The Global South Builds Its Own Future

The fight for a just new world economic order has clearly escalated since the historic summit of the BRICS in Johannesburg, at which six new nations were invited to join as of Jan. 1, 2024, to form the BRICS+ (cf. SAS 34, 35/23). Some 20 other countries have applied for membership, and countless others are looking to this new constellation of forces to help ensure their development.

The trans-Atlantic world, as to be expected, is determined to sabotage the process, through a combination of financial warfare and geopolitical destabilizations. Their immediate target is Argentina, one of the six new member nations, where an existential battle is now underway (cf. below). At the same time, Washington and London, in particular, are attempting to lure Saudi Arabia, another of the six, away from the BRICS and from its growing trade relationship with China.

At the G20 summit, which takes place this weekend in New Delhi, the European Union hopes to take advantage of the absence of both President Xi Jinping and President Putin to strong-arm the African delegates attending. According to a report in Bloomberg, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, among others, will propose to redefine the EU’s partnership with Africa, as a supposed counterweight to the many Russian and Chinese initiatives.

However, given the record of the “unipolar world” in freeing the Global South from neo-colonialism, these attempts are unlikely to succeed. Indian Prime Minister Modi for one, who is hosting the G20 summit, is quite optimistic about the new orientation the vast majority of the world is choosing. He told Press Trust of India last week that while the G20 is an influential grouping in terms of its combined economic might, “a GDP-centric view of the world is now changing to a human-centric one,” and just as a new world order was born after World War II, a new world order is now taking shape.

“The shift to a human-centric approach has begun globally and we are playing the role of a catalyst”, he stated. “India’s G20 Presidency has also sowed the seeds of confidence in the countries of the so-called Third World.” Rejecting the accountant mentality at the core of British monetarism, Modi noted: “For a long time, India was perceived as a nation of over 1 billion hungry stomachs. But now, India is being seen as a nation of over 1 billion aspirational minds, more than 2 billion skilled hands, and hundreds of millions of young people.”

Such a perspective is what all of humanity urgently needs.