52 International The Economist April 16th 2022
ers, he added, “These countries do not
want to be in a position where Uncle Sam
orders them to do something and they say,
‘Yes, sir.’” On April 5th Russia added Argen
tina to its list of 52 “friendly countries”
with whom it will restart direct flights.
Still, Argentina, the current president of
the Human Rights Council, voted to re
move Russia.
Brazil’s strongman president, Jair Bol
sonaro, has made no secret of admiring Mr
Putin and his “masculine qualities”. Mr
Bolsonaro also happened to pay a visit to
Moscow in February, and hailed the two
countries’ relationship as a “morethan
perfect marriage”. It is a marriage fertil
ised, apparently, by fertiliser. Though Bra
zil joined in condemning the invasion, Mr
Bolsonaro has since said he cannot cut ties
with Russia because of the “sacred” impor
tance to Brazil of imported fertiliser, more
than a fifth of which comes from Russia.
Mr Bolsonaro now says Brazil will remain
neutral in the conflict, a position in har
mony with his political opponents and,
polling suggests, the public. Similarly,
Mexico, despite having condemned the in
vasion, has a longheld policy of nonin
tervention and a habit of shrugging off
events far beyond its borders. It doesn’t
help that President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador shows little concern for democra
cy. He is also playing to his leftist party, ele
ments of which set up a friendship group
with Russia following the invasion.
It is in Africa that Russia has found the
most outright sympathy. Almost half of Af
rican countries—25 of 54—abstained or
stayed away from the first unvote. The his
tory of colonialism makes some reluctant
to throw support behind what is seen as a
Western cause. But others are acting out of
growing affinity with Russia. That is true of
South Africa, the other big democracy to
shrug off the West’s call for unity. It has ab
stained in all the unvotes. In southern Africa many countries see
Russia as the successor of the Soviet Un
ion, which armed and trained the guerrilla
armies that fought colonial powers and
segregationist regimes. Such nostalgia
partly explains South Africa’s swerve to
wards Russia during the presidency of Ja
cob Zuma, from 2009 to 2018. But South Af
rica’s relationship with the West was also
strained by the bombing of Libya. In 2015
leading figures in the African National
Congress published a foreignpolicy paper
lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union
because it had “altered completely the bal
ance of forces in favour of imperialism”,
meaning America and the West. Arms across the sea
Mr Zuma’s departure from office—he is
now on trial for corruption—has not
cooled the anc’s ardour for Russia. Presi
dent Cyril Ramaphosa mouths Kremlin
talking points, arguing that natois re
sponsible for the conflict because of its
eastward expansion. He has also criticised
Western sanctions on Russia. One reason
may be pecuniary. Although overall trade
between the countries is puny, Russia is
South Africa’s secondlargest market for
apples and pears and its fourth largest for
citrus fruit. Even as Russianflagged ships
were being turned away from European
and American ports, the Vasiliy Golovnin, a
freighter, docked in Cape Town on April
4th. South Africa is also reportedly pursu
ing a $2bnayear deal to buy gas from Gaz
prom, a Russian stateowned energy firm.
In other parts of Africa, support for Rus
sia reflects its success in spreading influ
ence by selling weapons or supplying mer
cenaries. Russian gunsforhire have been
seen in five of the 17 African countries that
abstained on the first unvote: the Central
African Republic, Madagascar, Mali, Mo
zambique and Sudan. Many more of the
abstentions or noshows are buyers of Russian arms. These include Algeria, Angola,
Sudan and Uganda, according to data col
lected by the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, a thinktank. Eri
trea, a gulag state, was among the five
countries in the world that voted with Rus
sia on March 2nd.
As the conflict grinds on, the West will
increasingly confront the question of how
aggressively to use its own leverage to prod
fencesitters onto their feet. Some coun
tries might be encouraged to see an oppor
tunity to repair relations with the West.
That could be the case with Pakistan, par
ticularly now that Mr Khan has been oust
ed in a noconfidence vote. Trade with Rus
sia is meaningless to Pakistan, and its
armed forces, which tend to call the shots,
are showing signs of discomfort with its
deep and growing dependence on China.
General Qamar Bajwa, the commander
inchief, has lately sounded surprisingly
conciliatory to the West. In a speech on
April 2nd he nudged China to fix its border
troubles with India, and then said that
Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine
could not be condoned and “must be
stopped immediately”. He also noted the
war showed how a smaller country could
defend itself by having stronger morale
and making clever use of simple technolo
gy—an allusion to Pakistan’s struggle with
India, its larger neighbour.
The West has even greater leverage with
India. All told, Russia, with a gdpjust over
half of India’s, accounts for barely 1 % of In
dia’s trade. Trade with the West is of vastly
greater importance, as are India’s ties to
America via peopletopeople exchanges.
Under a law authorising sanctions against
countries making “significant transac
tions” with Russia, America placed sanc
tions on China in 2018 and Turkey in 2020
for buying the s-400missile defence sys
tem. India has bought the same system,
but the Biden administration has so far
danced away from the question of whether
it will apply the same standard. “We have
not yet made a determination,” Antony
Blinken, the secretary of state, said when
asked about such sanctions at a press con
ference after the meeting between Ameri
can and Indian officials on April 11th.
Meanwhile, India is not merely refraining
from criticising Russia but increasing its
purchases of Russian oil.
Mr Biden’s strategy is clearly to woo In
dia rather than pressure it, an approach
that has appeared so far to bear little fruit.
Pressed in the same exchange with jour
nalists as to why India was not moving to
reduce any dependence on Russia, Subrah
manyam Jaishankar, the minister of exter
nal affairs, sarcastically thanked reporters
for their “advice and suggestions” and then
shot back, “Believe me, we havea decent
sense of what is in our interestandknow
Nothing says friendship like a Russian grenade launcher how to protect it and advance it.”n