From the Third World to the Third World

In the midst of a growing confrontation between great powers, the Global South, at one time called the Third World, is growing, but the world of third parties: countries that have become more important and that do not allow themselves to be carried away by the prevailing tension between the west plus, expanded towards the Indo-Pacific (essentially with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) and a China that has awakened to become the second power in the world, in addition to an aggressive Russia. These third parties have seen their weight, power and influence grow in recent years, especially with the war between Russia and Ukraine/the West. It is not like in the cold war, in which they had to choose a camp, or stand with the non-aligned, a movement once led by India, but which is not being revived. This is something different.

These powers have increased their room for maneuver, forming multidirectional, triangular or more, multinodal foreign relations, in a world that thus becomes more difficult to understand and manage than in the days of the cold war. From the three worlds of yesteryear, in which China partly replaces the Soviet Union and its empire, we have gone on to an outbreak of powers –including some huge companies– that interact with each other and with others in a complex.

Let’s start with what is, or will be, the most important of the third parties and perhaps, due to its positions and possibilities, one of the most interesting countries in the world: India. The UN services expect it to become the most populous country on the planet this year, ahead of a China whose population is shrinking and aging. It is also becoming a scientific power and technological, already larger, for example, than the United Kingdom; military, with nuclear weapons; and energy, with its large investments in renewables (like Morocco and others, China in the first place, by the way). This India, democratic, although with the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, more nationalist and authoritarian, sees China as its biggest rival and approaches the United States and the West in general, who court it to compensate for Chinese power. The Indian delegation was the largest at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos.

“India intends to establish itself as a main leader of the Global South and project its vision, importance and values ​​in the G20 that it is chairing this year”

While India continues to buy gas, oil – which it still needs, and which it later re-exports as diesel and other derivatives to Europe and the US, among others – and weapons from Russia, it participates in some initiatives with the US – such as the QUAD , the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Dialogue– and in others with China –it has been a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization since 2017–, while distancing itself from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war. New Delhi aims to establish itself as a leading leader in the Global South and project its vision, importance and values ​​at the G20 that it is chairing this year. Modi advocates the creation of a new world order that guarantees the well-being of the citizens of developing countries, and considers that the next phase of world growth will come from the countries of the South. As the analyst points out Raja Mohanwho recently visited Madrid, India presents itself as a bridge between the Global South and developed countries.

Second example: the Saudi Arabia of Mohamed bin Salmán (MBS). On Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Riyadh – his third departure from him since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic – the Saudis reached a deal worth $29 billion. And although they did not formalize that a part of the oil sold to China – the country that buys the most crude in the world, Saudi Arabia being its first supplier – would be paid in yuan (renminbi), they did accept, like others from the Gulf Cooperation Council, to open this path, which would question, if materialized, the centrality of the dollar, a perspective that is reinforced with several countries trading in other currencies. The Saudis, who buy huge amounts of US weapons to counter Iran – another third party that is gaining importance – have realized that neither because of oil nor because of their weight in the Middle East do they import as much to Washington anymore, despite Joe’s visit Biden to Riyadh. In this way, they broaden their room for maneuver and diversify their foreign policy. “Diversification”, which applies on a general scale in the case of these third powers, has fully entered the Saudi diplomatic vocabulary.

Third case, Turkey. It is a member of NATO and has a base where the US stores nuclear weapons. It is against Russia in Syria and in Libya. It wants US F-16s, but in 2019 it bought air defense systems from Moscow. He is the only member of the Atlantic Alliance that has refused to adopt sanctions against Russia, although it has blocked the passage of Russian warships through the strategic straits it controls for the duration of the war in Ukraine. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, prime minister between 2003 and 2014 and since then president, with authoritarian tendencies, has also expanded his room for manoeuvre, as a regional power, with an increasing presence in Africa as well. Turkey, as an intermediary, reached an agreement for the output of Ukraine and Russia through the Black Sea of ​​17 million tons of grain and fertilizers, which some developing countries craved to avoid famine.

Like many other Latin American countries, Mexico has been restrained in its condemnation of Russia and has not agreed to adopt any sanctions, while pushing for the UN, India and the Vatican to lead a committee to negotiate a five-year truce between Russia and Ukraine.

Fourth example: Mexico. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had distanced himself, politically, from the US, with Donald Trump and his wall. He praised Biden for not building another foot of fence on the border with his country when he hosted him alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the North American Leaders Summit. But, like many other Latin American countries, it has been restrained in its condemnation of Russia and has not agreed to adopt any sanctions. Now, Mexico is pushing for the UN, India and the Vatican to lead a committee to negotiate a five-year truce between Russia and Ukraine.

There are many other third powers on the rise, from Morocco –which has greatly expanded its regional importance–, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt or Nigeria, in Africa, and others in the Gulf (United Arab Emirates, Qatar), Asia or Latin America. In fact, Parag Khanna already anticipated it, in other conditions, in his book The Second World, in which in 2008 he glimpsed the rise of these powers, which have grown and grown since then. The Global South does not end with the aforementioned countries, but has many more. Without unity, but with some important common elements, such as their frustration with the Western powers that colonized them for a long time and that only serve them when it suits them and then forget about them. They see how Westerners pour billions of public dollars and euros into their economies, and the European Union imposes environmental taxes on what they buy, while they sweat to grow. They look to China, above all, with which they sympathize, but also to Russia, which provides them with investments and other elements, without conditioning, although with geopolitical consequences. They are increasingly influencing the UN, not its Security Council, quite paralyzed, but the General Assembly and other environments.

Many of these third parties have condemned the Russian invasion and annexation of a part of Ukraine, but have not joined the sanctions against Moscow, but rather frown on them, while considering the war as a matter of the North, of powerful even though they are affected and concerned about its impact on their economies and food security. Freezing the assets of the Central Bank of Russia – and other private ones – in the West has created a precedent that worries these countries. The rise in interest rates in the US hurts them. In the Global South, countries are increasingly wary of the dominance of the dollar in the international financial system, including the G7, described by the Biden administration as nothing less than the “organizing committee of the free world”.

In any case, the world has changed with the rise of these third-party powers seeking diversification. Western diplomacies have only partially adapted to this ongoing transformation. They all run to Africa. They will also have to diversify their foreign action. They will have to reconnect with that third world, in another way. china already it is doing. Russia, too.