Diplomatic Strategies of Nations in the Global South

The Search for Leadership

Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner, Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137452269
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Vergleichende Politikwissenschaften

At a time of change in the international system, this book examines how non-traditional leading nations from the Global South have fared to date and what the chances are of their rise to continue. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the enthusiasm of observers of the international scene about the "rise of the rest" is waning as many countries that were expected to lead the evolving multipolar order are experiencing economic contraction and governance problems. In order to predict further developments, the contributors to this volume focus on the types and sources of the diplomatic strategies that must be executed by rising states if they are to preserve domestic advances as well as gain influence regionally and internationally. Through a comprehensive examination of case studies from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, they show that while there are commonalities among these rising states, unique domestic conditions, values, and traditions impact and predictdiplomatic strategizing and the ability for sustained projection on the international scene.

© The Author(s) 2016

Jacqueline Braveboy-Wagner (ed.)Diplomatic Strategies of Nations in the Global South10.1057/978-1-137-45226-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Rise of Which Global South States?

Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-Wagner¹

(1)

Political Science Department, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

End Abstract

Introduction

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, leading international newspapers, academic publications, and public intellectual forums began to seriously address the “rise of the rest” (Zakaria 2008). The term implied that American/Western predominance was giving way to a more diverse world in which certain traditionally less-powerful countries, those countries lucky enough to have substantial and well-managed natural or human resources and/or had reached a relatively high stage of technological advancement, were emerging as worthy competitors—economically if not militarily—to the USA and the European “great powers.” The most concentrated focus of political pundits was the so-called BRICs—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—a handy acronym coined by Goldman Sachs’ economist Jim O’Neill in 2001 (South Africa was added in 2011). However, countries as diverse as Argentina, Indonesia, and Turkey were included as rising countries, as reflected in their incorporation into the new Group of 20. ¹ Fareed Zakaria (2008) termed this phenomenon the “third great power shift,” coming after the rise of the West in the fifteenth century and the rise of the USA in the closing years of the nineteenth century. ² Meanwhile, Kishore Mahbubani (2008, 2015) maintained that Asia was the region of the future and that it was not a question of if China would be number one but when and what kind of number one it would be.

Few observers of the global changes that have occurred since 1990 would dispute that some countries other than the traditional “powers” have emerged as important players in the past few decades. Many of these countries are from the so-called “global south,” a term that has replaced the older term “third world” and other variations (see next section). These countries have been growing economically at a faster rate than the older industrial economies of the “north,” and have vocally—and to some degree successfully—sought inclusion in, and expansion of, various key global economic forums. In contrast, the older powers, despite maintaining their attraction as developed nations, have begun to project a less vibrant image, slowed by economic difficulties and by the cost of interventions and their aftermath (including the burden of dealing with refugees fleeing north) in unstable regions of the world. For academics and public intellectuals, this has engendered a burgeoning industry of books and articles on the rise of the rest. China alone, a great power that still sees itself as developing, has spawned a veritable library of books on its activities in Africa and elsewhere on what its emergence means for the USA and the world, and whether its rise will be peaceful or not. ³

Yet, post the 2008 recession and into 2015–2016, while there is still agreement on the fact that the world order has changed, there is also a more somber assessment of the pace of that change. The problems being experienced by the most promising “risers” are reflected in headlines such as “As the Boom Fades, Brazilians Wonder How It All Went Wrong” (New York Times, September 11, 2015: A6), “Rocky Economic Times Testing Friendship of Xi and Putin” (New York Times, September 4, 2015: A1, A6), and “Weak Oil Global Equities Hit Gulf” (Gulf Times, Business, September 30, 2015: 16). As shown in the profile table provided at the end of this chapter, economic growth has slowed in much of the emerging south, for a combination of reasons ranging from the economic correction of imbalanced economies (especially China’s) after more than a decade of high growth, to the drop in commodity prices—oil in particular—stemming from a global glut attributable to new production as well as lower demand in the very same rising countries. Persistent problems in parts of the European Union (EU), complicated by slower global growth, add to global uncertainties in 2016. At the domestic level, many of the rising countries have also been experiencing societal and political protest and changes triggered by allegations of high-level corruption and mismanagement. As this chapter is being written, China continues to be engaged in a major program to root out official corruption, while Brazil is trying to recover from a scandal that began with the implication of the state oil company Petrobras in suspicious payments to its contractors, and went on to severely undermine the Workers’ Party. (See also the chapter by Kahil and Braveboy-Wagner in this volume.)

With this as a backdrop, it seems that it is an appropriate time to focus on the prospects of the rising countries, in particular, in this volume, those classified as “global south” (for example, Turkey is viewed as emerging but is not generally included in the south). While the economic and social difficulties mentioned above are, rightly so, of global concern and therefore the subject of many works, this book is focused on a much less studied area, foreign policy and diplomacy. It is not always adequately recognized that foreign policy is so completely intertwined with domestic policy that the rise of the south depends as much on external as on internal developments. In fact, it is in the external environment that the ambitions of these countries are most fully articulated. As countries begin to achieve their domestic development goals, they also gain the capability to project themselves regionally and internationally if they so choose. It is important to stress their choice: as neoclassical realists note—although that is not the approach used by the contributors to this volume—domestic achievements do not necessarily lead to external projection; the domestic environment has to be conducive as well (see, e.g., Zakaria 1998). Foreign policy analysts have, by being devoted to the detailed analysis of the relationship between domestic “sources” and external behavior, inherently recognized this tight linkage. In this book, substantial sections of each chapter are devoted to elucidating what domestic conditions or ideas drive the diplomacy of ambition that is the subject of this book. All the contributors observe that there are distinct domestic traditions or situations—for example, the legacy of Rio Branco in Brazil, or the more recent revolutionary ambitions of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela—that have pushed countries to seek affirmation in a particular way in the external environment. Domestic conditions may change rapidly, but many traditions and ideas have lasting effects.

The (Global) South

As with the older term “third world,” there has been some contestation about the term “global south.” “Third World” was initially used widely in the global community, only to be critiqued eventually as too static and hierarchical. In fact, the economically oriented companion term “less developed” suffered from similar problems and was later replaced by “developing,” and later was further disaggregated into “emerging,” “transitional,” “developing,” “least developed,” and other terms.

The term “third world” had ideological referents, being first related to the political parties of France in the 1940s, those distinct from de Gaulle’s Rassemblement Populaire Française or the Fourth Republic (Braveboy-Wagner 1986: 1–15). It was also compared to the concept of the Third Estate, the underrepresented bourgeoisie in the French Revolution of 1789. In its modern reference, it was coined by the Frenchman Alfred Sauvy in 1952 to describe the nonaligned nations. With the ideational and practical advancements reflected in the Bandung (Afro-Asian) Conference of 1955, the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961, the establishment of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964, the initiation of the UN development decades in the 1960s, and the decline of colonialism, “third world” stuck as a rubric for the nonindustrialized, newly emergent, and nonaligned countries. These countries differed in levels of economic and social development from both the industrial capitalist first world and the socialist second world.

At first, the concept was attached primarily to Africa and Asia inasmuch as Latin American countries had gained their independence so much earlier—in the nineteenth century—and had fallen under the US umbrella as well. Cuba was the only Latin American country to attend the first NAM conference. However, in the 1970s the Latin American countries began to identify with Afro-Asia as the latter turned from decolonization concerns to neocolonialism and economic nationalism. The term “third world” came to refer to all those countries that shared an aversion to colonialism and imperialism, were technologically at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the industrial world, and, with varying degrees of commitment, did not wish to be entangled in the rivalry between the superpowers. In the 1970s, the heyday of the third world in terms of their gains in international forums, these countries joined as a bloc to articulate their concerns about the imbalances in the international economic system as well as the inequities and hierarchy they saw in the international structure of decision-making. ⁴

Although the term “third world” was used less often formally in international documentation than the terms “less developed” and “developing,” the sympathetic international institutions, represented primarily by the UNCTAD and the NAM, conceived a host of noteworthy programs that became part of what was seen as the “third worldist” agenda—on development, trade, regionalism, decolonization, anti-racialism, disarmament, and other areas. However, by the 1970s, the UN itself had already begun to use the term “south” fairly frequently reflected in the fact that the important discussions at the time on the New International Economic Order were contextualized as “north-south” discussions.

The curtain fell on the idea of the “third world” with the fall of the Soviet Union and the demise of ...