Global South

 source: Der Spiegel

translation: GoogleTranslate

Indian Author Pankaj Mishra on the War in Ukraine

"Have You Really Thought This Through?"

Pankaj Mishra is one of the most important voices in the Global South. In an interview, he discusses why he thinks Western sanctions against Russia overshoot the mark and how the developing world views the conflict.

Interview Conducted by Bernhard Zand

03.05.2022, 14.58 Uhr

About Pankaj Mishra

Foto: Grey Hutton

Pankaj Mishra was born in India in 1969. The historian has been a guest professor at Wellesly College and at University College in London. His writing focuses on travel literature and historical works that are enriched by philosophical queries.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Mishra, which historical conflict do you believe is most instructive for understanding the war in Ukraine?

Pankaj Mishra: I think it would be more useful to not reach for historical analogies at this point. We’ve not seen a geopolitical situation like this before, with the political assertiveness of nuclear-armed countries like Russia and China and the ambiguous role of countries like India. It could even be dangerous to think that we can reach for easy historical analogies.

DER SPIEGEL: You, yourself, recently drew a comparison with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the Unites States.

Mishra: If I were asked about cautionary tales in history, I would point not to Hitler, Munich and appeasement, as many Anglo-American politicians and journalists have done – but to the Western response to 9/11. The fanatics of al-Qaida killed many people and caused a lot of damage on September 11. But what was truly irreparable was the global damage caused by the catastrophically foolish response to 9/11 – which was to declare an open-ended war on terror, which involved practically every country in the world and ended, as we now know, in defeat and humiliation and the political disintegration of entire parts of the world.

DER SPIEGEL: What does this teach us for the current conflict?

Mishra: Putin is heading for certain defeat, just as al-Qaida was heading for certain defeat more than 20 years ago. But if you deploy such an excess of military, economic, and political weapons today, you will do far greater damage in the long run.

DER SPIEGEL: You think the measures taken against Putin are excessive?

Mishra: You’re freezing the central reserves of the eleventh largest economic power, something that has never been done before. You’re imposing sanctions of a kind we’ve not seen on any country before. We’ve seen disengagement of companies, some of which have been present in Russia for 25 or 30 years. I think the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been quite extreme. Because it affects not only Russia, not only the countries in the region and in Europe, but also countries far away from Russia. This raises several questions: At what stage will these sanctions end? What’s going to happen to those countries which depend on Russian energy and food exports? Will Russia be forever ostracized and stigmatized? Will Russians maybe get rid of Putin, or will he become more popular? Is it likely that they might elect or might choose an even more extreme nationalist leader? We know that the experience of national humiliation can breed uglier evil.

DER SPIEGEL: If you think the sanctions are too extreme, how do you propose to stop the war and prevent its consequences?

Mishra: What did the Americans do in Afghanistan? They negotiated with the very people they had set out to exterminate completely. This is a lesson that history teaches over and over again, and we always forget it. We over-invest in our military capacity and our economic capacity. And we don't realize that by doing so, we cause deep damage to the economic and social fabric, which is already very fragile right now. Particularly in a world as interdependent as today.

DER SPIEGEL: You propose negotiating with a man who has unleashed this war despite dozens of rounds of negotiations?

Mishra: There is no alternative to dialogue. I’m not a policymaker, nor am I an intelligence operative. I’m not a finance minister. I cannot offer you details on any of this. But I really do worry that this whole policy of imposing severe sanctions will ultimately destroy Russia’s economy. And you’re doing this to a nuclear power, which is currently ruled by a quite crazy man in many ways. But more importantly, that man, even if he is overthrown, can pave the way for someone even more dangerous than him. What, then, is the endgame of this policy of isolation, punishment and humiliation?

DER SPIEGEL: How can there be dialogue after what we have seen and learned about events Bucha and other cities? Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who has consistently argued for direct negotiations – says that such talks have become much harder after Bucha.

Mishra: War always breeds barbarism of the kind we have seen in Bucha, though we don’t always notice it. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do we seriously propose not talking to the people responsible for this unprecedented global violence? The Ukrainians will, of course, find it hard to negotiate with the Russians after the brutalities they have suffered. But Zelenskyy knows he can’t rule out negotiations altogether. Is there any other way to secure justice and peace in both the short and long terms? Is military and rhetorical escalation against a nuclear power the answer to the global crisis of inflation and hunger emerging across the Global South?

DER SPIEGEL: It is Putin who triggered this reaction.

Mishra: Yes, but against whom is this reaction now directed? Against Russia – or against the globalized world itself? If you start thinking about the consequences of this policy, you will immediately recognize that it’s destroying the very fabric of global interdependence. The West is sending out a message that it can wield its dominance of globalization as a weapon. In addition to Russia, this signal is also sent to autocratic countries like China and India. It’s giving them good reasons to further disengage, to turn themselves into digital fortresses, to limit foreign influence and keep out foreign media.

DER SPIEGEL: And thereby create another bloc, as was the case during the Cold War?

Mishra: The Cold War paradigm, democracy versus autocracy, used by politicians like U.S. President Joe Biden, is highly defective and misleading. This antiquated intellectual framework assumes that there are only two major powers, and that the world hasn’t become intricately interdependent. But that’s not the case. By punishing Russia, you are inadvertently punishing a lot of poorer countries. You encourage paranoia and embolden autocrats to take the very path that China has already embarked upon. What I’m asking is: Have you really thought this through?

DER SPIEGEL: How are you thinking it through?

Mishra: I am not denying the massive challenge facing the West today. The greatest geopolitical challenge of the modern era since the 19th century has been how the leaders and earliest beneficiaries of modernity, the UK, U.S. and France, accommodate the claims of the latecomers to modernity – first Germany, then Japan and Russia, and now, China, India and a lot of smaller regional powers like Iran. In the early 20th century, the claims of rising Germany and Japan were managed through calamitous world wars. But that option seems inconceivable when so many rising powers today have nuclear weapons. We can survive the next few years only if we recognize our unique historical conjuncture and act accordingly and prudently.

"Putin embraced the West, and the West embraced him."

DER SPIEGEL: Isn’t Putin himself a Cold Warrior? Just a few weeks before this war, he and China’s President Xi Jinping signed a manifesto which openly challenged the West.

Mishra: You’ll remember a time when both Russia and China, their populations, and their leaders, desperately wanted to be part of Western modernity. Putin started off as a Westernizer, with his transformation into a Cold Warrior coming later. The same is true for the Chinese. Their idea was: We are part of a world order which was created by the West, and we are going to take advantage of that. We are going to embrace Western investment, and we’ll invest in the West. Over the years, however, suspicions have arisen that globalization is a means of ensuring Western hegemony over the world.

DER SPIEGEL: Putin a "Westernizer”? He is a former KGB agent who began his presidency with a brutal war on Chechnya.

Mishra: Let’s not rewrite history. Look at all his visits to America, his visits to Britain, where he was received by George W. Bush and Tony Blair with great fanfare. Putin embraced the West, and the West embraced him – and his oligarchs. Whatever he might have done in Chechnya, his anti-democratic and repressive policies, that was fine with most people. Because back then he was "our guy.” He was very much a collaborator in the War on Terror. Russia and America were close during that time.

DER SPIEGEL: He wasn’t "our guy” anymore in Syria. Today, Russia and China are close. What do you make of the manifesto Putin and Xi signed in early February? Is a bloc of autocrats emerging?

Mishra: China’s and Russia’s thinking has miraculously coincided. Xi Jinping’s mind, I think, was formed during the four years of the Trump presidency when Trump imposed sanction after sanction during his trade war against China. Xi and Putin have both concluded that they need to find a way militarily, economically and politically such that they no longer depend on the West. That is the basis of their friendship and their alliance. The Chinese are deeply disturbed by what is happening in Ukraine, but they cannot go too far towards the West because they have made the decision that they need to start decoupling. This is going to be very difficult because China is deeply embedded in the global economy. But the trust that was there before is gone. The four years of the Trump presidency made them suspicious in a way that’s not going to fade for a long time.

DER SPIEGEL: The South China Morning Post recently described you as a "dark and brooding” realist and contrasted you with U.S. political scientist Francis Fukuyama. For Fukuyama, Ukraine’s resistance against the invasion demonstrates the rebirth of the "spirit of 1989” and reminds us of the value of the liberal world order.

Mishra: I like to think that I’m looking at the world as it is, drawing conclusions based upon learning about the histories of the particular societies that I’m talking about. If you do all that, then there is a danger that you will be described as a pessimist. But I think the notion that history is about to end, yet again, with the new birth of freedom globally is nonsense. And I’m amazed that this nonsense has been given so much credit. But the United States has not just military or economic power, it also has cultural power and prestige, and so its intellectual output is automatically valued, no matter how disconnected it might be from the reality of so many societies and countries. We’ve been hearing for the last 30 years or so that Western liberal democracy is the only game in town and that most countries are converging to it – even when that self-flattery is decisively defeated by reality.

DER SPIEGEL: Of the 193 countries in the United Nations, 141 have sided with Ukraine. Only four have explicitly voted for Russia, with 35 abstaining.

Mishra: If you look at the countries that have either abstained or refused to join the sanctions against Russia, you’re looking at the vast majority of the human population. These countries have cast their vote for a variety of reasons. The people who run South Africa today were supported by the Soviet Union during the Apartheid regime. India is in a difficult situation economically and cannot really afford to be on the American side whenever the Americans decide to move against Iran or Russia. Mexico, Argentina, Brazil – they all had their own reasons for not joining the sanctions regime and not condemning the invasion. And we have discussed China. So, I think the idea that the international community is united against Russia is a delusion.

DER SPIEGEL: You speak of countries. In this case, is it perhaps better to distinguish between the governments that vote in the UN and their peoples?

"We have a massive deficit of leadership and intellectual quality at the highest levels in the West today."

Mishra: I can only speak of India and maybe a little bit of Indonesia, where Putin’s popularity has been surging over the last month or so. This is disturbing but something we have to reckon with. Putin is perceived by many as someone who has acted decisively against a neighbor that is being supported by the West. That alone is enough to support him for many people who don’t have access to information …

DER SPIEGEL: … or who are exposed to concerted disinformation campaigns.

Mishra: In India, many of these people are also supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So we are looking at a very segmented, a fragmented global population in which it is difficult to reach unanimity about even something as straightforward as the absolute evil of the war in Ukraine right now. It’s important to understand this diversity of opinion and motivation rather than assume moralizing positions before then making decisions which turn out to be rash and deeply destructive.

DER SPIEGEL: Many in the West are surprised that India, of all countries, the world’s most populous democracy, is not taking a clearer stance against Putin.

Mishra: I would make it a safe bet that many in the West are not aware that under Modi, India has systematically destroyed Kashmir's constitutionally guaranteed autonomy. And not a peep was heard from any of the Western nations. The entire valley has lived under martial law for months on end, under the most dehumanizing conditions. And yet the larger public in the West has not even become aware of the situation, let alone done something about it. There are all kinds of issues here. Where are the Western countries going to go after sanctioning Russian oil? Well, they are going to Venezuela, to Saudi-Arabia – to regimes they have been criticizing all the time. Many people in the Global South deeply resented the way the rich West hoarded COVID vaccines. This is where the moralistic position suddenly seems hypocritical and hollow, and where it encourages anti-Westernism in the Global South.

DER SPIEGEL: How will the countries of the Global South orient themselves after this crisis?

Mishra: When the world was divided up into two antagonistic blocs, many developing countries followed the strategy of non-alignment. Both blocs were interested in gaining influence in the Third World, so you could seek help from both sources. Later, this movement became irrelevant, because the only game in town was U.S.-led globalization. With the rise of China, however, things started to change again. China became a major source of credit and infrastructure to poor countries, and it didn’t ask questions about democracy and human rights either. Russia was never a big player in all of this. But I’m convinced that the world is going to be divided again into these blocs – with China and Russia on the one side and the U.S. and Europe on the other side. This will lead to countries like India, Indonesia, Argentina and Brazil to keep a distance from both sides and to play them off against each other.

DER SPIEGEL: Given the current situation in Ukraine, what would be your policy advice to governments like those in China, India or Indonesia that have abstained in the UN or do not support the sanctions?

Mishra: I would obviously tell their leaderships: Please, do everything you can to persuade Putin to see the error of his ways and withdraw his troops. You have enormous responsibility. Particularly China has that responsibility, much more so than India.

DER SPIEGEL: What are the implications of the Ukraine crisis for democracy or, in Fukuyama’s words, the "spirit of 1989”(Fall of the Berlin Wall)?

Mishra: I think it’s not serious to conclude that the spirit of 1989 is back simply because Ukrainians are bravely resisting a brutal Russian tyrant. We have to recognize the painful and complex reality that democracy is currently under assault from elected leaders, and not just in countries like India, Brazil or Hungary. You also have to look at the United States. A very popular yet crazy man was running that country just a few months ago, and that crazy man, or someone even crazier, could easily come back to power. So, the idea that we will reverse the trend of de-democratization because of Ukraine is a fantasy. The policy of tough sanctions and the withdrawal of Western companies from Russia is only going to help autocracies become more self-reliant, crank up the machinery of repression and leave dissenters with absolutely no appeal to international civil society.

DER SPIEGEL: How might Western nations use their newfound unity to prevent that?

Mishra: If this unity is only directed at punishing Russia and, by extension, a lot of poorer countries who are dependent on Russia’s energy and food exports, then I’m afraid this unity is deeply negative and destructive. If it aimed at something bigger, a reflection about what mistakes have been made and how such a situation can be avoided, that would be great. All sides have to reflect on mistakes. Putin has made a disastrous mistake and he is going to pay for it. But the scent of victory in Ukraine – which is going to be a very brief moment – should not distract us from the essential task of formulating wise policy. And it will be difficult because we have a massive deficit of leadership and intellectual quality at the highest levels in the West today.

DER SPIEGEL: In the face of such a massive attack of one country against another, is it appropriate to ask both sides to reflect on their mistakes? Isn’t this a case of false balance?

Mishra: What’s the alternative? Saying that only one side has made all the mistakes? Doesn’t this sound foolish, or, in fact, completely idiotic?

DER SPIEGEL: No, because Putin is the aggressor, and this is about an acute, dramatic crisis and not about working through and relativizing historical errors.

Mishra: It is important to look how we arrived here and what we can learn from that. To simply look at the present and assume a highly moralistic position is dangerous. All of the big and small powers today, whether early arrivals to modernity or latecomers, have been guilty of appalling crimes; from slavery, imperialism, and genocide to wars of aggression. Let’s not start pretending to be innocent at this late and crucial stage in the history of the modern world.