HERE’S WHAT WAS MEANT TO HAPPEN. After Russia fell upon Ukraine in February 2022, the international community — other than designated rogue and pariah states — would rally to condemn and resist the atrocity. The largest act of predation against a sovereign state in living memory was a great wrong that must be righted. Vladimir Putin’s attempted annexation was a security threat to all. It violated a precious, postwar global norm, the norm against conquest. This threatened the “Global South”, a condescending term of art for poor, postcolonial countries that lumps together everyone from Burundi, the poorest state on earth, to India, which has a space programme.
Under the “global leadership” of the United States with its NATO and treaty allies in Asia, the peoples of South America, Africa, the Middle East and Oceania would come together to repudiate not only the invasion of Ukraine, but the old order of imperial aggression, sphere-of-influence prerogatives, genocidal expansionism and great power presumption. It was not just a collective effort to help Ukraine against an aggressor. It was a noble undertaking to rescue the world from the nineteenth century.
this might come true. As Russia recognised secessionist republics in Ukraine and mobilised on the border, Kenyan ambassador Martin Kimani made a celebrated speech at the United Nations Security Council. With moral clarity dialled up
