“Wherever I go, I find myself confronted with the accusations of double standards,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell at Oxford University in May. At last year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), French President Emmanuel Macron said: “I am struck by how much we are losing the trust of the Global South.”
Eisentraut makes this clear in her brief: The criticism of Western double standards is often justified. For example, countries from the Global South point out that the US and other Western states insist on the principle of the territorial integrity in Ukraine, but did not respect this principle during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Western states have often disregarded human rights by carrying out illegal detentions as part of their war on terror. And the Europeans have made common cause with North African autocrats in order to prevent migration to Europe.
However, Eisentraut also points out that critics from countries such as China and Russia often use their accusations to relativize their own violations. Or they use them to justify an approach to foreign policy that is no longer based on moral principles at all, but only on their own interests. The result is that the value of universal rules is being questioned around the world.
LoL at thinking these countries got wiser. They are just getting competing offers from china now that serve the decision makers better. Bribery is an important tool in this. If the countries and their population will fare better in the future… China needs cheap labor for their next stage of growth… to do what we did using china.
But … These countries are not led by a political ideology that believes in the destiny of their country being the greatest (and lift their population out of poverty). Instead many of these countries are led by people who will sell their mother if they can. And in the west we at least try to hold companies to ethical standards (and regularly fail) … china does not have any issues with what happens in not-china.
This is a big part of it. Dealing with China isn’t any better, but it probably won’t blow up on the leaders in their tenure so they might as well tag the bag.