The Global South Is Misunderstood
But it is also a shame that this is how marginalized countries are using their newly-found leverages for something that looks all too similar to the West
In recent years, there has been an emergence of the underdogs gaining more political leverage, power, and discourse in international relations. Advanced and developed countries are paying attention, while some in the commentariat are more dismissive of such a trend existing in the first place.
As alliances in global politics go, the existence of the “global south” is a peculiar one to begin with. It consists of rich and poor countries, developing and supposedly developed countries, and countries that are democracies to authoritarian regimes while also encompassing everything in between.
In geopolitical terms, the global south is just another piece of the geographical imagination. For those who haven’t studied or remembered anything from human geography, the geographical imagination includes descriptions, metaphors, and templates such as “iron curtain,” “Third World,” and “rogue state.” Each of these terms is inherently geographical because places are identified and labeled as such. It then helps to generate a simple model of the world, which can then be used to advise and inform foreign and security policymaking.
For example, the “global north” and the “West” often refer to developed countries mainly located in Europe and North America. However, countries like Japan, New Zealand, and Australia are also widely considered to be Western countries, even though they are positioned in the eastern hemisphere of the map. Members of the global south include China and India, both located in the northern hemisphere of the globe. Even the term is used loosely for some countries because of their mixed political status, for example despite Russia being identified as a country of the global north, many consider it as a global south country because of its shared values with those belonging to that title.
For many, the designated leader of this coalition is undoubtedly China, which has long positioned itself as a unifier and a helping hand for developing countries around the world, all under the mouthy term of “a community with a shared future for mankind” (In Chinese, it sounds much simpler since this is the original version: 人类命运共同体). After China, the two most powerful forces are Russia and Iran, which are both regional political heavyweights, all sharing a similar disdain for the West and the US in particular. Some other “global south” countries that exert considerable influence include India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil. With India’s Modi and Brazil’s Lula advocating their countries can be the loudest mouthpieces given their growing economic and political status.
In recent years, the coalition has grown as a bulwark against the Western-led world order. In theory, instead of dismissing or scoffing at this new alliance, people should celebrate and embrace it. Regardless of your opinions on how the West has successfully led the world since WW2, there are glaring problems left unaddressed by the ones in charge. For example, the US has adopted outdated industrial and trade policies abroad while using effective ones at home, key international institutions (like the UN Security Council) have been woefully inept at addressing and representing less advantaged member states, and there are reasonable complaints that organizations like the ICC have an “Africa bias” as much of its prosecutions target African leaders disproportionally.
But one of the key complaints wedged against what many perceive as Western hegemony is the blatant hypocrisy, specifically comparing the war in Ukraine with its counterpart in Gaza. From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the protests and unrest during the Black Lives Matter protests and the recent college encampment protests concerning the Gaza war, the list of Western hypocrisy is long and exhaustive.
These complaints are valid and easy to spot, take the recent warrant applications to the ICC against Benjamin Netanyahu among five Israeli leaders and Hamas officials over war crimes surrounding the recent conflict. President Biden denounced the applications, pointing out the false equivalency that is lodged against Israeli officials as reported by Al Jazeera.
“Let me be clear, we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” Biden said at a Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House on Monday, the same day Khan announced he was applying for the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes.
“There is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas,” Biden added. Hours earlier, he had issued a strongly-worded statement saying that the ICC warrants were “outrageous”.
Israel is also facing a separate case on alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which was brought by South Africa.
Biden said that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.
“Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), what’s happening in Gaza is not genocide. We reject that,” Biden said in his speech.
Ironically, this pales in comparison when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova over war crime allegations, Biden openly welcomed the decision when the Guardian reported it in March last year.
The US president said Vladimir Putin had clearly committed war crimes and that the arrest warrant for the Russian leader made a “very strong point”.
“Well, I think it’s justified,” Biden said of the warrant on Friday. “But the question is – [the ICC is] not recognised internationally by us either. But I think it makes a very strong point.”
This form of “the law serves thee but not me” is typical in international relations, especially given the context that the US is not a member of the ICC over fears their countrymen could be prosecuted for alleged war crimes during their interventions and war efforts. But that does not make it right. A self-serving interpretation of international law not only gives up hope for a just and fair infrastructure on which political and economic power can be based, but it also actively undermines the West’s messaging that they are the ones defending the liberal world order.
For many countries in the global south, that discrepancy has not gone unnoticed in non-Western media. From RT of Russia, CGTN of China, TRT World of Turkey, and Al Jazeera of Qatar, they have all deliberately or inadvertently nudged their news content to show the hypocrisy of the West by juxtaposing their words and their actions. Even if you disagree with their views and approaches (I have my own complaints about that as well), it is nonetheless a cheap but fair shot. In late April, Indonesia’s leader Prabowo Subianto published an op-ed in the Economist, accusing the West of double standards (A common phrase used by global south countries against the West), arguing their valuation of Ukrainian over Gazan lives is morally indefensible, and he’s not wrong!
How is the destruction of Gaza City less condemnable than the destruction of Mariupol? How is the attack on Bucha worse than the one at al-Shifa hospital? How is killing Palestinian civilians less worthy of denunciation than the killing of Ukrainian civilians?
More and more people in Indonesia and all over the world, in the global south and in the West too, feel that the failure of Western governments to put pressure on Israel to end the war indicates a serious moral crisis. How else can such double standards be explained, where we are asked to have one set of principles for Ukraine and another for the Palestinians?
That article has received rave reviews, especially in Subianto’s home country, which has the largest Islamic population in the world. This comes to another feature that many “global south” countries do share. Based on their legitimate (and occasionally warped) criticisms of Western hegemony comes an element of performative outrage or action that boosts their country’s standing among their own crowd, while conveniently ignoring the hypocrisies from their side.
Instead of conducting international relations and foreign policy based on pure morality, they tend to serve an audience. To be fair, a realist political worldview will likely emphasize how states interact through self-interest, and there is no pure-hearted consciousness guiding their decision-making. However, in many “global south” countries, their geopolitical maneuvers always has an intention to woo audiences at home to praise the current government, while showcasing to other countries how they want their business to be handled.
South Africa’s case against accusing Israel of genocide is one particular example. As I have noted before on this Substack, I believe the case presented to the ICJ is a fair and understandable case that needs to go through the entire legal process and be considered carefully. However, as South Africa is lauded domestically and internationally as the David fighting the Goliath, Sasha Polakow-Suransky of Foreign Policy magazine alludes to the country having a hypocrisy problem on the homefront.
On the foreign-policy front, South Africa’s moral compass had already started to falter. The ANC government had little to say—behind closed doors or in international forums—when its former ally, Robert Mugabe, plunged neighboring Zimbabwe into crisis by stealing elections in 2002 and subsequent years, attacking his political opposition, and fomenting a refugee crisis that sent over 1 million Zimbabweans across the border to South Africa.
Faced with the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown on demonstrators in 2011 that exploded into a subsequent civil war, South Africa abstained in a key U.N. Security Council vote. When the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for former Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir in 2015, South Africa refused to seize him when he arrived on South African soil, despite the clamoring of local human rights lawyers—some of whom were in The Hague in January to argue the case against Israel.
In recent years, the war in Ukraine has received meek criticism from countries that belong to the global south. And South Africa is the perfect case study for how their moral standards are at best, flexible.
The ICC declared two years later that “South Africa breached its international and domestic legal obligations when it failed to arrest Al-Bashir. … South Africa must now put its weight behind international justice which faces increasing global challenges.”
Pretoria arguably had such an opportunity when Ukraine brought a case against Russia two days after Moscow invaded in February 2022; more than 30 other nations intervened to support the case.
Instead, South Africa’s first public statement from President Cyril Ramaphosa was to thank “His Excellency President Vladimir Putin” for taking his call and noting South Africa’s “balanced approach” calling for “mediation and negotiation between the parties.”
Ramaphosa’s government is filled with officials nostalgic for the Cold War days when Moscow aided the anti-apartheid movement and many ANC operatives trained in the Soviet Union; many have simply transferred their historical anti-imperialist allegiances to contemporary Russia. The sense of historical debt runs so deep that when Putin—also facing an ICC arrest warrant—planned to visit South Africa for the BRICS summit last August, Pretoria formally requested that the ICC exempt it from its legal obligation to arrest him. (Putin later decided not to attend in person.)
Some might argue this is relatively historic, and there is a chance that South Africa’s leadership has a come-to-Jesus moment for geopolitical morality. Sorry not sorry, but that is wrong.
Then, last November, just after its foreign minister made an official visit to Iran and met with regime officials not exactly known for their commitment to human rights, South Africa welcomed a delegation of Hamas leaders to the country. They met with leading ANC figures and members of the Mandela family while praising the Oct. 7 operation and denying the extent of its brutality. All of this served to bolster the view that South Africa was not just standing up for Palestinian rights, but that it was explicitly embracing a group that celebrated anti-Jewish violence—all of which undermined Pretoria’s effort to cast itself as a potential peacemaker.
And just one week before South African lawyers put forth genocide charges against Israel in The Hague, President Cyril Ramaphosa welcomed a well-known genocidaire: Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, who has been leading his Rapid Support Forces in a civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces for nearly a year. He is better known for commanding the Janjaweed militias in a well-documented genocidal rampage in Darfur between 2003 and 2005 on behalf of Bashir’s government.
As noted before, despite all the flaws and hypocrisies by South Africa’s side, many international powers have showered the South African government with praise, while domestic support for the unpopular incumbent ANC party has slightly grown in light of the developments.
Hence, it leads to the third feature that countries in the global south share: Trademark nihilism and cynicism about perceived rights and wrongs. Remember the brief mention of media from the global south? When they are not comparing and contrasting the words and actions of Western officials, they often engage in whataboutism and talk of double standards. Essentially, the argument roots down to: If these countries who judge us are hypocrites themselves, why should we listen to them at all when we are right?
For the parental audience reading this piece, you are unlikely to buy that defense from your child. Are you really going to exonerate or not punish your child for doing something wrong, just because they accuse you of hypocrisy so they can get away from it?
Unfortunately for the liberal world order, many countries and individuals buy that defense and that nihilism also leads to something even more alarming. Returning to the Foreign Policy piece on South Africa’s case to the ICJ, Polakow-Suransky reveals how nihilism is translated into emboldenment for many “global south” countries.
Yet at a time when Western double standards have been so spectacularly on display, most of the world seems more than happy to let Pretoria’s past and present moral shortcomings slide. Perhaps that’s because, listening to the formal legal proceedings, punctuated by a robed American judge reading out the court’s interim decision in The Hague’s imposing Peace Palace, many Palestinians and their supporters felt genuinely heard for the first time.
This is damaging to the idealistic view of the world order because that gives way for countries to bend how righteousness is perceived under that political system, and twist it to their own benefit.
Most foreign leaders—and populations—outside of Europe and North America now simply don’t take U.S. or European appeals to support Ukraine on humanitarian grounds seriously given the double standard they perceive and their resentment of the West’s hierarchy of solidarity, which so clearly privileges the victims of its adversaries over those of its allies.
They are likely to dismiss future moral appeals emanating from Western capitals on similar grounds—no matter how valid or urgent the cause may be. That’s bad news for Darfuris, Rohingyas, Uyghurs, and other victimized minorities; it could also be calamitous in places such as Taiwan or Guyana, should larger saber-rattling neighbors like China and Venezuela choose to make good on threats of war.
Essentially, the political discourse many in the global south engage in is not punching up, but dragging down. Because nobody has a clean record on human rights issues, nobody has the moral majority and everyone should do as they please. Even though that argument is tempting for many to use and expect an awkward response from the opposing side, it is fundamentally wrong. Two wrongs don’t equal a right. Just because somebody who accuses you is not perfect themselves, doesn’t mean what they’re saying is not wrong. Reusing the parent-child reference, just because your mom or dad is far from perfect, doesn’t mean you can ignore them and continue your bad behavior!
On top of all the discussion of the global south essentially being the opposition against the West, there is also a problem within the coalition. As much as these countries talk about political and economic collaboration, actually practicing it is much more difficult than theory. As The Economist points out, the collective adhesiveness can wear off ever so slightly on the negotiating table.
The large number of countries in the global south gives it a collective weight, but makes it so heterogenous that reaching consensus on many issues is difficult. Taking a joint stance on, say, human rights is impossible when the group includes democracies but also absolute monarchies, hereditary dictatorships and states run by soldiers. Having a coherent position on climate change is difficult for a club that includes poor energy importers and wealthy oil states. Because several countries are adversaries—think of Iran and Saudi Arabia, or India and China—co-operation on security is unlikely. And given that some economies have repressed, state-run financial systems, while others are more open, the idea of deep financial links, through, for example, a common currency, is a fantasy.
Some of the criticisms hold water. It is true that key international bodies, not least the Security Council of the United Nations, do not give fair representation to the emerging world. Problems that affect emerging economies only, such as the debt crisis in very poor countries, are wrongly neglected. Nonetheless the danger is that the idea of the global south evolves into a sophisticated nihilism. China wants to weaponise it by conflating the idea of being a developing country with being anti-Western, and, by implication, adopting a hostile stance to universal liberal values. The global south is a zone of co-operation and contest, and a critique of the status quo. It does not, and may never, have a broad, coherent agenda for improving the world.
Essentially, the global south is the GOP of international coalitions. Founded for the right causes, but has developed into a full-on opposition party with barely any policy proposals except spite for the other side, and could be proven as weak in actual governance.
Among countries of the global south, their alternative is more transactional than collaborative. The message boils down to the argument that widely adopted universal values based on liberalism and internationalism are failing and a fantasy dreamed up by the colonialist and hypocritical West, so instead join our group-based transactional international order. For any country in the coalition, nobody needs to care or dare criticize what your country is doing, because it’s none of their business. As long as you hate the West, you have an automatic membership card.
However, there is a big flaw hidden within the global south that could implode or explode depending on who holds the trigger. Despite their bravado as allies and friends, the connections that bind many leading global south countries are weaker than many think. For example, Russia and China have developed an incredibly close relationship given their recent meetings between the leaders of the two nations. But at closer inspection, you can see the inherent distrust beneath the handshakes. Both countries have territorial disputes, and China’s support of Russia is way beneath the coined term of a “no-limits partnership” that Xi proposed in 2022, days before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The glue that binds their cooperation is their disdain for the West, take that away from it and see what happens. Imagine if tomorrow, the West and the US lost all their perceived international strength and were relegated to sharing the same geopolitical power as the UK does now. That leaves a wide and open goal for “global south” countries to assert their dominance and form a unipolar world instead of a multipolar world today. Suffice it to say, these relationships will be broken in a heartbeat, and a massive global south infighting will commence.
That is the problem with friendships built on hate for the other side and personal gain, whether it is political or monetary. If those adhesive arguments that bind the global south are gone or eroded, you’re unlikely to keep that friendship in the long term. Even worse, enemies can be forged out of broken promises and worn-out friendships.
Another (but less certain) possibility is the explosion option, in which Western countries could sneakily use leaders of the global south’s disdain for them against each other inside their alliance. Theoretically, the US and the West could empower the minor members of the global south into their proxies and undermine the collective messaging by the coalition, but that is highly unlikely given their priorities and the political cost at home and abroad.
Ironically, the global south has become more like the West instead of a worthy international counterpart to Western hegemony. Instead of showing a contrasting difference as a coalition that could both recognize its mistakes while leading from moral and political authority, their use of that newly-founded voice descends into pointless finger-pointing and self-servitude, quite like the West. From a realistic point of view, the end outcome inevitably looks like this, but it doesn’t make it any less disappointing.