Where are the emerging powers on Libya?

Watching the international response to Libya, it’s notable that the Western powers appear to be firmly in the driver’s seat. American and European leaders are almost frenetically issuing statements, drafting resolutions, and convening multilateral meetings. The European Union wants tough multilateral sanctions. So does Washington! Meanwhile, the United States and Europe are congratulating themselves over a new UN Human Rights Council resolution, Joe Biden’s talking about how countries forfeit their sovereignty when they commit abuses, and NATO’s convening an emergency meeting.

Indeed, for all the talk of international power shifts and rising BRIC diplomatic and strategic power, the superficial public dynamic appears to be very similar to that in the early 1990s, when the Western powers pushed through the United Nations an interventionist agenda, largely on human rights grounds, in places including Cambodia, Somalia, northern Iraq, and the Balkans. At the time, Russia, China and other big players largely stood aside, swallowing their disquiet about what they often saw as unwise intrusions in countries’ domestic affairs.

The world is very different now of course. The economic wind is in the emerging countries’ sails. By all accounts, China is more outspoken, competent and confident in international fora than it was in the early 1990s. Brazil and India are feeling their oats and jostling–sometimes almost demanding–new global leadership positions. Russia has long since abandoned the doormat status it assumed briefly in the early 1990s, when it was utterly dependent on Western aid and indulgence. Meanwhile, the advanced economies are in recession, slashing their budgets, and deeply uncertain about their futures. NATO’s in the midst of a draining and controversial Afghan mission that has all but exhausted the patience of many alliance members.

So why then is the West so loud on Libya while the emerging countries maintain a low profile? Part of the answer may be that the West’s slippage in relative power hasn’t yet worked its way into its foreign policy DNA. The Western powers still feel interventionist even if the economic and strategic foundations of that interventionism have eroded. What’s more, the West feels comfortable working the levers of international institutions like the Security Council in a way that Moscow, Beijing, Delhi and Brasília still don’t. When a crisis hits, the American and European instinct is to set the various parts of the global governance machinery in motion. They may not produce much of value, but at least they make a lot of noise.

The other answer is that the disparity in volume reflects key substantive differences. The emerging powers are quiet not because they don’t have the assuredness to speak out but because they believe that silence is the appropriate international response to most domestic matters. One key question will be whether these more soveignty-minded states at some point soon feel moved to restrain the interventionist impulses that are running so strong in Washington and Brussels.

But there’s an even more fundamental question: after years of reading and vaguely going along with Western-authored Security Council resolutions and other multilateral missives condemning various abuses committed by sovereign governments against their own people, have these states (and Moscow and Beijing, in particular) started to absorb that interventionist, scolding mindset? For the moment, power is flowing from the West to the emerging economies. Are norms and values going along for the ride? Libya may help to answer that question.

Update: There are some superb comments from readers, including this:

The fact that emerging powers ’emerge’ doesn’t mean they would carry themselves the same way the current established powers do. Perhaps because of their shifting status, of their perceived experiences of dependence or colonisation (affecting their understanding of sovereignty as you mention), one certainly should not measure their level of diplomatic ‘activity’ by the loudness of their spokespersons. It’s a different approach.

I agree that volume isn’t necessarily the best metric; the question is whether there’s much going on behind the scenes.