It may horrify us that Vladimir Putin can call an international conference and the leaders of China, India, Brazil, the UAE, the UN and many others of the BRICs+ all willingly turn up. But this is not an aberration but part of a plan to sideline us and our allies in the club of democracies often referred to collectively as ‘The West’. And in our casual use of “The Global South” to bracket ‘The Non-West’ we have been complicit in that. It is deliberately being used by Putin and Xi, and others, to undermine our position with the countries we have so clumped together. It is time to stop using the term.
The label “The Global South” might be useful conversationally, as a shorthand for all those nations who might not share our NW European, Atlanticist view of the World’s problems. Even then it should have quotation marks around it in admission of its limits as a useful analytic term.
When it gets used in official Government communication justifying policy changes with genuine strategic implications then we should take notice, and ask questions. The Foreign Secretary’s public statement explaining why he had decided upon ceding to Mauritius the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, and its hugely important military base on Diego Garcia, gave the following justification:
“…it undermined our international standing. We are showing that what we mean is what we say on international law and desire for partnerships with “the Global South”. This strengthens our arguments when it comes to issues like Ukraine or the South China Sea.”
In testing this rationale, one must ask to what extent “the Global South” can be considered to have been positively influenced by the UK’s assumed gesture of magnanimity and understanding of their shared concerns and interests. The issue itself has been hotly debated, and the true position of the US in this deal remains opaque. But the thinking behind it should be analysed as it may well underpin future foreign and security policy decisions by this administration and its executive.
A new paper for Policy Exchange comprehensively explores the provenance, life and utility of “The Global South” as a concept and useful lens by which to view the bloc of countries that comprise the majority of the World’s population. Unsurprisingly, it tells us as much about ourselves as about those nations with whom we treat. And it suggests we are not helping ourselves, in fact we are being counter-productive.
Membership of “the Global South” is somewhat malleable. The use of ‘South” suggests a geographic coherence, yet we exclude Australia which is very definitely in ‘our’ club of aligned nations, while arctic Russia is clearly a sponsor of the ‘South’. Indeed that that is a major current concern is revealed in the Foreign Secretary’s acknowledging Ukraine in his justification. And, ditto, China in his nod to the South China Sea – is that P5, nuclear armed, economic superpower aligned with, even a member of, “the Global South”? What of North v South Korea?
If we simply measure economic clout as a measure of emerging nations, then we find that other assumed members include emerging superpowers with advanced Space programmes: India. Or are members of our Euro-centric alliances even as they have polities and a World View different to our own: Turkey. Many nations we include in our club of enlightened, democratic, European neighbours have lower GDP per capita than some of “the Global South”. Puerto Rico is richer per capita than Spain and Portugal.
Nor can we consider nations of “the Global South” to be unified in their approach to a range of global issues, as the conflicts between its members reveal clearly. Understanding these differing individual positions well is the necessary bedrock of successful diplomacy and intervention. Throwing them together casually looks careless – and inhibits clear, strategic thinking on our part.
For what we are left with is a grouping whose only essential, defining characteristic is ‘not like us’. In this its rationale shares a similar, and troubling, provenance with the now largely discredited term ‘BAME’ for Black and Minority Ethnic Britons. As many ethnicities pointed out, there was as much difference, perhaps more, between them as between ‘black’ and ‘white’. The only differentiator was ‘not white’, and for those minorities doing better than some white social groups this grouping appeared patronising; it was in reality white condescension cloaked in altruism.
And that is the problem with using “The Global South” as a foreign policy framework for dealing with a hugely diverse group of peoples. It patronisingly lumps them together, it has shades of “The Third World” de nos jours, and its users can be taken to be not so subtly saying ‘these are people who need our enlightened help’.
This latter point is revealed in commentary from African nations where a common trope is “the Chinese bring us infrastructure, the Europeans bring us lectures”. These sentiments are being weaponised against us by China and Russia, who play up that sense of “The Global South” being historically disadvantaged and so quite justified in demanding post-colonial reparations whether ever colonised or not. Indian political parties now promote themselves as champions of the oppressed “Global South”. All this plays to and preys on Western ideas such as Critical Theory. One result is the organised ‘lawfare’ we saw in action to persuade us to give up the Chagos Islands to a Chinese ally.
Engaging widely and creating global partnerships is a necessary part of addressing immensely serious global challenges. We could help ourselves by treating and respecting all actors as individuals, and dropping unhelpful and divisive collective labels such as “The Global South”. In so doing we might get more respect, not through signalling our own virtue but by acknowledging, understanding and defending where necessary vital national interests. We should not be giving others a stick with which to beat us.
Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB CBE, Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and former Director-General of the Defence Academy
[Image: Andrew Stutesman]