India’s Global South Summit Is The Most Important Multilateral Event In Decades
The gathering of so many countries for apolitical and geo-economic purposes proves that the vast majority of humanity wants mutually beneficial development that unites the world instead of more geopolitical competition that’ll only tear it apart.
India announced on Friday that it’ll virtually host the Voice Of Global South Summit on 12-13 January, which aligns with Prime Minister Modi’s ambitious vision for his country to lead the developing world amidst the global systemic transition to multiplexity that unprecedentedly accelerated last year. More than 120 states are invited to participate in the ten sessions that’ll brainstorm ways for this category of countries to collectively pool their efforts in pursuit of the shared goal of improving their people’s lives.
The lingering consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the emerging ones connected with climate change, continued difficulties servicing debt, and the interconnected food and fuel crises catalyzed by the West’s anti-Russian sanctions are all expected to figure prominently on the agenda. As the world’s largest developing country and this year’s G20 chairman, India is uniquely positioned to give a global voice to its peers’ concerns and ensure that tangible action is taken to deal with their shared challenges.
Furthermore, it deserves to be mentioned that India’s principled neutrality has already reaped the grand strategic dividend of making it the kingmaker in the New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS- & SCO-led Global South of which it’s a part. The pragmatic path pioneered by India in keeping a foot in each de facto bloc without doing so at the other’s expense is worthy of emulation by its peers since it’s the best way to maximize their sovereignty during these chaotic times.
By practicing their own form of multi-alignment, the entire Global South can come together as a third pole of influence for breaking through the bi-multipolar impasse of International Relations characterized by the Sino-American superpower duopoly’s disproportionate influence. Unlike during the Old Cold War when the Non-Aligned Movement was geopolitically driven, the informal new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM”) that India aspires to assemble is geo-economically driven and completely apolitical.
Prime Minister Modi’s famous declaration late last year that “today’s era is not an era of war” can serve to inspire the Global South to unite in pursuit of peaceful development by discarding political divisions in favor of mutually beneficial economic partnerships with everyone. The stars proverbially aligned in India’s favor last year due to the grand strategic effectiveness of its previously mentioned principled neutrality and new G20 chairmanship to give it this unique role.
Only India has the credibility as a truly neutral and bonafide developing state to bring this category of countries together at this historic point in human history to midwife tripolarity prior to the global systemic transition’s final inevitable form of complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”). This outcome is in all of their interests since it’ll make International Relations more democratic, equal, just, and predictable, thus helping to counteract the chaos that was unleashed by last year’s complicated sequence of events.
This grand strategic context means that India’s Global South Summit is the most important multilateral event in decades since it’s the best hope yet for humanity to make positive progress in the face of so many negative developments as of late. The gathering of so many countries for apolitical and geo-economic purposes proves that the vast majority of humanity wants mutually beneficial development that unites the world instead of more geopolitical competition that’ll only tear it apart.