The History and Relevance of the Global South
Context:
- As a result of multiple important countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America declining to back NATO in the conflict in Ukraine, the term “Global South” has once again gained attention.
Global South:
- The term “Global South” is not geographical in nature. Rather, it alludes to a range of commonalities among states in terms of politics, geography, and the economy.
- This phrase refers to a wide range of countries that are commonly described as “developing,” “less developed,” or “underdeveloped.”
- The majority of these countries are found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, however not all of them are.
- The “Global North” countries, which are wealthy nations mostly in North America and Europe with small additions in Oceania and elsewhere, typically live in harsher environments and have shorter life expectancies. Additionally, they typically have lower life expectancies, have greater levels of wealth disparity, and are generally impoverished.
‘Third World’ and Beyond:
- The term “Global South” seems to have been first created by political activist Carl Oglesby in 1969.
- However, the term didn’t fully catch on until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which also marked the end of the so-called “Second World.”
- Before that, states in the developing world or those that hadn’t fully industrialised were more commonly referred to as “Third World” countries.
- The terms “First World,” “Second World,” and “Third World” were used to designate developed capitalist nations, communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union, and rising nations, many of which were still under to colonial domination, respectively.
- The idea that dictatorial banana republics were synonymous with the “Third World” throughout time was popularised by Western media.
- The end of the so-called Second World and the collapse of the Soviet Union offered a sufficient justification for the word “Third World” to likewise disappear.
- Throughout this time, the terms “developed,” “developing,” and “underdeveloped” came under fire for conflating Western nations with the ideal and characterising everyone outside of that group as backward.
- They were being substituted more frequently with the euphemistic term “Global South.”
Geopolitical, not geographic:
- The term “Global South” is not geographical in nature. The two largest countries in the Global South, China and India, are actually entirely in the Northern Hemisphere.
- Rather, it alludes to a range of commonalities among states in terms of politics, geography, and the economy.
- Most countries in the Global South were under imperialism and colonial rule, with African countries acting as perhaps the most notable example of this.
- They acquire a radically different understanding of what dependency theorists have referred to as the relationship between the core and the periphery of the global political economy, or, to put it more succinctly, the connection between “the West and the rest.”
- By 2030, the top four economies are expected to be China, India, the United States, and Indonesia, with three of them coming from the Global South.
- The BRICS nations, which are dominated by the Global South and comprise Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have already surpassed the GDP of the G-7 club in terms of purchasing power. In addition, Beijing has more millionaires right now than New York City.
Conclusion:
- Brazil’s efforts to develop a peace plan to end the turmoil in Ukraine or China’s efforts to mediate the reunification of Iran and Saudi Arabia are just two examples of how the Global South is quickly making its presence felt on the world scene.
- The so-called “developing countries” and the “Third World” have never possessed the political and economic clout that the Global South currently possesses.
