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London Economist Admits the West Is Hated, but Worries That Its ‘Worldview’ Is at Stake in Ukraine

April 19, 2022 (EIRNS)—Under the headline, “Get Off the Fence: What Is at Stake in Ukraine,” City of London mouthpiece The Economist explains in an April 22 article that what’s really at stake in Ukraine is “a worldview.” Whose? While Putin thinks big countries should dominate small ones, the author asserts, Ukraine affirms the universal principle that all countries are sovereign, and that “whoever prevails on the battlefield will win a fundamental argument about how the world should work.” But guess what? Off the battlefield, “this is an argument the West is losing.” Why? Because, as The Economist admits, most of the “emerging world” either backs Russia over its military operation or is neutral, with many nations seeing the West as “decadent, self-serving and hypocritical.” Even those who might reject the operation, think it’s someone else’s problem. “This is a stunning rebuke.”

The author reveals that it was the Economist Intelligence Unit that had to figure out that the UN General Assembly vote in which 141 countries voted for a resolution condemning Russia’s military operation in Ukraine (5 against and 35 abstained), really wasn’t a vote for the West: one-third of the world’s people live in countries that have condemned Russia and imposed sanctions, but most of these are Western. Another third are neutral, including India, and “tricky allies” Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.; and a final third are countries that “are echoing Russia’s rationale for the invasion.” This includes China, which has also denounced the American bioweapons labs in Ukraine.

The conclusion? The power of the West and America over small countries is declining; the West has lost influence. Up until the time of Russia’s operation in Ukraine, the author laments, the West “seemed to have lost faith in the universal principles it espoused.” The EU seemed “helplessly self-absorbed.” The West hoarded vaccines during the pandemic while China and Russia supplied vaccines to the world. So guess what? Poorer countries see the West as hypocritical. Europe talks about universal rights, but look at how it treats refugees. There was the illegal invasion of Iraq, not authorized by the UN. Saddam Hussein, the criminal, couldn’t have been more different from Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Yet the rulers of other countries worry that if the West is free to act as judge, jury and executioner, they will get summary justice.”

Speaking for the City of London, The Economist asserts that this “is a poisonous cocktail of legitimate grievances and exaggeration, all laced with a lingering resentment of colonialism.” But, not to worry, it says. The West may be decadent, but people should be reassured, because the world Putin espouses would be even “more decadent and self-serving and amoral than the one that exists today.” Everything Putin says about the Nazis, that NATO posed a threat to Russia and provoked the war, are lies, and they are all decadent and self-serving. But, The Economist’s great fear is that the world order will indeed change, should Putin prevail in Ukraine, predicting that “bullying, lying and manipulation will further permeate trade, treaties and international law—the whole panoply of arrangements that are so easily taken for granted, but which keep the world turning.”

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