The world has rejected what George W Bush claimed at the launch of his anti-terrorism campaign, “either you are with us, or you are against us.” In these turbulent Trumpian times when politics is fundamentally about “friends versus enemies,” countries are choosing to live in what Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard call an “a la carte world”. Their contention is based on a major public opinion poll in 21 countries for the European Council on Foreign Relations and an Oxford University project. They argue that an à la carte arrangement gives their governments a choice to “pragmatically choose their partners depending on the issue at stake.” That explains the emergence of a large number of groupings and platforms which may appear to be working at cross purposes.
India is a member of George W Bush and other formations. Where to locate the Global South? The language of development is the best way to understand worlds in the making. But it has become la langue de bois (the language of evasion). If developmental buzzwords have tended to become fuzzwords, spaces of resistance and global platforms are understood differently in different contexts at different times. Global South has become what international relations experts Laura Trajber Waisbich, Supriya Roychoudhury and Sebastian Haug call “an identity shorthand that we simultaneously reject and need.” It is full of sound and fury, signifying many things to many people. The term “Global South”, coined by Carl Ogelsby, an eloquent voice of the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s, is again getting traction.
And the groups of countries claiming to belong or speak for the Global South too are growing by the day. However, China is up to its own game. It has been appropriating terms and platforms that were coined and created by others. Currently, China has been working to bolster its claim to respect the “Bandung spirit.” It also has leadership claims over “Global South”. It did the same with the ‘Third World’. French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term ‘Third World’ in 1952. While the “First World” comprised the United States and its Western allies; a “Second World” was composed of the Soviet Union and its satellites in the Eastern bloc, the “Third World” consisted of “developing” and nonaligned nations. Global South later became a synonym for the Third World and gained traction in the 1970s, with the call for a new international economic order.
The 1980 Brandt Report gave it greater acceptability. However, in the post-Cold War period, the term “Third World” fell gradually out of favour as it sounded pejorative. By comparison, the “Global South” offers a more neutral and appealing label. Global South has become synonymous with G77. Today 134 countries constitute the Global South. The Global South has a major role in reshaping global governance. BRICS is a part of the Global South.
Global South has been used in several BRICS declarations, serving both as a geographical descriptor and as an ethical signifier. The Johannesburg Declaration of August 2023 affirms a commitment to “continuing to amplify and further integrate the voice of the Global South in the G20 agenda”. The term has also featured prominently in the G20 deliberations. The last four presidencies of Indonesia (2022), India (2023), Brazil (2024) and South Africa (2025), have highlighted the Global South priorities in their joint declarations. One of the major criticisms of the Global South by Western analysts is that while it defends its interests, it does not offer an alternative model to the Westled international order. It is not enough to be a geopolitical disruptor. Western analysts also maintain that the Global South is a divided house. Both China and Russia have sought to position themselves as Global South powers.
The place of Russia, a former super power and China, a superpower in the making, in the Global South is a dampener when it comes to Global South’s anti-hegemonic engagements. The Global South’s limitations are obvious. It is no more a space of resistance against neoliberal capitalism. In fact, the grouping is anything but coherent and a united bloc. It is both at odds with the North as well as vis-à-vis China and Russia. Russia’s identification with the Global South is both pragmatic and transactional. The interactions and external trade of heavily sanctioned Russia have shifted from Europe to Asia. Russia’s growing alignment with the Global South has prompted some Western analysts to see even BRICS as antiWest. India has taken pains to correct such a perception by describing BRICS as “non-West” and not “anti-West.” In view of the reservations among non-Russia-China BRICS members, Russia has begun to promote alternative terms like ‘the global majority’ and ‘multipolar world order’.
But China is using the Global South in its pursuit of geopolitical competition with the West. China claims it embodies the aspirations of the Global South and that it actively fosters collaborative growth through strategic initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative. It also claims that its philosophy of a community with a shared future for mankind encapsulates a vision of cooperation over conflict, inclusivity over exclusivity and mutual benefit over zero-sum competition. The changes in the international system have given the Global South a new impetus of identity. But it needs to refashion its worldview. Today, the old matrix of donor-recipient relations is no more relevant. There is no one donor who is not receiving and there is no one recipient who is not giving.
The Global South must become a password for influence and responsive global governance. It must become a normative force whose influence emanates from its capacity to set behavioural norms that have an international outreach. The test of its clout and influence depends on what it does, rather than what it is. All said, the Global South is here to stay, having become what post-colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty calls “strategic essentialism”. If India hopes to lead the Global South, it will need to learn what Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar calls the art of “management of differences” in the “transactional bazaar” of global politics. The Global South, like many other platforms, is subject to interpretations. And as Friedrich Nietzsche says, “whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”
(The writer comments on global affairs )
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