Ukraine's David to Russia's Goliath

Little David hit the giant barbarian with a stone smack in the middle of the forehead. A bullseye. The Philistine died instantly. It’s a story that’s pregnant with meaning.

International lawyers are taught – and many naively believe – that the global legal order is a rules-based order. Nothing could be further than the truth. The truth is that international law was conceived in the workshop of a devil’s mind and born in scandal. It’s a product of Empire and the imperial conquest of Black, Brown, and dark peoples by White Europeans.

It’s the ideological progeny of the Occident against the Orient. It’s the father and mother of the colonial project. For centuries, it was the province only of civilized nations, which were strictly White, Christian, and European. Japan, Turkey, and China were admitted into this “society of Nations” much later. No one else was considered sovereign, or capable of reason.

It wasn’t just Black Africans, Arabs, Asians, and peoples indigenous to the Americas who suffered under the yoke of White Supremacy. Even among Whites, there was a hierarchy of peoples based on birth status and wealth – a sort of a caste system. In America, for example, Italian and Irish immigrants – and their American-born progeny – weren’t regarded as fully White until more recently.

Logic of White Supremacy

I still remember the words of my Irish Catholic priest in Kitui long ago telling me that the Irish and Black Kenyans had one thing in common – both had suffered under the brutal colonial boot of the English. He opined that we share same “hatred” for the English, who still see themselves as some master race.

I digress. In the world, there’s a racist, imperial hierarchy of the “subordinate” and “inferior” races to their “superiors.” The value of a single human being in one race is different from another. Put bluntly, one hundred of one race in the “disposable” races may equal to just one of the “superior” ones.

This pernicious racial hierarchy sits at the center of the logic of White Supremacy and of international law. A White man in South Africa is “inferior” to a White man in Europe or America. If you don’t know this, then you don’t have a clue about the simplest thing about racism. 

Countries in the so-called “Third World” look externally for validation, not the other way round.

This, in my view, explains the world’s empathy, on the one hand, and antipathy, on the other, with respect to Israel’s war on Gaza and Russia’s pummeling of Ukraine. It’s also the reason the world has turned a blind eye on the Sudanese civil war, as it has on so many absolutely devastating wars and conflicts in Africa. Africans can be killed, or kill each other, by the millions, and no one cares. That’s because Africans are “disposable” people.

International rules-based order

In the case of the decades-long occupation of Palestine by Israel, Palestinians have been the “disposable” people. That’s become clear after Hamas brutally attacked Israel on October 7. The wanton killing of Palestinians women and children by Israel haunts the conscience. 

In Ukraine, the international rules-based order has especially been shown to be fake, an absolute scandal. First, Russia took Crimea, a part of Ukraine, a sovereign state. Then Russia fully invaded Ukraine because according to Russians, Ukraine is historically a vassal of Russia. It was one of the former Soviet republics, and therefore belongs to Russia.

Ukrainians themselves are an “inferior” people to Russians. They have no right to independent existence outside the Russia orbit, according to Vladmir Putin. The mistake Ukraine made after the dissolution of the Soviet Union was to give up its nuclear weapons. Otherwise, Mr Putin would never have invaded Ukraine. Today, it’s forgotten that Ukraine was the second most powerful republic in the Soviet Union after Russia.

The courage of the heart is virtually impossible to extinguish. That’s why nomadic Somalia stopped George Bush’s Operation Restore Hope and forced the superpower to flee a ragtag militia. In the last several weeks, Ukraine has staged a devastating military operation inside Russia, capturing a wide swath deep inside Mr Putin’s gulag.

Imagine this – Ukraine now occupies a large territory of Russia. David has struck Goliath where it hurts the most. Russia’s vaunted army is unable to respond effectively. Even Ukraine’s Western allies are shocked. The “inferior” ones have turned tables on their “masters.” That’s how freedom is won – one inch at a time.

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua