Non-Aligned Countries Are Now ‘Fence Sitters’ For The Political West

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Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

The political West seems to have lost any semblance of understanding geopolitics and diplomacy, while some might argue it has completely lost grasp of logic and reality. The belligerent power pole simply refuses to let go of the notion it has supposedly “won” the (First) Cold War. While this idea might have held some ground during the 1990s and early 2000s, the last decade and especially the start of this one has been anything but victorious for the political West.

The tremendous amount of power and influence of the US and its allies partially benefited numerous new client states, most of which owe their very existence to the political West. In order to create them, the US/NATO bombed and dismantled sovereign nations, such as Serbia/Yugoslavia or Libya, or simply invaded and destroyed countless others, such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

After Lybia, the political West has been unable to completely destroy yet another country and murder millions with impunity, as they had been doing for well over half a millennium now. It has been suffering one humiliating defeat after another in the last nearly 10 years. The failed invasion of Syria, the failed takeover of Crimea and the defeat in Donbass, the botched invasion of Venezuela, the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the ongoing defeat in Ukraine are some of the most prominent examples. Naturally, the damage inflicted is still quite severe, but it’s less severe than in Iraq, which was ravaged and burned to the ground multiple times in several decades, or former Yugoslavia and Libya, which have been plunged into (still ongoing) chaos, unlikely to end any time soon.

The vast majority of those who suffered (and continue to suffer) under the jackboot of Western neoliberal “freedom and democracy” are in the Global South, the most exploited part of the world, resulting in most of its population living in abject poverty. The principal reason is none other than the political West, with its parasitical policies, invasions, (neo)colonialism, currency dominance, etc. During the (First) Cold War, Russia was instrumental in the liberation and development of the Global South. The superpower invested incredibly large amounts of money and resources to help these countries. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. However, after 1991, Western (neo)colonial overlords returned in full force. But, this time, it was “different”. The masters were bringing “freedom and democracy”, the new “white man’s burden” and yet another euphemism for colonialism.

While the political West spent decades transferring its “dirty” industries to the Global South and using its world reserve currency dominance to extract natural resources from the world, the US/EU started implementing so-called “green economies” and “sustainable development”. The result was a relatively clean and quite comfortable lifestyle for most of the political West. Although exploitation and (neo)colonialism were giving results, it wasn’t enough, because it never is for greedy corporate oligarchs. The Global South was now “responsible” for all the world troubles, including terrorism, climate change, pollution, etc. Let’s all forget about who created, funded and armed the terrorists, who moved their heavy industry to the Global South and who has been invading, murdering and exploiting everyone else.

However, the people of the Global South haven’t forgotten and never will. They still remember who was actually helping them, and who was the force behind nearly all of their misery. This is precisely why the world, and especially the Global South, refused to follow the clinically Russophobic diktat of the political West. It took time, but the people and their leadership finally started recovering from the trauma of Western aggression and (neo)colonialism, so they simply started looking after their own interests.

Turns out the national interests of the world diverge significantly from those of the political West. India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar summed it up perfectly: “Somewhere, 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. That if it is you, it’s yours, if it is me, it is ours.” The statement quite clearly applies to the whole political West.

Needless to say, the belligerent power pole didn’t take this lightly. The “noncompliant” world (which is around 80% of the global population) soon became known as the “fence sitters“. As if the Global South and the rest of the world owe anything to the political West and are obligated to follow it – an increasingly insignificant portion of the planet, which has no more than 15-18% of the world population, a large portion of which comes from numerous client states under Washington DC (and to a lesser extent, Brussels) control.

If anything, it’s the political West which owes most of its prosperity and comfort to the world, which has been giving its natural resources and labor in exchange for worthless paper the political West keeps printing without check. In other words, nothing. And if anyone was to ever refuse to essentially be robbed by the political West, they’d suddenly become “violators of human rights” or similar worthless phrases, which not even the Western leadership bothers to properly define anymore. Luckily, those days are gone now, as the belligerent power pole is now effectively in a state of unstoppable decline on all levels.