Analysis | Don’t Be in the No Man’s Land Between Putin and the West

As with actual family photos, however, the real story is often about who stands where and with what body language. And sometimes it’s about who should be in the photo but isn’t. 

The show of unity was easiest to stage at the G7 summit. The group — representing rich democracies — is small and homogenous, and the mountains made a suitably Brobdingnagian background. The photo signaled a strong and united front against Russian President Vladimir Putin — who partook in these symposiums when they were still called G8, until he was excluded after his first attack on Ukraine in 2014. 

Another photo from the summit needs a longer caption. It shows the same G7, but with the addition of leaders from “partner countries” in the so-called Global South. These are South Africa, Senegal and Argentina, as well as Indonesia and India — the hosts this year and next, respectively, of the G20, a larger forum in which, awkwardly, Putin is slated to participate.

The G7 host, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, invited these guests to nudge their countries, and indeed their continents, to join the West in resisting Putin in particular, and the world’s autocrats in general. But getting them into the family photo isn’t the same as eliciting that commitment.

During the Cold War these countries were part of the non-aligned movement. Its nations sided with neither the free nor the communist bloc (the “first” and “second” worlds, as it were) and thus became known as the Third World, although that term later took on a wholly different connotation.

Today, again, many countries in Asia, Africa and South America aren’t exactly enthusiastic about helping to confront Putin over what they see as a distant regional war that doesn’t concern them. As they see it, the G7 aren’t usually too fussed about regional wars in Africa or Asia either. 

The captions will also be complicated under the photos taken in Madrid when the 30 members of NATO congregate there. In staring down Putin, the transatlantic allies are more united than they’ve been since the Cold War. For example, they’ve reinforced their eastern flank and will adopt a new strategy to better protect Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 

But,  like other families, the alliance suffers from tensions. Turkey, in particular, has always been a difficult and mercurial ally — it acts more like foe than friend toward fellow NATO member Greece. Since Putin’s assault on Ukraine this year, Turkey has also tried a diplomatic “balancing act” between Russia and Ukraine that’s now become “a tilt toward Moscow,” according to Yevgeniya Gaber at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.

Worse, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in effect holding two non-aligned but Western nations hostages. Sweden and Finland — members of the EU but not yet of NATO, and potentially in Putin’s crosshairs — want to join the alliance. NATO also wants them as members, because the well-armed Scandinavians could help defend the Baltic nations. But Erdogan, largely for the sake of domestic politics, is threatening a veto.

This leaves the Swedes and Finns in a perilous no-man’s-land. They’ve signaled their allegiance and intent to join NATO — drawing Putin’s ire — and yet they still miss the security of the alliance’s mutual-defense clause. They’re neither in nor out.

Owing to Erdogan’s myopia, Turkey is in a different sort of no-man’s-land. Geopolitically, it’s neither fully in the West nor out, neither genuinely democratic nor totally autocratic, neither trustworthy nor hostile. What kind of ally — if an ally at all — will it be?

Other countries in the region are also in limbo. Several Balkan nations — as well as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia — want to join the EU but know they’ll have to wait decades, provided the EU says yes even then. How will Serbia, say, position itself between Europe and its old friend Russia in the meantime?

Then there’s the whole rest of the world, from Asia to Africa and South America, home to most of the world’s population but represented so modestly in the Bavarian Alps this week. For now — as during the Cold War — these countries would rather hedge their bets and stay non-aligned. 

The West’s leaders, once they’re done jetting between summits and posing for pictures with one another, have a job to do. They must get the rest of the world out of this no-man’s-land. So they should offer generous support — in dollars, euros and other forms — to countries that pledge help in defending global democracy against the autocrats in Moscow and Beijing. 

They should also remind these nations that non-alignment isn’t a permanent option. As the late Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s favorite archbishop, once said: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Today, Putin is the elephant, Ukraine the mouse. And no-man’s-land is no place to be.

More From This Writer and Others at Bloomberg Opinion:

• To Save Democracy and Defeat Putin, Give Up ‘the West’: Andreas Kluth

India Can’t Afford to Lose the World’s Trust on Trade: Mihir Sharma

• NATO Should Think Twice Before Accepting Finland and Sweden: Emma Ashford

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics. A former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist, he is author of “Hannibal and Me.”

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