The second Global Prosperity Summit (GPS), which concluded in Hong Kong last month, addressed a number of important issues relevant to the whole of humanity. Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, a founding member of the GPS and Executive Council convenor, said the summit sought to bring nongovernmental expertise to bear on public matters in a neutral way. One of the five subjects covered this year was the trade war.

Two messages came through very clearly. The first is that economic and security issues are now so thoroughly interlinked that they have become more complex and hence difficult to solve. The second is that wherever significant numbers of diplomats and academics meet, the language will be very polite, but the old problems of hypocrisy and double standards will linger.

Take the Russia-Ukraine conflict that began in February 2022. The brutality and savagery have been at a terrible level, and many civilians have been killed. War crimes have undoubtedly been committed, and most people would blame Russia, but Ukraine has not been without fault either.

Who bears primary responsibility? Well, of course, if your discourse begins in 2022, it must be Russia. But is that the proper starting position? Many independent observers would point instead to 1990-91. Those years saw the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and the reunification of Germany. One consequence of the latter was that the border of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would inevitably move eastward i.e., closer to Russia, which naturally raised security concerns for that country. To address this issue, all the big Western governments gave assurances to Moscow that NATO would not expand eastward. “Not one inch” in the words of then-US secretary of state James Baker.

Full documentation of the assurances given at that time by all the key countries involved including the United States (president George HW Bush), United Kingdom (prime minister Margaret Thatcher), France (president Francois Mitterrand) and Germany (chancellor Helmut Kohl) and their respective foreign ministers can be found in the National Security Archive maintained by the George Washington University in the US.    

As we have all seen, these assurances have not been honored. In the 1990s and the early years of this century many Eastern European countries were allowed to join NATO. After the NATO Summit of April 2008, the organization’s secretary general indicated that Ukraine would be a member in future.

In my view, primary responsibility for securing peace in Europe rests with the countries of that continent. The countries of Western Europe should have opened a dialogue with Russia to establish their legitimate security concerns and devised a formula to meet them. Instead, they went along with American plans to promote the eastward expansion of NATO.

They were led up the garden path, certainly, but they went willingly. When they got to the end, instead of fairies they found only a retired KGB officer with a long memory and a bad temper.

So Russia started the conflict, but the countries of Western Europe were complicit in creating the security situation which led to it. The US’ hands were not clean.

Instead of accepting their own role in the present situation, the European Union countries have sought to shift a substantial portion of the blame on to China. European ire is particularly directed at China because it continues to buy Russian oil and to allegedly sell to that country a range of goods, some of which are described as “dual use”, that is, capable of both civilian and military uses. Presumably, Ukraine could also acquire the same products though this seldom gets a mention. India also does these things but seems to escape most of the anger. The EU has made it clear, including at the GPS last month, that what it regards as China’s “failure” in this area will have a direct bearing on future trade negotiations.

Meanwhile in the same time zone as Ukraine and some 3,900 kilometers to the south, Israel is waging a devastating war in Gaza and on the West Bank. Starvation is being used as a weapon of war in contravention of all human decency and international conventions. Small children are being blown to pieces daily by bombs and ground incursions. By any measure, this conduct constitutes genocide and a war crime. There is nothing “dual use” about the weapons being supplied to Israel by NATO members, in particular the US and the UK. They are weapons of war designed to kill.

Whereas the West is justifiably angered by Russian actions in Ukraine and vociferous in its calls for sanctions, it seems rather more understanding of Israel’s behavior. Trade relations are being “reviewed” but meanwhile the country was allowed to take part in the Eurovision song contest (the Israeli entry finished second). Arms shipments have not been halted.

Europe struggles to understand why the whole world has not rushed to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, only a small minority of countries worldwide have implemented the sanctions imposed by the G7, while the vast majority continue to trade normally, possibly because the sanctions are not imposed by the United Nations (where of course Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council has a veto), but perhaps also because they recognize a double standard when they see one.

I hope by the time of next year’s Global Prosperity Summit, the world will have fixed these two dreadful wars and resumed rational trade relations on a multilateral basis. Fair trade will make all countries more prosperous and provide a firm basis for peace.

The author has lived in Hong Kong for over 50 years. He retired in 2008 after 34 years in the public service, and is now an independent commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.