The Imperial Ambitions of the Great Powers: Explaining the War in Ukraine from the Perspective of Global Justice

Abstract

The position of Russian President Vladimir Putin in starting the war in Ukraine proceeds from political realism or the imperial ambition of global powers. The propensity for conflict governs the global political order. President Putin thinks that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an existential threat as far as Russia is concerned. In the absence of a universal standard of justice in the world, Russia thinks that it was justifiable to invade Ukraine. NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has argued that the right thing to do is to prevent Russia from imposing its will on a sovereign country. But while the West is trying to find a way to help Ukraine on moral and political grounds, it can be argued that the US and some of its Allies are a complicit to the absence of justice in the world. The reason is that the conflict in Ukraine also reveals the hypocrisy of the US when it comes to its own wars, for instance, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I argue from the perspective of global justice. I believe that the moral position is for President Putin to acknowledge his mistake but at the same time, the moral endgame should not appear as if the West has won this proxy war but for the world to finally realize the primacy of the respect for human rights and the dignity of peoples over all forms of hegemonic power.