The Rise of ‘Middle Powers’
The close integration of global financial architecture and the rapid economic growth of emerging economies over the past few decades has led to the burgeoning power and strength of countries that can be colloquially referred to as ‘middle powers’. Even growing global expenditure on defense technologies and increasing cooperation between these countries has led to the false perception or illusion of so-called “global south cooperation” or global south solidarity.
Nic Cheeseman and Marie-Eve Desrosiers write in The Journal of Democracy,“The rise of authoritarian middle powers poses a profound challenge to liberal institutions. By weaponizing multilateralism, these governments transform forums designed to uphold democratic norms into instruments of regime legitimation.”
The repeated crises the world has had to encounter in the past many years — from 2008 financial crisis to the Eurozone crisis of the 2010s and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian war and renewed regional instability in the Middle East — makes effective democratic governance unstable.
The rules-based international order that came into existence post-WW2 is based upon the fundamental principle of democratic norms and preventing aggression or bullying by a powerful state and the rules-based order has found itself under incessant assault by the so-called ‘Global South’. This very notion of emerging economic strength of developing nations spearheading the creation of some ‘new world order’ is just rhetorical nonsense. These places such as Russia and India are countries with the dangerously increasing power grip of autocrats and dictatorial leaders, to give credence to the view that “democratizing global affairs” by increasing the voice of the so-called ‘Global South’ happens to be their noble motive is just laughable to any practical observer of realpolitik.
American economist Noah Smith writes — in a post very aptly named as ‘BRICS is fake’ — “So why has BRICS received so much attention in the media? One reason is that some people think (and some people hope) that it’s a nascent geopolitical or even military bloc — a global anti-NATO that will put an end to U.S. hegemony and Western dominance etc. etc. For example, economist Branko Milanovic recently wrote […..] This is, of course, nonsense. China and Russia are indeed in a quasi-alliance against the developed democracies, and India still has somewhat friendly relations with Russia dating back to their Cold War partnership. But India and China are strategic rivals, not allies. They have an occasionally bloody border conflict, which periodic talk of “de-escalation” has failed to defuse. India bans many Chinese apps and is moving to restrict imports of Chinese goods, even as it deepens its economic and strategic partnership with the U.S.
The tensions between India and China are very visible in Indian public opinion, which, like that of many countries in Asia and elsewhere, has shifted strongly against China over the last few years. In fact, Brazil has also become less favorable toward China..”
Obviously everything cannot be cited in a single piece of work but I think it is fair to state that the very recent rise of these autocratic and illiberal ‘multipolar’ or ‘middle power’ states that have been the principal beneficiaries of this system of global financial integration and globalized economic architecture spearheaded by the United States itself especially in the 1990s and beyond (after the collapse of Soviet communism) cannot be equated with some new permanent leadership emergence of so-called ‘Global South’ nations. In fact, the very term ‘Global South’ itself carries no justifiable intellectual logic or basis for existence. Nations such as Saudi Arabia and Türkiye have for long been explicitly dependent on U.S. security guarantees, the United States accounts for a vast majority of global economic output and the United States DWARFS these so-called “emerging countries” in terms of sheer economic strength and GDP per capita, and most importantly, in terms of global energy production such as fossil fuels, oil, shale production, etcetera, the U.S. comes out on the top. Not to mention the top position the U.S. secures for innovation and research, R&D grants and world-class university infrastructure committed to constant innovation and R&D, and also cutting-edge U.S. defense technology — from Lockheed Martin to Raytheon and much beyond — remains the envy of the world.
The defense budget of the United States is more than the next ten nations combined. Yes, strategic competition and challenges exist that need to be dealt with, but the U.S. is the only nation capable of exerting meaningful deterrence and military force at any given time on any given place (land or water) within a quick and reasonable span of time.
These authoritarian and corrupt states ruled by corrupt autocrats share no common or noble goal of standing up for the developing world. The Russians and Chinese just care about the expansion of their own economic and geopolitical interests, not about a fair and just global order.