Jean-Noël Barrot is convinced of this: “There is no global south. »» However, the recent summit of the Shanghai cooperation organization bringing together the leaders of the “South”, Xi Jinping in the lead, flanked by Putin and the North Korean Kim Jong-un, has shown the consistency. Significantly, the Chinese military parade commemorated the 80th anniversary of Japan defeat, perceived as the main Western pawn in Asia.
This nebula of powers, which does not form any formal block, is thus recognized first in the refusal of the domination of the West. “” Deep south ” Or ” Global South », The concept is criticized, sometimes denigrated as was the “Civilization shock”as if to deny the downgrading of our influence. The “North” nevertheless encountered his reality when he became aware of his helplessness to lead to the rest of the world in his condemnation of Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Since the Persians threatening the ancient Greeks, the West has never stopped being coveted and disputed. But while the countries of the South have long used Western modernity to seek to rise, they now want to design themselves to satisfy their “Revanchism” and reconnect with an idealized precolonial past. The “third world” praised by Maoism has given way to the “decolonial” ambition of a new global order dominated by the South. It is then less a endless decline of the West than a recomposition of the world without him and against him.
Economic and social disparities
The emergence of the south has flowered on the soil made unstable of the West by the world’s 20th century world conflicts and decolonization. Its magisterium and its capacity for attraction have sustainably suffered. Nevertheless, this emancipation still fed on Western codes. We freed ourselves here in the name of the Republic, there, in the name of a sovereignty in Anglo-Saxon fashion. In 1952, Alfred Sauvy then invented the Third World, a sort of third state of countries “Underdeveloped” renamed “Development ». The Cold War classified them de facto Among the non-aligned making them the chessboard on which the two blocks clashed by peripheral conflicts. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the First Gulf War in Iraq symbolically transforms the east-west confrontation into North-South opposition.
But in the wake of the Indonesian conference of Bandung, in 1955, the South claimed an autonomy of action and thought which was embodied in group 77 (1964) and the organization of solidarity with the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America (1966) then around the concept of Global Southmobilized by American university leftism at the time of the Vietnam War to become a cultural weapon at the service of the “oppressed peoples”. The goal is first of all to favor South-South cooperation by trying to escape the domination of the dollar. The term rewarding of “South Global” presents itself as a revenge on the infamous brand of Third World. The BRICS as the Shanghai cooperation organization comfort this name.
Admittedly, economic and social disparities are gaping between a few giants and a host of fragile nations. The patterns of friction are also numerous between them but their detestation of The decadent West And its universalist claims makes them unitedly. They would be worth defining what the West is but their resentment in it is enough to orient their policy. The countries of the South are thus disinterested mainly from the Ukrainian conflict which they consider as a Western war, barely pronounce against the sanctions taken from an important economic partner, and through which, they believe they see a form of imperialist arrogance. Like South Africa, they have no more reason to support Israel which appears to be the advanced post in the United States. Beijing is strong to want to bring over the overwhelming Taiwan, and some lost islands, in the Chinese lap. The “global south” is thus found against the American hydra draped in the clothes of NATO and its soft power.
Western countries would do well to measure the hatred they have aroused and take their destiny in hand
But the emergence of this non-Western postmodernity does not only claim to rebalance international relations but now erase colonial humiliation. The South intends to restore its precolonial past by desoccidenizing. Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and even India want to reconnect with the imperial glory which would have been theirs before the European “large conquests” of the 16th century. Westerners, starting with France, are chased from Africa or Latin America for the benefit of Russia and China.
African leaders use the rope of their refusal of Western modernity to marry the nationalist aspirations of the young generations and hope to stay in power. But this assumed will of Russian, Turkish or Chinese domination reconstructs a form of colonialism which does not say its name. Their neo -plating, based on the leveling of cultures, participates in a new globalization which they claim to fight.
Towards a new world order?
The competition to take the head of the South Global to make a deleterious rivalry between the “Great South”. Modi’s India seems to have had its time before binding, disappointed with the pricing policy of the United States, to its best Chinese enemy but has not given up its ambitions on cashmere. L'” Boundary friendship “Between Putin and Xi could be spoiled by” The Renaissance of the Chinese nation (…) unstoppable ». Iran is still waiting for the support of its Chinese “ally” after the strikes against its nuclear sites. The Red Emperor boasts the multi-alignment but, inhabited by the providential mission to restore the lost grandeur of his country, would like to submit his “vassals” to his new world order.
We can gloss with sarcasm on the relevance of the “South Global” label and prophesy its burst. But in the meantime, the Western countries would do well to measure the hatred they have aroused and to take their destiny in hand not to give the lesson to the world but to pull themselves together with a force that they have left to those who have no modesty to exhibit it to impress us. We should be less concerned with a reflux of the West than in the rise of the global south. To our moral exhaustion, this South opposes its economic and above all demographic dynamism. But the West has not disappeared, it has only lost confidence in its own power, in inertia, in comfort or for fear. The West, even devitalized, still seduces. He just has to be convinced.
