WHEN you were educated in a third world (TW) university, and I mean any TW university including the developed TW nations, you get a cultural shock when you sit for the first time in a Canadian, American and European university to study international relations.

You have to live in this ambience to experience it. It is two diametrically opposed worldviews. TW professors in global affairs tend to situate super-power rivalry in the context of the search for domination to protect national interests.

TW professors have a perspective that the TW nations are not important to superpowers that see them as geopolitical pawns to be used and be discarded given the success of power rivalry.
One example from the past and one from the present are instructive. The Americans invaded Grenada in 1983 to remove a pro-Cuba state. Once that was completed, Grenada became an infinitesimal footnote in American diplomacy and did not receive any significant form of American aid and that continues up to this day.

The present day example is from Saudi Arabia. This Middle East bigwig the past two months is consolidating its rapprochement overtures to its arch enemy, Iran. The kingdoms know that, with the changing oil sources, the US does not need Saudi oil as it did since the end of World War 2. TW professors teach international relations using theories, perspectives, paradigms and examples that are profoundly different from their counterparts in the US.

In the US, particularly at places like Harvard, international relations is taught with the US as the agent for global change whose messianic mission is to rid the world of global instabilities. The competitors of the US are always seen as actors whose intentions are to destabilise the US for geopolitical reasons. I know this because professors taught me at McMaster University and the University of Toronto and they were absolutely and completely biased against the USSR and the Third World. In India and South Africa, it would be unthinkable for a professor to teach global studies the way it is taught in the US and Canada.

After this long preamble we come now to an article written yesterday by Guyana’s former Foreign Minister, Mr. Rudy Insanally. Strangely, for a Foreign Minister of a third world state, Mr. Insanally takes a Eurocentric/Americanized approach to international affairs and in the process distorts the facts and saturates his essay with shameless pro-American bias.

I will quote Mr. Insanally to highlight his flaws. He wrote: “Now that Russia been found guilty in the eyes of the majority of states.”

Mr. Insanally’s use of the word “guilty” has a purpose that I believe was deliberate. A majority of the world’s countries has voted to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Let’s quote Mr. Insanally again: “(Russia should) be sanctioned with the withdrawal of Russia’s permanent status (at the UN) as well as its right to exercise the veto.”

I can only assume that Mr. Insanally did not know that the UK and US invaded Iraq and they still hold veto powers at the UN. I assume that Mr. Insanally does not know that the US and the UK invaded Afghanistan and occupied it for over 20 years, withdrawing only last year and the US and UK still hold veto power at the UN.

To argue that Russia is right to invade Ukraine is wrong. Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country must be condemned. But to use distortions the way Mr. Insanally did is unacceptable and unbecoming of a former Foreign Minister of Guyana.

Let’s quote Insanally for the third time: “Putin has suffered from (sic) many grievances against the West but since he has not specified these, we cannot understand his decision to invade.”
It is now accepted in international relations scholarship that the genesis of the invasion lies in the presidency of Bill Clinton and subsequent US presidents including Obama who violated an agreement with Russia not to shift NATO borders right up to Russia.

I will ask Mr. Insanally to research that topic. A Google search will be helpful. But he can start with the thoughts of Jeffry Sachs on that topic. Mr. Sachs is a globally respected scholar whose books are highly admired.

Mr. Insanally ends his essay not with a call for mediation of the conflict as China, Brazil and a number of African leaders have suggested.

Mr. Insanally seems to want more confrontation with Russia from NATO and the US. Let’s quote him for the last time: “An end to the violence can only happen…if NATO, (particularly the US), is willing to do more to frustrate Putin’s strategy.” Insanally did not spell it out but by those words, he wants more war.