Regardless of the reasons behind the current Ukrainian crisis, its reasons, the delicacy of the related conditions, its fate and the disparity in the stances taken by various countries – its outbreak does not only reflect the depth of buried grudges between Russia and Ukraine. The crisis also embodies Russia’s stark and armed rejection of Washington’s insistence to carry on with the unipolarity, which has characterized international politics for the past 30 years.
Russia is not the only country that rejects such politics. Ozther major powers, such as China, prioritized expressing its global ambitions to excel at the economic, commercial and investment levels. This has allowed Beijing to break into fortresses that were once only accessible for Western countries. There are also other countries with expansionist ambitions, but whose power magnitude does not allow them to act accordingly except in their immediate geographical surroundings. This is the case with Iran. One should also mention the power of confusion and provocation practiced by North Korea in East Asia.
Amidst the current events taking place on the international scene, it is not unlikely for the ferocious rejection of the USA monopoly of international dominance to increase in intensity. This could be translated into military action is some place, if the US intransigence continues to ignore the new facts on the international scene, and to continue this monopoly of dominance. This also applies if dominance takes the shape of subcontracting, which means granting the settlement or arrangement of some hot international issues to countries for various considerations, to play certain roles. These countries are usually either close to Washington or orbit in its politics.
It is obvious that should the conflicting parties continue with their intransigence in their positions, this would block the road towards any serious good efforts to contain the differences that have begun to rage little by little. These differences have been evident in the exchange of the imposition of sanctions and the personalization of accusations. This prompted these parties to turn the international scene into a track for a frantic race in order to attract the rest of the world’s small and medium-sized countries to either camps in a way that threatens the return of the Cold War overtone, but with new data now, and possibly multiple poles.
By monitoring and following up on the diplomatic movements of the parties involved directly or indirectly in the Ukrainian crisis and their intense contact whether through visits or telephone calls with most countries of the Arab world, it becomes clear that the latter’s polarization of the position of one of the parties or neutralizing some of them - if it is not possible to attract them - represents a very vital matter, given the weight of Arab countries and their impact on a number of open areas of conflict.
Considering that there is not a unified stance among Arab countries towards the current crisis, most of these countries’ capitals found themselves in critical situations as the conflict is growing in intensity and expanding in geography. This prompted most of them to take balanced stances to a large extent, contented with calling on the parties involved in the conflict to solve the crisis and its political consequences in accordance with the international law. They also called for focusing on alleviating the horror of human tragedies resulting from the conflict and contributing to it, without holding any party responsible for what happened, for fear of any interpretation not suitable for their stances towards both sides of the conflict.
There is no doubt that other countries around the world have been sensing this embarrassment, which is directly linked to the intensification of the conflict and its expansion. Therefore, and in order to avoid any potential dangers from the accelerating developments, and the subsequent intensification of attempts to polarize or at least neutralize, whether by temptation or pressure and coercion, it seems that the international community needs to restore some of the positive neutrality roles that the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) had previously played during the Cold War that followed WW2.
NAM has lost a large extent of the effectiveness that it once exercised on the international scene and in the lobbies of international organizations after the fall of Soviet Union and the dismantling of its socialist system. Rather, it grew meaningless as some of its members rushed to align with the Western doctrine and its economic concepts, at least, especially with US policies after their interests deepened and their various ties with Washington were strengthened. However, the credit is due to some members who tried, at the height of the unipolar power, to find new jobs for the movement by seeking to develop its goals, despite its fading luster.
It is clear from the context of the current international developments and the heightened tone of the accusations and mutual threats that even if some solution to the Ukrainian crisis is reached, the competition for global leadership will not subside. It will continue with the sharp polarization in which the major powers focus largely on winning over Arab countries, considering that some of them are important sources of energy, which in turn has become an open field for exercising power and exerting pressure.
The war on Ukraine has greatly affected the food security of a number of countries in the world, including the Arab countries that depend heavily on importing wheat from the two warring countries. In order to avoid the repercussions of the events developing in the direction of either starvation in some countries, as the International Monetary Fund expects, or a massive rise in prices, which may cause serious social and security tensions, the countries of the Arab world, especially the affluent ones, are called upon to lead a broad diplomatic activity. This initiative is aimed at reviving NAM and bringing back its lofty humanitarian principles, and its positive neutrality that greatly contributed to settling many crises and mitigating tension in a number of global hotspots during the Cold War.
