The geography of suffering and the colour of empathy: The implications of the Ukraine crisis for the future

To many observers, the unfolding events in Ukraine signify a potential “make or break” moment in the future of collective security in the world, with potential implications for the rule-based international order. If so, lessons learned may be applied one day also to responses to other situations of aggression and mass violence. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

The first ten days of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine brought about intense international responses, some of which were described by commentators in turns of phrase such as “first in decades” or “first time ever”. While rejecting direct military confrontation, near unified reactions from EU and NATO member states were accompanied by a number of paradigmatic foreign policy shifts — such as Germany’s reversal of its long-time ban on supplying weapons to conflict zones, Turkey’s partial closure of the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to Russian warships, Finland revisiting its stance against joining NATO, or the snap closures of air spaces throughout Europe and North America to Russian aviation.

An invocation of the “Uniting for Peace” Resolution at the United Nations — first time in forty years — allowed transferring the debate over the invasion from the Security Council (UNSC) to the General Assembly (UNGA), where Russia holds no veto power. The resulting special emergency session at the UNGA produced a non-binding but politically significant resolution that isolated Russia diplomatically from most of its traditional allies and kept in its corner only Belarus, and pariah states North Korea, Eritrea, and Syria.

A record-speed assembly and imposition of an economic, diplomatic, and cultural sanctions regime supported by states, international organisations, sports associations, media outlets, and big businesses is shaping to be among the most comprehensive we’ve seen in a long time. This multifaceted frenzied activity is driven, at least in part, by an exceedingly strong public opinion campaign, particularly in the West, spurred on by international media coverage.

The early days of the crisis brought to the fore stories of overt racism, manifested in the language of some Western journalists, and in discriminatory treatments of non-whites at border crossings out of the Ukraine. These occurrences were reported extensively in the Global South by Al-Jazeera, Wion, TRT World, as well as in the Guardian. Clearly, there is nothing new in the reality of endemic racism in the West.

But as warranted as the outrage may be, behind these incidents lies a more sinister reality — that is, a troubling angle to the story is of attention disparities between injustices and suffering experienced by Europeans, Americans or Australians and miseries faced by so many in the Global South. This gap, of strong responsiveness to violence in the West and habitual inattentiveness to near forgotten violent wars in Yemen, Darfur, South Sudan, and in many other places, has become increasingly evident in recent days.

Rather than ascribing the disparities entirely, or even inevitably, to racism, a preliminary analysis of the public outrage and robust political will in relation to Ukraine points to a build-up of a range of additional key factors: the unexpectedness of the attack; the blatant breach of international law and the UN Charter; the location in NATO’s back (or front) yard; the ease and relative safe access (thus far) for journalists covering the events from the ground; the making of a villain (Putin) which many have learned to love to hate; and yes, very likely, the skin colour of the victims. Add to these the immense influence of fear — fear of a Russian expansionist agenda, or of a massive refugee crisis; fears of a second Chernobyl disaster, should the fighting damage another of Ukraine’s nuclear power-stations, or of a military confrontation between nuclear powers.

Under such conditions, Western publics have metamorphosed, almost overnight, from perpetual passive bystanders to atrocities in faraway places to potential victims under a newly emerging existential threat.

To be sure, had it not been for the sensitive location of the Ukraine, the nuclear threat, and concerns about energy supply interruptions, most governments would not have acted as decisively as they did. Yet is it unclear whether the same priorities apply also to international public opinion. Because when fear is coupled with strong identification, based on physical or emotional proximity to victims, levels of empathy for the latter increase significantly. I witnessed some of this in action during a meeting on atrocity prevention at the United Nations in 2015. The agendas for such consultations reflect the priorities of participating governments, and at that time my group — the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network — was asked to pay particular attention to the threats of radical Islam. It was shortly after the November 2015 Islamic State attacks in Paris, and with 130 fatalities and hundreds injured, the request came as no surprise. Still, the departure from the familiar public indifference and weak official responses to large-scale atrocities in the Global South was quite jarring. At the meeting, you could imagine millions of eyes of Rwandans, Sudanese, Congolese, and Syrian victims looking on in curiosity. Why was a world that had left them to die, so troubled by a few more bodies?

To be fair, the effects of fear, identification, and solidarity are by no means unique to people in the West. The outcries from majority Muslim countries at massacres of Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars of the 1990, or of Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar had been much louder than in situations where the victims were not Muslims. Nevertheless, important distinctions exist and should be underscored between the rich West and the Global South in terms of capacity disparities, and in some cases accountability for past culpabilities.

To many observers, the unfolding events in Ukraine signify a potential “make or break” moment in the future of collective security in the world, with potential implications for the rule-based international order. It is no longer disputed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had miscalculated not only the Ukrainian, but also the international response to the invasion. Unfortunately, he had climbed a very tall tree and it is unclear what kind of a ladder the other side could offer him to come down without losing prohibitive amounts of prestige. As things stand, short of finding and offering such a ladder, a Russian takeover of Ukraine in one form or another seems a likely possibility. Such an outcome would convey a disheartening message of an international community powerless against a nuclear state’s aggression — today in the Ukraine, but in the future, perhaps, in Taiwan or even South Korea. Conversely, a Russian pull back out of the Ukraine would set a positive precedent for collective non-military international responses to cross border aggression. If so, lessons learned may be applied one day also to responses to other situations of aggression and mass violence.

Along with denouncing instances of racism and discrimination, international actors would thus do well to study the extraordinary rapid evolution of the public opinion campaign over Ukraine in order to improve future mobilisation of publics, media, governments, and other entities, not only in the West or in the South, but the world over.

Eyal Mayroz is Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Coordinator in the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. His is the author of Reluctant Interveners: America’s Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur, which was named one of Choice magazine’s outstanding academic titles of 2020. You can hear Eyal Mayroz discuss the broader implications of the international response to the invasion of Ukraine with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens this week on The Minefield.