THE West likes to tell the world that the war in Ukraine is a battle between democracy and autocracy. It can't be more deceiving.
The West has the habit of dressing its interests in the language of values. But the East is not so easily fooled. It is seeing right through it. This is why a democracy like India, though a troubled one at times, is not with the West on Ukraine.
If the West is truly on the side of democracy, it would not force India or other nations to impose sanctions on or condemn Russia.
While we agree that the invasion of Ukraine is wrong — all invasions are wrong — we think isolating Russia as the West is doing now, not only harms all Russians but also the rest of the world.
The West for some strange reason isn't able to tell the difference between regimes and people. It punishes all and sundry.
Take the United States. It has a quarrel with Iran's regime, but imposes sanctions that hurt all Iranians, including women and children that the US claims to defend.
The European Union is equally guilty. And yet, when their ally, Israel kills and maims Palestinians, Brussels and Washington are as quiet as a mouse on sanctions.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame is right. There are three political systems in the world: autocracy, democracy and hypocrisy. We know where Kagame dumps the West, because we, too, would do likewise.
Democracy tells us that India and every other nation must be allowed to make choices for themselves. Any decision arrived at under duress is never an exercise of choice. Because choice is one of the values of democracy. Isn't this what the West says it is defending? Likewise, why shouldn't Indonesia, the chair of the G20 meeting, have the choice to invite whomever it pleases? If aggression is a reason for exclusion from the G20 meeting then most of the West shouldn't be attending the G20 meeting scheduled for November. Nor be members of the United Nations, most of all be members of the UN Security Council, the law-making arm of the world body.
America and its Nato allies have, at many points in history, been aggressors. And for no good reason, too.
If they don't fight the war directly, they supply weapons and mercenaries to fight it. What's worse, they have never learned from their disastrous past. Nor offered any reparations.
Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam come to mind. True, the nations of the East aren't angels either. Some of them there hurt each other. And quite a few hurt their own people.
The truth is, both the West and East have to learn how to live with each other. It isn't wrong to live according to one's values.
What is wrong is to force those values on others. It is also not wrong for nations to shape their foreign policies according to their national interests so long as they don't harm those of others.
The reality is both the West and the East live in a world where a middle path is the only right one. Other paths lead elsewhere, to a world where East is East and West is West. Not the best of possible worlds. In Rudyard Kipling's "The Ballad of the East and West," the two meet on judgement day.
But that will be too late.