The West’s diminishing moral space

By Uditha Devapriya

On Tuesday, December 12, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The United States was one of 10 countries to oppose, the others including Guatemala, Nauru, and Paraguay, and of course Israel. New Zealand, Canada, and Australia were among the 153 countries to vote in favour, while Ukraine, Hungary, and the Netherlands were among those that abstained. While the support was higher than with the October 27 Arab-sponsored resolution, the abstentions were lower. The verdict is simple: Israel is losing international support and credibility.

The resolution underlies the urgency of protecting Palestinians and Israeli civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law and demands the protection of Palestinians in Gaza and the return of Israeli hostages. Interestingly, it makes no mention of Hamas. The US and Austria reportedly tried to edit the original text to include Hamas’s “heinous terrorist attacks”, but attempts to amend the resolution were opposed by the Arab Group and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. In any case, Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s Ambassador in the UN, called it “a historic day in terms of the powerful message that was sent from the General Assembly” – in contrast to the Security Council, where the US continues to veto one resolution after another calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Even the most persistent supporters of Israel in the current conflict have given way. These include not just Ukraine, whose support may have been motivated by its military and political links with Washington, but also Oceania. India, which wavered in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, has now sided with the rest of the Global South.

While Spain was one of the first countries in Europe to censure Israel and call for a ceasefire, the rest of the continent has joined it. Not all those who supported the recent resolution are critics of Israel: many continue to defend its “right to exist.” But its response to the October 7 attack and its treatment of Palestinians have made them realise that Israel’s right to exist can no longer be invoked at the cost of its humanitarian obligations.

Israel’s invocation of self-defence reveals the hypocrisies of the West well. However heinous the Hamas attack was, there is a line – an altogether fine one – between a terrorist outfit that binds itself only to its strategic objectives and a State that is bound to international humanitarian norms. In an ironic reversal of roles, the Global North, which was not above supporting terrorist outfits and liberation movements, even those that targeted civilians, has put its weight behind the Israeli State. The right to self-defence is a cornerstone of State sovereignty, and much of the Global North, prominently Washington, has advocated for a form of popular sovereignty that ostensibly puts people and communities above States and governments. This makes it easier to invoke interventionist rhetoric.

Its refusal to abide by these tenets in the case of Israel, and to change course over Gaza despite much international pressure, shows that the West is selective in where and how it applies its values. This is disappointing, but hardly surprising. For over 30 years – since the fall of the Soviet Union, if not earlier – the West has consistently failed in implanting its values in the non-West.

This underlies a crisis of credibility. The US for one has batted for the idea of a more democratic world order. But it has not been sincere in its pursuit of such goals. It advocates the undermining of national sovereignty in the interests of popular sovereignty – hence its embrace of R2P – yet it refuses to extend this to the international community to the extent of undermining its own hegemony.

The US’s greatest failure, which has surfaced only too well in its conduct in the current conflict, has always been in its treatment of its allies. In a review of Samantha Power’s Education of an Idealist, Daniel Bessner argues that protecting human rights has come to mean “disciplining nations of the Global South that are not US allies.” This is not surprising: while the US can benefit from compelling its allies to adhere to humanitarian norms, it has no immediate strategic interest in doing so.

On the other hand, it finds it much easier to coerce a country like Sri Lanka, which is not one of Washington’s bosom buddies, to conduct itself in this way or that. It goes without saying that China’s rise partly has been due to the US’s selective deployment of human rights rhetoric. This can be seen most glaringly in Israel and Gaza, though these are not the only instances out there.

The US has also tended to overreach and overextend itself. Take the invasion of Afghanistan. Russia, led then as now by Vladimir Putin, supported it, motivated partly by a desire as a member of the G8 to cultivate closer ties with the West. Yet the US blew its chances of rallying more countries around it by invading Iraq two years later, on trumped up and false pretexts.

One cannot condone the invasion of Ukraine and the plight of Ukrainian refugees, but it is hard to disagree with the likes of John Mearsheimer and their critique of NATO expansion – or more correctly, overexpansion – into Russia’s immediate periphery. The US may invoke and deploy human rights concerns, as indeed it does. But when fires continue to burn in Palestine and the women and children of Gaze continue to be deprived of access to the most essential necessities, one sees nothing but selectivity.

And it is this selectivity that will hasten the US’s demise in the world order. I am not one of those who see or predict a steep decline in the US’s hegemony: that will take time, not least because of contradictions within the Global South, such as between India and China, that have little if at all to do with US overreach. But its support of Israel, coupled with its rhetoric on Ukraine and Russia, will drain it of what little credibility it has. Going by Europe’s and Oceania’s voting record at the recent resolution, even the rest of the West has realised this, and is shifting course. The US will not: it is too stubborn for that.

The writer is an international relations analyst, independent researcher, and freelance columnist who can be reached at .