World disorder: Can the Global South define itself?

War, that hoary ‘institution’ has returned as the arbiter of world politics and international relations. The maneuverings around AUKUS, the QUAD and the incipient but budding militarisation by the principal Cold War 2.0 antagonists- China and the United States- are elements of the militarisation of international relations. But had war really disappeared from the fabric and vitals of world politics? 

No. 

If Gulf War I and II along with mini conflicts around the world are any indication. It may be that the world was led to believe that war had disappeared from the political life of states and relations between these. But assuming that war is no longer salient but has been given an impetus by Putin’s Ukraine war, how is the non-West to comport itself? Should it align itself with either of the principal adversaries? Should it (the global South) comport itself as a separate entity? Or should it take a leaf from the play of raison d’etat and look after itself? What would this mean in practice?

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Post the outbreak of Ukraine war, the global South has once again become important. It will be and is being wooed by powers that be in a power configuration that is ‘loosely bipolar’. In the previous global confrontation between the United States and the former USSR, by and large the global South latched onto either side for petty crumbs- foreign aid, arms supplies and support for issues that the South was bedeviled by. 

I am not suggesting here that the non-West in the putative Great Power conflict between China and the West extort rents from either side. No, that would not only be petty but also self-defeating. If ‘more than crumbs’ are to be sought after, then that would, among other things mean that the non-West is still colonised (in the mind) and is analogous to the ‘brown sahib’ of the South Asian variant who grovels before the ‘white’ west, stands erect before the white sahib to take some crumbs home.

So what is the non-West or the global South to do?

Comport and conduct itself with self-respect and honorably is the answer.

What would this mean in practice?

One prong of the answer is to stay non-aligned. But this might neither be prudent nor expedient. The non-west or the global South must identify its interests as a collective entity and group and either as individual constituent units or as a group define itself. This self-definition is extremely important: it will determine that the non-West is neither seen as a pawn to be instrumentalised in a Great Power conflict nor does it become a groveling entity ever ready to be used by either side.

What would a robust and vigorous self-definition and identification of interest(s) mean?

At one level, it would mean and entail understanding the fact that the non-West is not beholden to any side: It is what is – neither the East nor the West. By that I mean the non-West must straddle and occupy the middle ground and then engage in ‘cherry picking’- more philosophically and ideationally than in material terms. But cherry-picking must not mean donning and adopting wholesale ideas say of the West but synthesis of the best that the West has to offer with the non-West’s traditions and philosophies, privileging its own idioms in a non-chauvinistic manner.

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With respect to interest identification, it is pretty simple. The non-West’s major interest is economic growth and development allied to the vitals of ‘power as interest’. Economic growth and development would mean the primacy of multi-lateral co-operation in these spheres.  Here the famed phrase of Deng Ziao Peng’s phrase, ‘No matter if it is a white or a black cat. As long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat’ would be apt and appropriate for the non-West or the global South.

But it is in the realm of ‘interest as power’ or its converse, matters become tricky. The non-West must understand the nature of power in the 21st century: Is it in hard power or smart power- the synthesis of soft and hard power? Does power lie in advanced technology and its various applications or human capital development? Or does it lie in culture and applied knowledge? Or in media production? Or even though this ‘list’ is not exhaustive does power lie in all these forms and dimensions?

I would posit that power is a compendium of all these forms and it is here that the non-West or the global South must focus on. But this focus must be non-adversarial and tread a fine line where the non-West carves out its own identity and craft a paradigm of power where, ‘ it neither becomes the servant of the sahibs’ nor latches onto the other adversarial great power. 

This, to repeat, is a fine, delicate path to tread upon and it is here that the diplomatic talent, finesse and craft of international relations will come into play. The post-Ukraine war world is a ’new’ world defined by a degree of disorder. This is a potential opportunity for the non-West or the global South to redefine and re-assert itself in an idiom that smells of roses. Is the non- West upto it? Time will tell...

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)

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