The Russia-Ukraine crisis has rapidly been established by Western commentators as a tipping point in global affairs, supposedly signifying a new world order.
This is largely addressed from two archaic angles. First, a deepening of the existing world order, with America and Europe aligned on one side, and Russia and China aligned on the other. Second, the fear that the West is losing its grip on the world, and that this is a significant threat to global security.
There is however a more contemporary angle that is being missed: amid the tragedy, the birth of a new world order that may be better equipped to prevent and resolve crises like Russia-Ukraine. Why? Because it will be a world with more equal power-sharing that will no longer be dictated by the narrow interventionist interests of the West.
These interventions have spanned the tragedies of the 21st century, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen, yet these did not elicit the pious posturing of Europeans and Americans as Russia-Ukraine has. The mindset remains the same: wars are justified and tolerated if led by the West because it supposedly has a noble mission.
This is reinforced by propaganda about liberating repressed peoples from fascists, communists, or religious fanatics, which helps the Western public disregard atrocities committed by their governments. This willful ignorance is also fueled by a deep-seated belief in the Western public's psyche that white lives are more precious than those of others living in countries considered to be unpleasant. The hypocrisy and racism of reporting on Russia-Ukraine has made this abundantly clear.
For the first time, this duplicity has been exposed to the global majority by social media and other tech-enabled forms of communication. Hundreds of thousands of videos and messages have reached every corner of the world, as Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Africans, South Americans have the scale of this hypocrisy made crystal clear.
This is helping to combat centuries of Western propaganda, which portrayed white Westerners as superior, righteous, civilizing and the natural leaders of the world -- a perpetuation of white privilege stemming from brutal colonial exploits.
The sheer influence of this system was previously only recognized by some, but now there is a global conversation taking place about why the West is depicting the civilian tragedy of this conflict as somehow incomparable to other conflicts. This discourse is leading hundreds of millions to new understandings of current events and to not simply accept the one-sided Western version.
No one denies that it is utterly horrifying and inexcusable that people are dying. But the virulent reactions by Western media, politicians and businesses have completely blanketed attempts to understand Russia's motives and the events leading up to the war. What about NATO expansionism and provocation, the preexisting separatist movements in Ukraine, or the white supremacy of Ukrainian politics? How can we achieve peace without understanding these key elements?
Yet other conflicts are passed over. Take Yemen, for example, where the U.S. Navy has backed the Saudi-led naval blockade, which humanitarian organizations have argued was the main influencing factor to the outbreak of famine, which 5 million faced during the civil war.
