Opinion | China need not pick a side in Russia-Ukraine war, but it should mediate for peace
- Blindly accepting the West’s ‘good-vs-evil’ narrative risks prolonging the crisis, and China is right to resist pressure to choose a side
- Instead, it must focus its efforts on securing a speedy resolution to avert further bloodshed and a global food crisis
There is considerable reason for China to pursue a policy of discreet mediation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Such a policy is in China’s own interests and would benefit the global economy, but these factors are not the most critical considerations.
There are arguments for these positions and both sides of the conflict, based on morality, international law and national interest, and each merits review. However, perhaps most salient of all the considerations is the shape and character of the world we hope one day to inhabit.
To determine which course of action to pursue, we must think beyond the exigencies of the moment and even how these calamitous events affect our own tribe and nation. This requires struggling to grasp the position most opposite to our own, if not to embrace it, then to better understand it.
It bears remembering that the ties – and animosities – between Russia and Ukraine stretch back to the Slavic-Viking kingdom of the ninth-century Kievan Rus; that despite repeatedly expressed concerns about the eastward encroachment of Nato, Western powers encouraged and legitimised a coup against the democratically elected Ukranian leader Viktor Yanukovych in 2014; that this exacerbated Russia’s worries about an unfriendly alliance’s push towards a border over which it has repeatedly been invaded in recent centuries.
And that, in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, the same nations that are so righteously indignant about infringements on Ukraine’s sovereignty repeatedly ignored these norms when it suited their interests. These double standards do not justify this war, but they cannot be entirely dismissed.
