![]() ![]() On 1 June, the BRICS foreign ministers met in Cape Town (South Africa) ahead of the summit between their heads of states that is set to take place this August in Johannesburg. It is this re-assertion of national and regional interests within the Global South that has revived a set of regional processes, including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States ( CELAC) and the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) process. The rise of these developing countries – despite the great social inequality that exists within them – has produced a new attitude amongst their middle classes which is reflected in the increased confidence of their governments: they no longer accept the parochial views of the Triad countries as universal truths, and they have a greater wish to exert their own national and regional interests. Our calculations, based on the IMF datamapper, show that for the first time in centuries, the Gross Domestic Product of the Global South countries surpassed that of the Global North countries this year. This thirty-year-old US-led project is now floundering, partly due to the internal weaknesses of the Triad countries (including their weakened position in the global economy) and partly due to the rise of the ‘ locomotives of the South’ (led by China, but including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria). After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States asserted its primacy over the international order and, along with its Triad vassals, established what it called the ‘ rules-based international order’. In mid-April, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released its Diplomatic Bluebook 2023, in which it noted that we are now at the ‘end of the post-Cold War era’. These final words bear repeating: ‘the Global South… is reorganising to pursue its own interests’. Credit Suisse describes these ‘fractures’ accurately: ‘The global West (Western developed countries and allies) has drifted away from the global East (China, Russia, and allies) in terms of core strategic interests, while the Global South (Brazil, Russia, India, and China and most developing countries) is reorganising to pursue its own interests’. ![]() In its Investment Outlook 2023 report, Credit Suisse pointed to the ‘deep and persistent fractures’ that have opened up in the international order – another way of referring to what Jaishankar called the ‘changing world’. Second, like many governments in the Global South, it recognises that we live in ‘changing world’ and that the traditional major powers – especially the United States – need to ‘adjust to those changes’. First, the Indian government – which does not oppose the United States, either in terms of its programme or temperament – is uninterested in being drawn into a US-led bloc system (the ‘NATO treaty construct’, as Jaishankar put it). There are two significant takeaways from Jaishankar’s statements. ‘One of the challenges of a changing world’, Jaishankar said, ‘is how do you get people to accept and adjust to those changes’. India, he said, is not interested in being part of NATO Plus, wishing to maintain a greater degree of geopolitical flexibility. ‘It seems almost like that is the only template or viewpoint with which they look at the world… That is not a template that applies to India’. ‘A lot of Americans still have that NATO treaty construct in their heads’, Jaishankar said in a press conference on 9 June. The Indian government’s response to this ‘NATO Plus’ formulation echoed the sentiment of its earlier remarks about purchasing Russian oil. This policy statement was released shortly after the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, where India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the various G7 leaders, including US President Joe Biden, as well as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On 24 May, the US Congress’s Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party released a policy statement on Taiwan which asserted that ‘he United States should strengthen the NATO Plus arrangement to include India’. However, such comments have not deterred Washington’s efforts to win India over to its agenda. But I suspect, looking at the figures, probably our total purchases for the month would be less than what Europe does in an afternoon’. If you are looking at energy purchases from Russia, I would suggest that your attention should be focused on Europe… We do buy some energy which is necessary for our energy security. His answer was blunt: ‘I noticed you refer to oil purchases. In April 2022, at a joint press conference in Washington, DC with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jaishankar was asked to explain India’s continued purchase of oil from Russia. Jaishankar has been vocal in defending his government’s refusal to accede to Washington’s pressure. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, India’s Foreign Minister S. ![]()
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