Ukraine and the Double Standards of the West

Abstract

The West, under the leadership of the US, EU and NATO, claims to be defending a rules-based international order by way of its support for Ukraine, including its call for full accountability. Regrettably, however, this claim fails to fully convince given the inconsistencies in the West’s approach to international (criminal) law. I will develop this counterclaim in three steps: first, I will argue that the Western approach to the Russian aggression is by no means universally accepted, especially not in the Global South (Part 2). Secondly, I will try to explain, at least partly, the reason for this limited support by pointing out both historical and more recent Western inconsistencies with regard to international law (Part 3). On this basis I will then, by way of conclusion, call for (greater) Western consistency in international law, while formulating some caveats at the same time (Part 4).