukraine and Western countries’ response to Russian aggression has long had huge effects on billions of people across the Global South—symbolically, in terms of what it says about who counts; materially, in terms of how much things cost; and financially, with resources invested in defense of European borders often coming at the expense of commitments to the Global South. And for anyone hoping that Europe will fill the void the US has left by slashing its support for international programs, this last week has been very bad news.

The Global South has seen Ukraine very differently from the West

In some ways, the aftermath of the Munich Security Conference is a fitting time to think about the Global South and Ukraine. At the major NATO-aligned gathering two years ago, a major theme was Western leaders’ alarm that Global South countries were not throwing their weight behind the Ukrainian war effort. This followed a UN vote condemning Russia in which countries like South Africa, Pakistan, and India abstained.

The October 2022 UN vote condemning Russia in which a number of Global South countries abstained.

Western leaders made the case that Russia was an imperialist power, and that a world in which the strong could use force to invade the weak would not be a good one for the Global South. Some Southern countries certainly understood this point.

But the problem is that Western countries weren’t a very persuasive messenger for the interests of the weak. Russia invaded Ukraine at a time when many people in rich countries had gotten two or three COVID-19 shots while many people in poor countries had yet to receive any. Debt crises were brewing in many Southern countries. And developed countries had yet to meet a commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance that had been due in 2020. The problem was, as India’s External Affairs Minister put it, “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems but the world's problems are not Europe's problems.”

I actually think there is a lot to admire about the global (if primarily Western) support for Ukraine. The many people who added Ukrainian flags to their porches or profile pictures showed that people can feel a sense of solidarity with those living far from them. The idea that we need to stand up for those on the frontlines of the battle for democracy and international law before it comes to us is one that, if applied to phenomena like climate change or pandemics, would justify similarly intensive support for the Global South.

Of course, this principle has not been applied to the Global South. White, European Ukraine has received popular and political support that places like Sudan, Pakistan, and most certainly Gaza have not. But the solution is to extend that sense of solidarity more broadly, not to retreat into the Trumpian principle that we have no allegiance to anyone but ourselves.

(I’m not going to get into the complex discussion of how the US should approach the war, or what the best possible outcome for Ukraine is at this point, though I will note that Trump preemptively giving up US leverage with Russia is not the best negotiating strategy.)

Peace is good for stomachs and wallets

Most people in the Global South following the trajectory of the war in Ukraine will be thinking far more about their kitchen table than Crimea. Not too many people in the Global North remember this now, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a huge shock to Global South economies. When I go to rural Benin, a frequent question I get is whether the war in Ukraine has ended yet—even people who don’t know much about the outside world know that the bread they buy at the market and the fertilizer they use in their fields was made expensive thanks to a war thousands of miles away.

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine exported about a third of the world’s wheat and Russia was the top fertilizer exporter, and the war quickly caused price spikes. This threatened hunger crises in many countries where people struggle to afford food even in normal times: for example, Sudan and Egypt both got over 80% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine before the war.

Fuel prices also shot up, serving as a reminder of the importance of shifting to renewables but happening at a pace too rapid for new renewables to be able to fill the gap. As Europe tried to shift away from Russian gas, it gobbled up gas destined for poorer countries, with ships breaking contracts and changing course so that they could benefit from higher European bids. The situation was extreme for countries on the losing side: Bangladesh shut schools for an extra day per week to save energy.

Commodity prices have stabilized since the height of the shock in 2022. Ukraine’s restoration of shipping corridors has helped ensure grain could flow to the world and countries like India have taken advantage of Russia’s diminished bargaining power on oil prices. But the longer the war goes on, the greater the risk that conflict or sanctions will produce new price shocks for the rest of the world.

There many good reasons for Ukrainians to dislike the way the Trump administration is trying to end the war. But from the perspective of what will keep prices affordable for the billions of people around the world living on $1, $10, or $20 a day, stopping the fighting would be an unambiguously good thing.

But European tanks will likely come at the expense of Global South hospitals

Even if some Global South countries might celebrate the Trump administration’s push to end the war, the new US NATO policy will likely have devastating knock-on effects on funding for international development and cooperation.

It’s a pretty simple chain, with the US abdication of international engagement its key node. Funding for climate action, aid programs, and the United Nations was already far short of needs. The US has slashed its foreign aid and contributions to multilateral cooperation. The most likely option to fill those gaps is Europe. But Europe suddenly faces a giant, separate funding pressure of its own, because the United States basically just told Europe that it has been freeloading off the American military and if Russia comes storming in, Europe’s on its own.

Trump would like to see Europe spend 5% of its GDP on defense, when most currently spend around 2%. There’s no actual security rationale to the 5% figure, but if we use it for a back of the envelope calculation, this would require European NATO members to spend an additional $644 billion on defense. In other words, Trump is telling Europe to spend 16 times the budget of USAID on beefing up its militaries. Even if these countries only went up to 3 or 4% of GDP in military spending, that’s not exactly a promising environment for Europe to stump up the cash to plug the holes the US is leaving in foreign aid and multilateral cooperation.

Funding for European defense doesn’t need to come at the expense of funding for global cooperation. Europe found €650 billion—more than what it would need to get to 5% of GDP spending on defense—to respond to the surge in energy prices several years ago. There are plenty of options to raise additional revenue from new taxes on polluting sectors and the wealthy. Emerging powers also might be able to step up.

And whether or not Europe invests in addressing global challenges, they aren’t going away. If Global South countries can’t afford to invest in climate action, Europe will feel the effects in floods and rising food prices. If they can’t invest in pandemic prevention, Europe is at risk of another COVID-like shutdown. And when Europe wants the support of the rest of the world for addressing its problems, Europe will be even less likely to get it if it scales back its support for the rest of the world.

But even if there’s no need for the US security U-turn to push Europe to turn inwards, that depends on what they decide counts. And so far, the answer has been that Europe doesn’t see the world’s problems as its own.

Other updates

• Foreign aid litigation: In one of the cases, the judge issued an injunction on the funding freeze. The Trump administration’s main person at USAID, Peter Marocco, then filed a declaration saying that they had found separate legal authority to keep almost all the funding suspended, so they weren’t going to restart payments. The plaintiffs called for the court to hold Marocco and Rubio in contempt of court for “brazen defiance” of the order, and while the judge didn’t hold them in contempt, he made clear that the Trump administration could not just come up with a flimsy excuse for why they could do what they had wanted to do anyway. Unfortunately, in a separate case, the judge declined to extend an injunction preventing the administration from putting thousands of USAID staff on leave and recalling them from abroad. A lot has happened since my post from a few weeks ago, but it gives an overview of the various legal issues at play in the cases.

• Public opinion on foreign aid: After my last post on public opinion on foreign aid, I learned that the University of Maryland had done incredibly comprehensive polling on foreign aid in early February. Its findings are quite in line with what I argued: Americans feel relatively positively about foreign aid, but because they don’t know much about it, they’re easily influenced by whatever messages they hear. Indeed, the Maryland poll presented respondents with thirty arguments for and against foreign aid, and a majority found every single one convincing.

• We need immigration, whatever Vance says: In VP Vance’s broadside against Europe, he argued that immigration is the “greatest threat” to the US and Europe. Actually, the lack of immigration is a far greater problem. The US and—to an even greater extent—Europe have aging populations and face looming labor shortages. You can have the cultural and racial purity Vance wants, or you can have people to take care of elders and build homes, but you can’t have both.

Freddy’s take