With the US air force general Mike Minihan saying there will be war between the US and China within two years (Letter from Kinmen, 31 March), Graham Allison’s warnings about US provocation (NS Online, 1 April) help frame the way much of the non-Western world views the Ukraine war.
In Latin America, where I live, the US has had a hand in so many armed invasions (Panama, Grenada), coups (Honduras), trade embargoes (Cuba, Venezuela) and proxy wars (Nicaragua, El Salvador) that the Ukraine conflict is seen as fitting a pattern. While people know that Russia invaded Ukraine, many in the Global South view this as a stand against the US war machine. China in particular and Russia and Iran are also seen as trading partners and investors in countries whose priority is recovering from the economic damage caused by the pandemic. We now live in a multipolar world where many countries are responding to US threats in the same way that Saudi Arabia did after criticism over the Jamal Khashoggi killing – as Allison pithily puts it: “Screw you!”
John Perry, Masaya, Nicaragua
Content from our partners
