Global South and western divergence on Russia's war in Ukraine: implications for world order

Abstract Since February 2022, there has been much commentary about the divergence between responses of the global South and western perspectives in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There has been less discussion about this contrast representing a democratic divide. Yet the ‘non-aligned’ stance adopted by some of the world's largest democracies throws into question the framing of the war as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, as favoured by former United States President Joe Biden. This article highlights both differences and affinities in the international behaviour of democracies which are obscured in generalizations about a North/South dichotomy. Instead, it assesses Ikenberry's categorization of the competition to shape world order as an interaction between ‘Three Worlds’ (the global West, East and South). The article also uses Johnston's concept of international order as ‘a world of multiple orders in different domains … rather than a single, U.S.-dominated liberal order’. Finally, it draws on Moravcsik's ‘new liberalism’ regarding the primacy of interacting state preferences in international relations. The article argues that the case of the Ukraine conflict exemplifies how democracies converge and/or diverge in responding to issues in different domains of world order(s), thereby challenging the notion of a systemic North/South dichotomy in approaches to a purported liberal international order.