As with domestic politics, there is definitely an overarching element of class and privilege that pervades our geopolitics. And in a world in which the "good guy" professes universal human rights and universal freedom and democracy, this inconvenient fact has to be carefully and methodically erased with good PR. One can spot the discrepancies by holding the carefully brushed ideals up to the light of fact. Or else the ideal itself breaks apart all on its own under the strain of external pressure.
For one thing, it was no accident that Hannah Arendt, living through the World Wars, produced some of the more incisive critiques of that airy ideal of universal human rights, depicting them as a polite fiction which could be aspired to, and that it took the application of state power to move in that direction. This contradiction would become more visible as the gaps opened up between ideal and reality, when refugees fleeing failing states came to realize that their rights were only as good as the nation that backed them, and were treated as nonhuman by those host states which saw them as alien.
The principle nestled in this dismal state of affairs can be scaled out and applied in a number of ways on the world stage, and the Ukraine invasion in particular, due to its geopolitical dimensions and the actors involved, illustrates a number of these ways.
To witness the heads exploding in the Western establishment political and media classes over the invasion, one would be forgiven for wondering if the last two decades of US foreign policy actually happened. If the United States invades Iraq, it is to stop a madman from threatening the world with nuclear annihilation and then to pacify the state, spreading peace and democracy. If Russia does something similar then its leader is the next Hitler who is bringing about the end of the civilized world.
The subtext in these reactions is that only the rich and powerful - and by extension the richest and most powerful - can do whatever they want, and their closest subjects within their cultural and political spheres of affinity get to partake in some of that power, which is what we actually call "freedom" and "right."
When you extend this logic in the real world, it becomes the case that whoever is to challenge that position of concentrated privilege and prestige must necessarily -by virtue of their own concentrated location - accumulate and concentrate their own portion of loyal subjects to match the aggressive power of their rivals, so that a majority of the worlds nations - held in tension between competing powers - become appendages (or more politely, vassals) of the most powerful, where they are not becoming punching bags of course, and then the given suites of privileges and abilities are graduated along those contours of power.
So it is then that both the Ukrainians and Iraqis are shat upon, and the precision strikes and the surgical maneuvers meant to win the PR wars start smashing bystanders, and the short jaunts in to establish stability become prolonged occupations that increase instability. We'll get to some of the reasons for the decorum later; after all, it was not long ago that the great powers still beat their chests and brayed that they too had a right to conquest. We still do it now, but the formalities have changed.
Setting aside the Western hierarchical ranking of the conflicts, with the Ukraine invasion being a worse thing, the hierarchical rankings continue on down into the mechanics of the invasion itself, with detailed coverage and interest in Ukrainian refugees and their differing treatment compared to the many black and brown refugees of the past decades.
The rich nations that can afford to develop nukes get the cold war and the growling behind the fence, while the poor nations get to beat each other up or get beat up by the wealthy nations in the still existing hot wars, which are oftentimes followed with great enthusiasm by those bored with all of their milk and honey.
