Some Questions for the Global South

I'm not entirely sold on their current set of stylized facts about the world.

Photo by Srivatsan Balaji on Unsplash

In the fourteen months since Russia invaded Ukraine, one of low-level anxieties running through Western capitals has been the degree to which the Global South has sat on the sidelines during the conflict. At least half of the world’s population live in countries that have adopted a position of neutrality on the conflict.

To be clear, countries like Brazil, India, or South Africa have not supported Russia’s invasion — check the UN General Assembly votes. But they have not opposed it either, and goshdarnit if they don’t keep making statements that suggest some chafing against the West. These range from Brazilian President Lula vowing to “balance world geopolitics” and diversify away from the dollar to Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar complaining that, “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” It almost makes one fear the formation of an anti-Western “Legion of Doom.”

So bravo to the editors of Foreign Affairs, who this week released their May/June issue with a cover special devoted to “The Nonaligned World.” As their leader explains, “Governments and populations across much of the developing world have met gauzy ‘free world’ rhetoric with a series of increasingly vehement objections: about Western double standards and hypocrisy, about decades of neglect of the issues most important to them, about the mounting costs of the war and of sharpening geopolitical tensions.” These include essays from Matias Spektor on the upsides of hedging and and Nirupam Rao on the upsides of great power rivalry. Other essays include Tim Murithi on sub-Saharan Africa, Huong Le Thu on Southeast Asia, and David Miliband on the West’s failure to address development concerns.

Several themes recur in these essays explaining why the Global South refuses to leave their fence and pick a side in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Digesting these perspectives are useful — particularly the authors’ collective eye-rolling on the democratic values rhetoric. After reading them, however, I detected a set of common stylized facts — casual assertions that guide a lot of their thinking — that merit further interrogation. In no particular order:

First, just how hypocritical is the West? Both Spektor and Rao stress that Western critiques of Russia’s invasion smack of hypocrisy given past/ongoing American and European behavior. Spektor writes, “most countries in the global South find it difficult to accept Western claims of a ‘rules-based order’ when the United States and its allies frequently violate the rules—committing atrocities in their various wars, mistreating migrants, dodging internationally binding rules to curb carbon emissions, and undermining decades of multilateral efforts to promote trade and reduce protectionism.” Rao writes, “Europe and Washington may be right that Russia is violating human rights in Ukraine, but Western powers have carried out similarly violent, unjust, and undemocratic interventions—from Vietnam to Iraq. New Delhi is therefore uninterested in Western calls for Russia’s isolation.”

These critiques have some merit, but what they elide is how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is also a flagrant violation of the norms of territorial sovereignty and not changing borders through territorial conquest. Russia has formally annexed four regions in Ukraine (even though they do not control all of them) on top of their forcible annexation of Crimea back in 2014. The last time a country tried that was when Saddam Hussein tried to annex Kuwait, and I recall a more global response to that situation. It’s been a long time since Western countries have annexed territory by force of arms. Given the relative importance of internationally recognized borders for many states in the Global South, just how interested are they in seeing this norm erode?

Second, are the sanctions really worse than the war itself? Rao writes, “aggressive economic sanctions imposed by wealthy countries on Russia have generated costs, including higher food prices, for people who are far removed from the war in Ukraine.” This echoes laments made by other Indian observers like Pratap Mehta that the sanctions against Russia are as big of a problem as the invasion itself.

I have written a little bit about economic sanctions in my day, and am perfectly willing to acknowledge their overuse. On this claim, however, my response is: what in the world are you smoking? As the Congressional Research Service recently noted, “U.S. and EU sanctions do not prohibit the exportation of agricultural commodities from, to, or involving Russia. Transactions involving agricultural trade are exempt from financial sanctions.”¹ The sanctions have imposed, at best, a modest transaction cost on agricultural trade with Russia.

On the other hand, you know what has really elevated food prices? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine! Since the latter country is a vital source of food exports to the Global South. it sure seems like blockading Ukrainian ports, attacking grain storage facilities, and stealing Ukrainian food has contributed way more to higher food prices in the Global South. Why aren’t leaders of the Nonaligned movement speaking out more about how Russia’s war bears primary responsibility?² Could it be because they are swallowing Russian narratives?

Finally, is the world as multipolar as you think? Spektor concludes, “The countries of the global South are poised to hedge their way into the mid-twenty-first century. They hedge not only to gain material concessions but also to raise their status, and they embrace multipolarity as an opportunity to move up in the international order.” Read enough of these articles and the words “multipolar” and “polycentric” recur a lot.

I’m still enough of a realist to ask whether the world is as multipolar as Brazil, India, and other members of the Global South think it is. Indeed, in that same issue of Foreign Affairs, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth argue that, “the United States has become less dominant over the past 20 years, but it remains at the top of the global power hierarchy—safely above China and far, far above every other country.” At worst, it’s a world of emerging bipolarity, in which maybe China is a peer competitor. What it is not is a polycentric or multipolar world. If this is true, are the benefits of hedging and nonalignment really as great as Spektor and others posit? Huong Le Thu writes that ASEAN countries “have learned how to use U.S.-Chinese competition to their advantage, playing the two powers against each other for their own economic benefit.” But he also acknowledges that, “whether the region can maintain its position is an open question.”

My questions should not be read as dismissing everything in these essays³ — it’s a must-read package, especially for U.S. policymakers trying to figure out how the United States can compete with China and Russia in wooing the Global South. How best to do that will be the topic of a subsequent column.

1. The CRS report also noted “Russia’s exports to Brazil, China, India, and Turkey have increased by at least 50% since the 2022 war started, relative to the previous year.” Sounds to me like India in particular is doing pretty well by the sanctions on Russia!

2. To be fair, countries like India and Turkey have played an important role in making sure the Black Sea Grain Initiative has continued to function despite Russia’s desire to completely choke off Ukraine’s economy.

3. Thu’s repeated characterization of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy as “aggressive” is particularly noteworthy.