Authors

Haiting Fei²; Alexander Libman¹;  ¹ Freie Universität Berlin, Germany;  ² Peking University, China

Discussion

The "Global South" is a concept focused on development, describing an unjust world order and explaining its causes. Although Russia did not create the concept, it has successfully identified and applied it, transforming a long-standing issue in global politics and theories constructed by Western countries into its own political discourse. This has expanded Russia's diplomatic activities and enabled it to achieve its threefold objectives of anti-Americanism, European proximity, and alignment with the Global South. The "Global South" has undergone three distinct stages of development: the "Third World," the "North-South Dialogue," and the "Global South." The concept of the "Third World" laid the ideological, theoretical, and institutional foundations for the "Global South"; the "North-South Dialogue" gave the "Global South" a dual perspective, making development an issue beyond developing countries, one that requires the global community’s joint engagement; in the era of globalization, global governance theory has added a global dimension to the "North-South" issue, highlighting that resolving development issues requires a global approach. Russia's "Global South" concept is based on research on developing countries from the Soviet and Russian traditions, shaped by the interrelation between political thought and foreign policy. Currently, Russia’s "Global South" concept mainly divides into three stances: globalism, regionalism, and Eurasianism. These stances diverge on critical issues like world order, the North, the South, Russia, and China, yet converge on views concerning globalization, world order, the potential of Southern nations, as well as shared positions and goals. The "Global South" resonates with Russia's foreign policy strategy through its alignment on primary platforms, main participants, ideological foundations, and Soviet history. It has increasingly gained attention for its long-term, systematic, complex, and diverse nature, which offers Russia a broad and flexible diplomatic space. In articulating the "Global South" concept, Russia primarily emphasizes the BRICS countries and opposition to a Western-dominated world order. Additionally, two competing concepts—"World Majority" and "Civilized States"—have recently emerged in Russia, largely because the "Global South" is challenging to reconcile with Russia's practical conditions concerning globalization, decentralization, and Russia's own positioning and development model.