I would add a category called “failed states” where the little development that these managed to have is going in reverse. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Lebanon, Syria and the likes.
I get the impression that the countries who are keenest on the term “Global South”, or the rhetoric related to it, are middle-income regional hegemons. For countries like China, Turkey, and Brazil, the term itself and some other Global South-flavoured language (E.g. developing country, post-colonial) are handy to make them seem less threatening to their neighbours. Even Russia is keen on the notion that the “Global South” is on its side. Singapore is not a regional hegemon, but it uses the term to fit in more, as you pointed out.
India is interesting. The government seems to use the idea selectively when it benefits it, like in climate negotiations. But it is way less eager than some others to couch its entire geopolitical strategy in that terminology.
The colloquial term basically means “poor country where you probably shouldn’t drink the tap water”. Expecting these countries to be united on anything is as foolish as thinking there’s a “POC” coalition.
You shouldn't drink tap water in Russia, nor is it particularly rich (especially outside the two cities). Somehow, it has been colored as Global North.
I agree. Russia is an anomaly. The economy is built from petroleum exports. But it possesses some of the highest technology on par with the US. But it does not export or develop them. It has yet to reach the middle-income trap.
Yeah, the inclusion of Russia in the "North" makes no sense (it's poorer than many countries in South and Central America, and probably poorer than China by now) but if you leave it out then it makes the "north/south" terminology look even more like rubbish than it already does.
Next up let's draw the squiggly line to encompass the United Arab Emirates in the North. And probably Uruguay too, they're richer than many countries in Eastern Europe. Let's not forget Brunei.
Oct 29, 2023·edited Oct 29, 2023Liked by Noah Smith
Nice charts.
My experience with the “Global South” term dates from university 40 years ago where it was bandied about by wealthy white professors and activists, anti-colonialists all. I didn’t think much of it then (or now).
Much easier to claim to speak for billions of poor brown people from your comfortable offices in former imperial HQs if you can lump all the billions into one big group.
Back then I always thought the old “non-aligned” grouping was more interesting because 1) it was created by the countries themselves rather than by rich, white American and British professors and 2) was an interesting way to maximize aid and attention from both sides of the Cold War.
Even now as people talk again about the global south (which, as Noah points out, don’t have a ton of overlapping interests) it is the “non-aligned” that really matter (with India still at the heart of them).
I remember being taught in 5th grade history class (this was a long long time ago) that countries that manufacture and export advanced goods are developed nations and those that mainly export raw materials are colonies / undeveloped nations. Still seems pretty accurate.
I guess Australia does quite a bit of raw material export. I presume it dwarfs other stuff, but I they do have some relatively significant advance exports like Education, business/financial services, travel. So not quite a Venezuela 😁 Though they could become an effective colony of China if they don't watch out.
In Australia there's occasional national handwringing over how we export so damn much raw materials (iron ore being our number one export) and how it makes us look like one of those poor countries.
Realistically though, the problem is that making steel out of iron ore just isn't all that profitable, at least not with Australian (and worse still, north-west Australian) labour and energy costs. Someone could easily put in a huge steel plant at Port Kembla to export steel instead of ore if it would actually make money, but you'd need to pay all your employees $300K+ to work up there, and it wouldn't be competitive with just shipping the stuff to some other country where people are happy to work in a furnace for much lower wages and nobody will complain about your CO2 emissions.
Other than that, most of our other big exports are things that don't really permit a lot of further processing -- coal briquettes, gas, gold, wheat.
During 2020 and 2021 there were certainly gags about Australia being "South China" (and New Zealand being "New Xiland") based on the Zero Covid policy that those countries then had in common.
Quasi-related I recently wondered why the phrase "Anglophone countries" seems to mean "US, UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand if I remember it exists" with South Africa in a quantum state of inclusion and conspicuously leave out Nigeria, Singapore, India, Jamaica, Botswana, the Philippines, etc.
In the Caribbean, there's both patois and the local dialect of English. Patois is a different language (from English) with some mutual comprehensibility. I don't know Singapore as well, but I suspect that the same is true - that is, there's Singlish which is not English but is clearly related, and there's Singapore English, which is a local dialect of English influenced by Singlish.
Really it's mostly about culture. Those first countries were settler colonies that received most of their population from Europe (or European countries conquered directly by England), while the rest are much more mixed.
Resource-based countries too easily fall into one-dimensional economies. They suffer through cyclical prices of commodities. Diversity is best for investing, as well as for stabilizing economies. If people have stability and plenty to lose, they’re generally less inclined to go to war. For example, if you brought back the military draft and raised the draft-eligibility age to 45, I think you’d see a significant shift in sentiment related to war. It’s easy to sit back and watch people who are in the age range 18-25 become cannon fodder. They likely have little material wealth to lose and likely to not have started families. Sadly, many young people join the military to escape abusive parents/households. A peace-time military is a good gig, until it isn’t. Diverse prosperity benefits the entire world.
The thesis seems to be that “the leftists that I love to bash are saying US is losing support in the Global South over Israel. Lets not focus on the unpopularity, and instead on the idea of the global south, an the idea of the Global South is a contested political term with tenuous economics behind it. Since it’s political, then it doesn’t matter, so lets stop using the term, discourse will be so much better for it! Also I totally owned them. Do not question US popularity either. ”
That logic is nonsense. The Global South is a loaded political term. So what? How does the terms origin have anything to do with the fact that the US support for Israel is unpopular globally? Support for the siege is not popular pretty much anywhere, the US can get 14 votes of support in the UN for its resolution, and even at home in many of the countries that support, support is at best contested.
Your argument is immaterial and betrays I suppose a new conceit of this column - US centrists really just don’t care about the opinions and motivations of most of the world. Couch your disregard in whatever circuitous jargon or great power politics you want, but people outside the club of people you think matter aren’t stupid.
The Muslim world in particular can obviously see that you don’t care about them or their interests. Its obvious for example the way that you cite India’s support (which surprise, surprise has its own domestic reasons for stanning Israel) and not Indonesia or Turkey’s vehement distaste for the conflict.
In any case draw whatever fancy lines you want on the map that helps you feel better broski, the unpopularity is getting to Biden. This column continues to give off post-9/11 centrist warmonger consensus vibes.
This whole comment felt very juvenile and quite beside the point.
"This column continues to give off post-9/11 centrist warmonger consensus vibes." <-- This was a post about global development. Did you even read it, or did you just come here to blast out some anti-U.S. propaganda?
I for one genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, RM. I love out of consensus takes but can’t seem to figure out your point.
I think Noah’s point is pretty simple. Lefty polemicists love the notion of GS as it helps them draw the world in simple black and white terms. In reality much as changes and many members of the GS are exhibiting characteristics of the GN. So the oppression thesis seems a lot weaker than commonly portaged by the left.
My point is very simple. Noone cares about the reductio ad absurdum argument Noah is making in this article critiquing the idea of the Global South.
Noone.
What does it matter what you call the group of countries who disagree with the state of affairs in Gaza? Its the majority of the world.
And make no mistake, this article is about Gaza. It starts and ends mentioning the invasion.
The whole article reads like a technocrat defending the globally unpopular status quo in Gaza by attacking some empty, ivory tower technocratic term because that is exactly what it is.
Either Noah is completely tone deaf and cannot see how his articles will be interpreted or - more likely given all the groupthink responses in his comments section, groupthink he does nothing about - he supports the unpopular status quo and is defending as best he knows how - by using a spreadsheet, graphs and bashing the silliest lefties.
You don't like that he wrote about the term "Global South" rather than the Israel-Palestine conflict. But it's his Substack and he writes about what he pleases.
I comment as I please. He’s a columnist - a public writer who should be able to handle critique. You bashing me in the comments for disagreeing is none of my concern.
I don't share Noah's happy view that the world is growing wealthier by the day, and increased wealth/trade necessarily births greater world stability.
Broadening the lens, the diplacement of tens of millions due to climate change, the issue with aging populations, repression imposed by increasing numbers of dictatorial regimes, and wars over dwindling resources are increasing. Nomenclature doesn't do much to address these issues.
Finally, I'm confused as to "the political Left" who revere the post-war decades. I don't know who you speak with that enables you to confidently characterize a loose coalition with such glaring regularity in your recent columns. If anything, this view of the world is a Conservative one.
Re. Singapore, you want to adjust for for demographics. It’s got a abnormally low dependency ratio, i.e. working age population is abnormally high as a proportion of total population. Still rich after the adjustment, but not to the level of’ richer than Switzerland’.
I was wondering this too. I think the historical answer might be agriculture. Both countries enacted major land reform after Imperial Japanese landlords got booted.
Wasn't Indonesia long a big oil producer, to the extent that in 1941 Imperial Japan made its fatal decision to attack the US because the (then US-controlled) Phillipines stood between Japan and Indonesia's oil fields?
The German invasion of France and Holland in 1940 meant that there was confusion about who actually ruled Indochina and Indonesia which were French and Dutch colonies respectively. Vichy France leased air bases in Indochina to Japan which pissed off the US and Britain, who then embargoed oil etc. from Indonesia to Japan in mid-1941. That was a major trigger for the attack on Pearl Harbor and the grab by the Japanese for the entire South China Sea and Indonesia region in 1942 with eyes on New Guinea and Australia. The remnants of the French colonial rule in Vietnam in Indochina after WW II largely ended after Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Subsequent to the negotiated partitioning, North Vietnam was determined to take over all of Vietnam which resulted in the US support for South Vietnam that then morphed into a largely US vs. NVA/Viet Cong Vietnam War based on Communist domino theory in the 60s and early 70s.
It is human to categorize. Some categorization schemes are stickier (technical term for lasting longer) than others. Some are ephemeral - say TikTok memes, and some can be useful within a contemporary context for a while. Linneaus' binomial nomenclature is of the sticky ones. It is useful, descriptive, and evolves slowly. Without categorization and groupings we would be forced to deal with each object atomically, and describe all relationships between all possible objects idiosyncratically. That would blow our minds, to paraphrase "My Dinner with Andre' ." Noah is pointing out the shift of one of these contemporary categorization schemes from a set that was useful into a newer set. This is to be expected with groupings of human activities. NB: I enjoyed creating this triptych category of categories.
Really like your comment. Nothing gets people crazier than sorting the nations of the world into categories! If you like global affairs please get a free subscription to my sub stack.
I wonder what trajectory South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will take over the next few decades. There's been a lot of noise about India being the next big thing, but I feel like Africa will end up being the backdrop for the 21st century's biggest stories.
Almost all African countries are commodity exporters were their budgets are flush and growth soars when commodity prices go up (Zambia with copper, Nigeria with oil, Ivory Coast with cocoa), but decline when prices go down.
Ethiopia is one of the few African countries that is developing super rapidly and it isn't well endowed selling billions of any fossil fuel or mining commodity.
A lot of Ethiopia's growth has been due to increasing agricultural productivity, better ports, service sector growth, and starting to export more textiles.
If Ethiopia end its civil war against the Tigray, Oromo, and Amhara tribes and not declare war on Eritrea/Somalia/Djibouti for port access, then Ethiopia should continue to grow fast and grow even more rapidly.
Agreed, I have the suspicion India may well fall apart, without America, Russia & China keeping it together in some capacity.
Africa though is growing, especially in the far west and east of the continent in areas such as ECOWAS and Kenya. Africa will soon be a power-house or multitude of power-houses.
I don't see any mechanism that leads to India falling apart. The US is more likely to fall apart than India and I consider that exceedingly unlikely as well.
And BTW, India has managed just fine without any of the US/China/Russia to prop it up.
To what extent do you think sympathy for Russia within the global South is about OPEC-like solidarity between resource-exporting nations to get a higher price for their exports?
Probably some of it. But I think the real binding commonality is the sense that these countries are considered as pawns in international affairs. They feal as if the US and Europe treat them as little kids, not worthy of dealing with on a even level diplomatically.
I would add a category called “failed states” where the little development that these managed to have is going in reverse. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Lebanon, Syria and the likes.
Fair!
Captures Noah's added dimension of trending up, trending down.
Radelet pointed that out in the Great Surge, that there was a substantial bifurcation during the convergence period from 1990s to 2015 (ish).
I get the impression that the countries who are keenest on the term “Global South”, or the rhetoric related to it, are middle-income regional hegemons. For countries like China, Turkey, and Brazil, the term itself and some other Global South-flavoured language (E.g. developing country, post-colonial) are handy to make them seem less threatening to their neighbours. Even Russia is keen on the notion that the “Global South” is on its side. Singapore is not a regional hegemon, but it uses the term to fit in more, as you pointed out.
India is interesting. The government seems to use the idea selectively when it benefits it, like in climate negotiations. But it is way less eager than some others to couch its entire geopolitical strategy in that terminology.
The colloquial term basically means “poor country where you probably shouldn’t drink the tap water”. Expecting these countries to be united on anything is as foolish as thinking there’s a “POC” coalition.
It's as dumb as thinking BRICS is a coalition or alliance.
You shouldn't drink tap water in Russia, nor is it particularly rich (especially outside the two cities). Somehow, it has been colored as Global North.
I agree. Russia is an anomaly. The economy is built from petroleum exports. But it possesses some of the highest technology on par with the US. But it does not export or develop them. It has yet to reach the middle-income trap.
Yeah, the inclusion of Russia in the "North" makes no sense (it's poorer than many countries in South and Central America, and probably poorer than China by now) but if you leave it out then it makes the "north/south" terminology look even more like rubbish than it already does.
Next up let's draw the squiggly line to encompass the United Arab Emirates in the North. And probably Uruguay too, they're richer than many countries in Eastern Europe. Let's not forget Brunei.
Nice charts.
My experience with the “Global South” term dates from university 40 years ago where it was bandied about by wealthy white professors and activists, anti-colonialists all. I didn’t think much of it then (or now).
Much easier to claim to speak for billions of poor brown people from your comfortable offices in former imperial HQs if you can lump all the billions into one big group.
Back then I always thought the old “non-aligned” grouping was more interesting because 1) it was created by the countries themselves rather than by rich, white American and British professors and 2) was an interesting way to maximize aid and attention from both sides of the Cold War.
Even now as people talk again about the global south (which, as Noah points out, don’t have a ton of overlapping interests) it is the “non-aligned” that really matter (with India still at the heart of them).
I remember being taught in 5th grade history class (this was a long long time ago) that countries that manufacture and export advanced goods are developed nations and those that mainly export raw materials are colonies / undeveloped nations. Still seems pretty accurate.
I mean, there are obviously some exceptions (Australia!)
I guess Australia does quite a bit of raw material export. I presume it dwarfs other stuff, but I they do have some relatively significant advance exports like Education, business/financial services, travel. So not quite a Venezuela 😁 Though they could become an effective colony of China if they don't watch out.
In Australia there's occasional national handwringing over how we export so damn much raw materials (iron ore being our number one export) and how it makes us look like one of those poor countries.
Realistically though, the problem is that making steel out of iron ore just isn't all that profitable, at least not with Australian (and worse still, north-west Australian) labour and energy costs. Someone could easily put in a huge steel plant at Port Kembla to export steel instead of ore if it would actually make money, but you'd need to pay all your employees $300K+ to work up there, and it wouldn't be competitive with just shipping the stuff to some other country where people are happy to work in a furnace for much lower wages and nobody will complain about your CO2 emissions.
Other than that, most of our other big exports are things that don't really permit a lot of further processing -- coal briquettes, gas, gold, wheat.
(I meant Port Hedland, not Port Kembla)
During 2020 and 2021 there were certainly gags about Australia being "South China" (and New Zealand being "New Xiland") based on the Zero Covid policy that those countries then had in common.
Quasi-related I recently wondered why the phrase "Anglophone countries" seems to mean "US, UK, Canada, Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand if I remember it exists" with South Africa in a quantum state of inclusion and conspicuously leave out Nigeria, Singapore, India, Jamaica, Botswana, the Philippines, etc.
Because the first 5 are majority English speaking, the rest are not.
The Caribbean islands, like Jamaica, Barbados, etc are.
Singapore is mostly English as well but the Singlish sounds pretty different.
In the Caribbean, there's both patois and the local dialect of English. Patois is a different language (from English) with some mutual comprehensibility. I don't know Singapore as well, but I suspect that the same is true - that is, there's Singlish which is not English but is clearly related, and there's Singapore English, which is a local dialect of English influenced by Singlish.
Really it's mostly about culture. Those first countries were settler colonies that received most of their population from Europe (or European countries conquered directly by England), while the rest are much more mixed.
Global South: issues, including carrying capacity and geopolitics
Global North: issues, including declining birth rate and labor shortages
Partial solution: emigration, immigration, integration, adaptation, acculturation, acceleration of migration including China
Challenges: xenophobia; fear of unknown; barriers to migration, integration, adaptation, acculturation, diverse nations
Singapore: sui generis, not representative
Population: worse for planet than fossil fuels -- yesterday, today, tomorrow
Resource-based countries too easily fall into one-dimensional economies. They suffer through cyclical prices of commodities. Diversity is best for investing, as well as for stabilizing economies. If people have stability and plenty to lose, they’re generally less inclined to go to war. For example, if you brought back the military draft and raised the draft-eligibility age to 45, I think you’d see a significant shift in sentiment related to war. It’s easy to sit back and watch people who are in the age range 18-25 become cannon fodder. They likely have little material wealth to lose and likely to not have started families. Sadly, many young people join the military to escape abusive parents/households. A peace-time military is a good gig, until it isn’t. Diverse prosperity benefits the entire world.
The UN as an international organization doesn’t really have the power to tell its member governments “no.”
I wish people would remember this more often, especially when we’re confronted with spectacles like Saudi Arabia on the UN Human Rights Council.
Noah this article is incoherent.
The thesis seems to be that “the leftists that I love to bash are saying US is losing support in the Global South over Israel. Lets not focus on the unpopularity, and instead on the idea of the global south, an the idea of the Global South is a contested political term with tenuous economics behind it. Since it’s political, then it doesn’t matter, so lets stop using the term, discourse will be so much better for it! Also I totally owned them. Do not question US popularity either. ”
That logic is nonsense. The Global South is a loaded political term. So what? How does the terms origin have anything to do with the fact that the US support for Israel is unpopular globally? Support for the siege is not popular pretty much anywhere, the US can get 14 votes of support in the UN for its resolution, and even at home in many of the countries that support, support is at best contested.
Your argument is immaterial and betrays I suppose a new conceit of this column - US centrists really just don’t care about the opinions and motivations of most of the world. Couch your disregard in whatever circuitous jargon or great power politics you want, but people outside the club of people you think matter aren’t stupid.
The Muslim world in particular can obviously see that you don’t care about them or their interests. Its obvious for example the way that you cite India’s support (which surprise, surprise has its own domestic reasons for stanning Israel) and not Indonesia or Turkey’s vehement distaste for the conflict.
In any case draw whatever fancy lines you want on the map that helps you feel better broski, the unpopularity is getting to Biden. This column continues to give off post-9/11 centrist warmonger consensus vibes.
All the best.
This whole comment felt very juvenile and quite beside the point.
"This column continues to give off post-9/11 centrist warmonger consensus vibes." <-- This was a post about global development. Did you even read it, or did you just come here to blast out some anti-U.S. propaganda?
I for one genuinely have no idea what you are talking about, RM. I love out of consensus takes but can’t seem to figure out your point.
I think Noah’s point is pretty simple. Lefty polemicists love the notion of GS as it helps them draw the world in simple black and white terms. In reality much as changes and many members of the GS are exhibiting characteristics of the GN. So the oppression thesis seems a lot weaker than commonly portaged by the left.
Now what are you saying again?
My point is very simple. Noone cares about the reductio ad absurdum argument Noah is making in this article critiquing the idea of the Global South.
Noone.
What does it matter what you call the group of countries who disagree with the state of affairs in Gaza? Its the majority of the world.
And make no mistake, this article is about Gaza. It starts and ends mentioning the invasion.
The whole article reads like a technocrat defending the globally unpopular status quo in Gaza by attacking some empty, ivory tower technocratic term because that is exactly what it is.
Either Noah is completely tone deaf and cannot see how his articles will be interpreted or - more likely given all the groupthink responses in his comments section, groupthink he does nothing about - he supports the unpopular status quo and is defending as best he knows how - by using a spreadsheet, graphs and bashing the silliest lefties.
You don't like that he wrote about the term "Global South" rather than the Israel-Palestine conflict. But it's his Substack and he writes about what he pleases.
I comment as I please. He’s a columnist - a public writer who should be able to handle critique. You bashing me in the comments for disagreeing is none of my concern.
I don't share Noah's happy view that the world is growing wealthier by the day, and increased wealth/trade necessarily births greater world stability.
Broadening the lens, the diplacement of tens of millions due to climate change, the issue with aging populations, repression imposed by increasing numbers of dictatorial regimes, and wars over dwindling resources are increasing. Nomenclature doesn't do much to address these issues.
Finally, I'm confused as to "the political Left" who revere the post-war decades. I don't know who you speak with that enables you to confidently characterize a loose coalition with such glaring regularity in your recent columns. If anything, this view of the world is a Conservative one.
I don't understand the point of this article.
Re. Singapore, you want to adjust for for demographics. It’s got a abnormally low dependency ratio, i.e. working age population is abnormally high as a proportion of total population. Still rich after the adjustment, but not to the level of’ richer than Switzerland’.
(Many saw this trap [depending on resource extraction] and tried to break out of it, but only a few like South Korea and Taiwan succeeded.)
I wasn't aware that South Korea or Taiwan had any resources to extract. Do they?
I was wondering this too. I think the historical answer might be agriculture. Both countries enacted major land reform after Imperial Japanese landlords got booted.
Both countries do mining, though.
He should have added agricultural exports. Historically Brazil and Indonesia did not export resources.
Wasn't Indonesia long a big oil producer, to the extent that in 1941 Imperial Japan made its fatal decision to attack the US because the (then US-controlled) Phillipines stood between Japan and Indonesia's oil fields?
The German invasion of France and Holland in 1940 meant that there was confusion about who actually ruled Indochina and Indonesia which were French and Dutch colonies respectively. Vichy France leased air bases in Indochina to Japan which pissed off the US and Britain, who then embargoed oil etc. from Indonesia to Japan in mid-1941. That was a major trigger for the attack on Pearl Harbor and the grab by the Japanese for the entire South China Sea and Indonesia region in 1942 with eyes on New Guinea and Australia. The remnants of the French colonial rule in Vietnam in Indochina after WW II largely ended after Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Subsequent to the negotiated partitioning, North Vietnam was determined to take over all of Vietnam which resulted in the US support for South Vietnam that then morphed into a largely US vs. NVA/Viet Cong Vietnam War based on Communist domino theory in the 60s and early 70s.
It is human to categorize. Some categorization schemes are stickier (technical term for lasting longer) than others. Some are ephemeral - say TikTok memes, and some can be useful within a contemporary context for a while. Linneaus' binomial nomenclature is of the sticky ones. It is useful, descriptive, and evolves slowly. Without categorization and groupings we would be forced to deal with each object atomically, and describe all relationships between all possible objects idiosyncratically. That would blow our minds, to paraphrase "My Dinner with Andre' ." Noah is pointing out the shift of one of these contemporary categorization schemes from a set that was useful into a newer set. This is to be expected with groupings of human activities. NB: I enjoyed creating this triptych category of categories.
Really like your comment. Nothing gets people crazier than sorting the nations of the world into categories! If you like global affairs please get a free subscription to my sub stack.
I wonder what trajectory South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will take over the next few decades. There's been a lot of noise about India being the next big thing, but I feel like Africa will end up being the backdrop for the 21st century's biggest stories.
Africa will be the growth story by the latter half/end of the 21st century.
India will be the growth story of the middle of the 21st century.
I recall when Brazil was the future story, and always will be.
Almost all African countries are commodity exporters were their budgets are flush and growth soars when commodity prices go up (Zambia with copper, Nigeria with oil, Ivory Coast with cocoa), but decline when prices go down.
Ethiopia is one of the few African countries that is developing super rapidly and it isn't well endowed selling billions of any fossil fuel or mining commodity.
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/ethiopias-economy-in-the-modern-day?r=garki&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A lot of Ethiopia's growth has been due to increasing agricultural productivity, better ports, service sector growth, and starting to export more textiles.
If Ethiopia end its civil war against the Tigray, Oromo, and Amhara tribes and not declare war on Eritrea/Somalia/Djibouti for port access, then Ethiopia should continue to grow fast and grow even more rapidly.
Agreed. Either Africa develops and industrializes or 1 billion people come to the EU for free housing
Agreed, I have the suspicion India may well fall apart, without America, Russia & China keeping it together in some capacity.
Africa though is growing, especially in the far west and east of the continent in areas such as ECOWAS and Kenya. Africa will soon be a power-house or multitude of power-houses.
I don't see any mechanism that leads to India falling apart. The US is more likely to fall apart than India and I consider that exceedingly unlikely as well.
And BTW, India has managed just fine without any of the US/China/Russia to prop it up.
To what extent do you think sympathy for Russia within the global South is about OPEC-like solidarity between resource-exporting nations to get a higher price for their exports?
Probably some of it. But I think the real binding commonality is the sense that these countries are considered as pawns in international affairs. They feal as if the US and Europe treat them as little kids, not worthy of dealing with on a even level diplomatically.