The United Nations may not be the most effective world organisation in matters of war and peace. But it does reflect world opinion, and opinion not backed by money and bombs may not count for much, but it reflects the mood of the people across the world. The United Nations General Assembly vote on the Russian attack on Ukraine on Wednesday revealed that 141 countries voted against Russia, 35 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, abstained, and five, including Syria, voted in favour.

Though the United States and members of NATO are in adversarial position, most of the other countries are not opposed to Russia, and they are not involved in the military rivalry between the two camps. But they voted against Russia because Russia in invading Ukraine had violated the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity of member-states. It is an issue that is a cause for concern for many of the small states, who are at a disadvantage in economic and military terms. And the guarantee for their independent existence is the UN Charter which guarantees their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

It does not make sense to argue that all the countries that were not part of NATO or Europe or North and South America were arm-twisted by America to do so. Majority of the countries believed that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was wrong and unacceptable. And those countries like the UAE, China, India, and Pakistan who abstained were not morally neutral about the merits of the issue. Even when they agreed with security concerns of Russia arising out of Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO, they did not agree with Russia’s utter disregard of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The majority vote against Russia also carries the implication that Russia could have sorted out the issue of Ukraine’s potential membership of NATO through means other than war.

The other aspect of the decision of countries like the UAE who abstained from an anti-Russia vote was the pragmatic approach that when there is a crisis, ways must be found to solve it rather than exacerbate it or manage it. This position was articulated by UAE’s Permanent  Representative to the UN Lana Nusseibeh when she expressed concern over the deteriorating humanitarian condition in Ukraine arising out of the war. She reminded the members of their “collective responsibility towards exhausting all efforts and diplomatic efforts to prevent further deterioration of the humanitarian situation.” And she emphasised, “This is a time to summon our reserve of wisdom and experience to guide the way forward.” More importantly, she suggested a shift in approach to the crisis: “We need to shift our mindset from crisis management to conflict resolution.” Condemning Russia or supporting the US and NATO would not help in defusing a crisis, and the UAE’s stance turns out to be the sensible thing to adopt.

It would be wrong to infer that those countries which did not condemn Russia justified the Russian invasion of Ukraine because that is indeed not the case. The simplistic idea of dividing the world into black and white, good and evil, does not help in dealing with a complex world. For complex cultural and psychological reasons, Europe and America have thought in binaries.

That is why, at the beginning of the Cold War in the 1950s, then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared, “Those who are not with us are against us.” It is this immature attitude that has made the things difficult and dangerous for everyone around. And it is the ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine who pay the price for the follies of the powerful countries in the world.