In September 2022, when world leaders met in New York for the previous edition of the UN General Assembly, much of the week was dominated by Western officials’ efforts to win over the so-called swing states—countries including India and South Africa that were sitting on the fence about the war in Ukraine. But many of these countries were not content to be part of an unreformed United States–led Western order. They refused to put their full support behind Kyiv, or even to support a resolution condemning Russia for its violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Instead, they favored an agenda that balanced their own national interests and principles.
A year later, the ambition was largely the same—but the script had changed. At the 2023 UN General Assembly, Western officials once again made appeals to the global South’s leading countries. This time, though, these officials calculated that the way to win these countries’ support and backing on Ukraine was to champion new approaches to multilateralism and development partnerships. Part of this campaign has been driven by a heightened awareness of these states’ economic travails, but Washington’s growing rivalry with Beijing, which is itself seeking to lead the global South, is also a driving force. A tug of war to lead the global South has played out in other fora, including the recent G-20, ASEAN, and BRICS meetings.
The United States and China are not alone in trying to wrangle this large and important group of countries. Some of the major swing states themselves, especially India and Brazil, are seeking to lead this bloc. Kenya is also stepping forward, at least to lead in Africa, and made its own appeals at this year’s UN General Assembly, wooing the United States with an offer to send peacekeepers to Haiti, charming the Europeans with an Africa climate summit, and keeping the door open to both China and Russia. Leadership of the global South, and leadership by the global South, has come to dominate international summit diplomacy.
But all these contenders face domestic political realities that undercut their prospects of winning over developing countries. Populist politics and isolationist sentiments constrain many Western leaders. Slow growth, including in China, only exacerbates these constraints. Meanwhile, attempts by leading countries in the global South to create new international arrangements of their own have had limited impact and would-be leaders in Brasilia and New Delhi face their own domestic pressures.
No single leader from the global South is likely to emerge at present. But giving its major members a seat at the top table, in a more inclusive multilateral arrangement, remains more urgent than ever.
PLAYING CATCH-UP
China’s drive to provide infrastructure to many developing countries has helped weaken the West’s influence over the global South. For much of the past decade, Western nations watched as China launched its $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and interest turned to concern as Beijing signed infrastructure agreements with almost 150 countries. In response, Western powers felt compelled to act, but they have moved slowly to formulate alternative sources of infrastructure financing that would promote liberal values.
In 2019, Australia, Japan, and the United States launched the Blue Dot Network, to drive investment toward high-quality infrastructure. Washington wanted to take the plan to the 2020 G-7 but the summit was canceled due to the pandemic, and progress stalled. The perceived lack of Western leadership was then compounded by the failure to lead on vaccine provision in developing countries and to develop an adequate response to the escalating need for debt relief.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s effort to restore the United States’ international image after coming to office in 2021 also included a renewed commitment to improve the functioning of the G-7. At the 2021 summit in Cornwall, the G-7 launched the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative. B3W was designed to address an estimated $40 trillion shortfall in global infrastructure by using government funds to mobilize private capital. The initiative was intended to be global in scope, with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. Unlike China’s more narrow focus on ports, railways, and roads, B3W broadened the definition of infrastructure to include climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality.
A year later, following the invasion of Ukraine and the downsizing of Biden’s Build Back Better plan at home, the G-7 met in Germany and rebranded B3W as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII). The ambition remained to unlock public and private capital for investments in infrastructure with a focus on energy, digital, health, and climate that aligned with Western standards. The United States intends to invest $200 billion alongside an overall G-7 target of $600 billion for infrastructure investment in the global South.
TURNING ON THE TAPS
Since its launch, the PGII has made slow progress, just as Washington’s ambition to broaden and deepen its appeal to the global South has grown. The United States has so far mobilized only $30 billion of its intended share of $200 billion.
Responding to countries in the global South’s demands to reform the structures of multilateral institutions established in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. government has embraced calls to expand the UN Security Council and make it more accountable to the General Assembly. Last year, President Biden told the UN General Assembly that the United States would support the effort to expand the number of permanent and nonpermanent seats on the Security Council. The Biden administration then supported a successful G-20 decision in September to grant the African Union a seat at the table. And Washington is now calling on Congress to increase financing for the World Bank by $25 billion.
The Biden administration is also forging regional partnerships with countries from the global South. On the margins of this year’s UN General Assembly, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken presided over an event that launched a new Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation. This new forum brings together 32 countries—all of which, it was announced, “share a commitment to a peaceful, prosperous, open, and cooperative Atlantic region”—and focuses on boosting cooperation in science, technology, environmental protection, and development. The administration is also working across the Indo-Pacific to build agile and flexible partnerships, including the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, with Australia, India, and Japan.
But the United States is not the only country stepping up. In December 2021, the European Union launched the Global Gateway, its own bid for leadership and influence among developing countries. Under this initiative, the European Commission draws on the existing development funds of its member states to mobilize public and private investments of approximately $315 billion in infrastructure by 2027, in a bid to enhance connections with the global South. The EU aims to build partnerships rather than the dependency that the BRI has created. But the European bid, though impressive, is on a smaller scale than China’s, and all the usual EU rules and standards apply, which creates a far higher bar for recipient countries to jump over.
In the Pacific, in a bid to manage China’s assertiveness, Japan used its leadership of the G-7 to court potential partners at the group’s meeting in Hiroshima in May. Leaders of a number of countries that are not members of the G-7—Australia, Comoros, the Cook Islands, Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Vietnam—were nonetheless invited to attend.
OUT OF THE CROWD
The West’s efforts may prove to be too little and too late to win over the global South. Several of these countries are already seeking their own leadership role. China, with its BRI program, stands out. As the world’s largest official creditor, and the largest trade partner to Africa and South America, it has already made the greatest inroads, but others are also in contention, using global summits to promote their own ambitions. In August, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) agreed to invite six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. It was an attempt, by China in particular, to form a rival to the G-7.
Beyond such international summits, a few countries are attempting to assert their own leadership hopes. At this year’s UN General Assembly, for example, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched his bid to lead the developing world by giving the global South a greater stake in international governance and stressing Brazil’s role as a climate leader. He sought to position his country as a champion of social inclusion and pointedly refused to take the side of China or the United States.
This year, though, India has been the standout, and has pursued an increasingly assertive role on the international stage. Following mounting pressure on New Delhi to choose a side in the war in Ukraine, India instead chose to play the field and build partnerships with multiple major powers and developing countries. It spent this year deepening its strategic relationship with the United States, and confirming its central role in the Quad and the BRICS.
But it is India’s yearlong leadership of the G-20 that has been its central organizing device, at home and abroad. New Delhi has used the G-20 to burnish its credentials as a leader of developing countries and a partner to major powers. The G-20 was staged as a road show consisting of hundreds of events that took place over the course of the year, and signage was spread out across the whole country. The goals of the G-20 were designed to be people-centric and inclusive, in areas including digital public infrastructure and investment in gender equality. The New Delhi Leader’s Declaration called for major reforms to reshape the existing multilateral order—especially to institutions including the World Bank and IMF. The declaration is ambitious, and it outlined bold plans to connect India to Greece and continental Europe via a rail and shipping route through the Middle East.
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL
The sheer number of global appeals aimed at the global South is stunning. But these appeals have come late, and the gap between ambition and delivery is large. Domestic politics in the West are curbing instincts to globalism, as is summit fatigue. The limits of Western ambitions to lead were on particularly prominent display at this year’s UN General Assembly, where the leaders of France and the United Kingdom did not turn up. Nor did China and Russia’s. Biden was the sole leader of a Security Council state present. The coterie of cabinet ministers and support staff did little to cover up the glaring absence of the leaders of the veto-wielding powers.
In his speech at the General Assembly, Biden expressed his ambition to build new partnerships capable of tackling key global challenges. But his ability to forge a clear link between his foreign policy for the middle class and U.S. support for multilateralism remains tenuous. Economic forces, including the recent autoworkers’ strike, and political pressures, which may lead to a U.S. government shutdown, threaten his ability to lead internationally. Pushback from Republicans in Congress may stymie the president’s effort to secure more support for Ukraine. Moreover, Biden’s desire to maintain diplomatic contacts and cooperate with Beijing to address climate change make him susceptible to attacks for being soft on China. Europe and much of the rest of the world are growing increasingly nervous that former U.S. President Donald Trump could win the 2024 U.S. presidential election and upend the period of multilateralism that has been strengthened under Biden. The prospect of the United States delivering on an ambitious agenda for the global South seems remote in this context.
The United States is not alone in facing strong domestic pressures. Europe is struggling with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, and growing support for far right parties, none of which bodes well for following through on a commitment to the global South. The United Kingdom, fresh from a summer of strikes and expected to have the worst inflation in the G-7 this year, has largely abdicated its leadership role among developing countries by cutting its development budget and abolishing its Department for International Development. China, too, is struggling as it contends with deepening economic stagnation. India is continually beset by divisive internal politics and, though it has made progress in reducing poverty, it has not succeeded in creating a more inclusive politics or overcoming identity-based divisions. Brazil, after a polarized election and turbulent transition, has only recently emerged from a period of highly divisive leadership.
In the face of such domestic constraints in these countries, international cooperation is difficult and even more essential. Yet no single institution stands head and shoulders above all others. Multilateral institutions forged out of a desire to reject the West have shown little sign of being able to build a consensus or a set of priorities for the global South. The expansion of the BRICS, for example, lacks credibility as an alternative forum for leadership since its two most powerful members, India and China, hardly see eye to eye. The G-20’s New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration, with its focus on reformed multilateralism, is certainly ambitious, but whether these agreements can be implemented is less clear. And Brazil, the next host country, will need to build the momentum. The G-20 may be more important for enabling active and sustained dialogue than for delivering results.
It is also hard to imagine the G-7 as a serious contender for leadership of the global South. The forum’s tight knit and values-based cohesion is impressive, as is the effort to integrate a second tier of partners at its meetings. But the rest of the world has been excluded and is moving on. There may no longer be a single institution that can be a panacea. But in the absence of a viable alternative, a sustained effort to reform existing multilateral institutions will be necessary. This means updating membership and providing the financial resources that can enable institutions to deliver on their ambitions. These institutions must be supported by a cluster of smaller, agile institutions, which can move swiftly to resolve an increasingly complex and diverse set of problems. Ultimately, however, the commitment to building effective multilateralism will need to be forged at home.
Leslie Vinjamuri is Director of the U.S. and the Americas Program at Chatham House and Professor of International Relations at SOAS University of London.