As U.S. officials focus on countering China and Russia, both in their respective immediate neighborhoods and in other regions where their influence is rising, Washington’s policy community is taking a new look at U.S. relations with the Global South. These conversations tend to focus on two main questions: How does engaging with these smaller states advance U.S. interests? And why are many Global South countries ambivalent toward the U.S. and reluctant to follow its lead?
Given the strategic importance for the U.S. of these countries, the fact that these conversations about the Global South are taking place is encouraging. But that they focus on these questions also demonstrates how little U.S. leaders, policymakers and the wider public understand the Majority World, as some like to call the Global South. As a result of this knowledge deficit, political actors in the U.S. tend to base their analysis and decisions on assumptions, which are often proven to be wrong.
This is particularly problematic for two reasons. First, the lack of knowledge and flawed reasoning about these countries fuels U.S. hubris, which is expressed in the belief that, as Hal Brands put it in a recent op-ed, the “Global South owes America some thanks.” Second, ignorance about the Global South also contributes to a lack of urgency in reforming the international order, which currently reflects and perpetuates deep inequalities affecting most Global South countries that must be addressed.
What, then, are the United States’ interests in engaging with Global South countries?
With U.S. foreign policy now centered on great power competition, the Global South has become little more than an arena in which to pursue policies targeting U.S. adversaries across the world. In fact, many experts complain privately that in order to attract the attention of policymakers or the media, it is now necessary to frame U.S. foreign policy through the lens of competition, even if one is trying to deconstruct and subvert that prism.
But while U.S. leaders focus on how they can use the Global South to pursue great power competition, viewing these partners in such a narrow and instrumentalist way is shortsighted and nonstrategic at best, and dangerous at worst. To begin with, the laser-sharp focus on competition fuels a tendency to securitize all aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Despite rhetoric about expanding diplomatic engagement, the U.S. government continues to focus on security cooperation.
As a result, Washington may overlook areas for nonmilitary cooperation that could benefit both the U.S. and its partners in the Global South. This militarized approach to engagement is also escalatory, as it encourages a reactive, fear-based posture in an attempt to outbid adversaries’ actions. Finally, it can lead to questionable assumptions, particularly that increased military cooperation with partners like India will lead to their support in times of conflict.
U.S. policymakers and the general public already tend to see little value in engagement with the countries of the Global South. Washington’s current polarized, zero-sum approach further diverts attention away from how much the U.S. stands to gain from cooperating with these states.
This is unfortunate because, from a diplomatic, political and security vantage point, U.S. power cannot function without the Global South. Indeed, notwithstanding the conventional wisdom, it would be illusory to imagine an effective U.S. foreign policy based only on cultivating relations with Western allies in Europe and Asia. This is most obvious when it comes to the benefits and dividends the U.S. accrues from commerce and investment with countries such as India, Mexico, Thailand and Vietnam, and diplomatic and security ties with critical regional and middle-power partners like Indonesia, Kenya and the Philippines. Washington’s efforts to expand its influence in the Pacific Islands, and the strong human, economic and security bonds between the U.S. and its Caribbean neighbors, are also illustrative of the importance of smaller countries from the Global South in the international arena.
The Global South’s contributions to the United States’ success can be found across all sectors and throughout the country. U.S. leaders and the general public should reckon with that fact.
Despite their relatively limited power in multilateral institutions, Global South countries represent the majority of these organizations’ members. Comprising approximately 70 percent of the United Nations, for example, these countries are essential to building coalitions and passing resolutions in the General Assembly. In that sense, the diversity of positions expressed during the six votes pertaining to the war in Ukraine, and especially the frustration expressed by many representatives of these states toward some Western attitudes, demonstrate how important it is for the U.S. to do right by Global South countries. This should not be done in order to counter U.S. adversaries, but rather in order to advance shared interests that will bring about mutual benefits.
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, or USTR, in 2019, the U.S. benefited from the export and import of goods within the Western Hemisphere—excluding Canada and including Mexico—to the tune of $418.2 billion and $466.9 billion, respectively. That makes the region the United States’ top destination for exports and No. 2 source of imports. Meanwhile, also according to USTR, the countries making up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, combine to represent “the United States’ fourth-largest goods trading partner.” U.S. companies also gain from substantial levels of foreign direct investment to ASEAN members. In short, U.S. markets depend on economic, human and technical exchanges with Global South countries, which ultimately advance the United States’ economy and its people’s well-being.
Global South countries have benefited greatly from these relations as well. But given that the narratives shaping public perceptions tend to portray these countries mainly as recipients of international aid, it is important to underscore that the Global South’s contributions to the United States’ success can be found across all sectors and throughout the country. U.S. leaders and the general public should reckon with that fact.
What about the ambivalence many Global South countries express toward the United States and their reluctance to follow its lead?
Since the beginning of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many analysts have tried to explain the various reasons behind the diverse responses from Global South countries to the war, from national interests and historical relations to frustrations over the West’s double standards. Yet, Washington continues to dismiss or ignore their complaints over persistent global inequalities in multilateral institutions and the imbalanced distribution of globalization’s dividends. In the same vein, commentators tend to minimize Western powers’ violations of international law and ignore their moralizing discourses toward smaller powers.
This insular thinking is not only detrimental to cultivating ties with these countries, but also reveals a wider lack of diversity of thought in U.S. foreign policymaking. The failure of a large swath of U.S. experts to think and look outside narrow boxes and attempt to grasp the reasons behind the Global South’s rightful demands for a more representative international order is also symptomatic of the United States’ fear-based foreign policy. Rather than adopting an honest and clear-eyed approach to these realities, Washington’s conventional wisdom encourages policymakers to idealize the current order and demonize any criticism of it.
The current approach considers any proposed alternative to the existing international system as a downgrade and magnifies the benefits that Global South countries have obtained from the U.S.-led global system, while ignoring the exceeding disadvantages they face within it. This is a mistake for two reasons. First, it leads to self-righteous rhetoric that amplifies the United States’ savior complex, while erasing both the centuries-long record of struggle by Global South countries against colonization and their recent efforts to profit from globalization. Second, this way of thinking shuts the door to a realistic examination both of the U.S.-led order’s shortcomings—notably by universalizing the U.S. perspective—and of the United States’ relative declining influence within that order.
This viewpoint also undermines creative thinking and opportunities for deeper cooperation to create a more effective global order for all, at a time when fresh thinking about how to make improvements that generate more widespread benefits is exactly what is needed. Just because the current system is better than the one it replaced does not mean that it must remain static and resistant to any changes.
Washington’s partners across the globe certainly value their relations with the U.S. and wish to advance their interests through cooperation. But policy discussions in Washington do not focus much on what the U.S. gains from interacting with the Global South. It’s time for that to change. To enhance cooperation, leaders in Washington should reflect on those U.S. policies that are the most detrimental to multilateralism, stability, international security and prosperity for all—and replace them.
Many leaders from the Global South have expressed their desire for enhanced but more balanced relations between the world’s biggest powers—including the U.S.—and the Majority World to advance prosperity and security for all. But that requires the U.S. to see Global South states not as mere recipients of the benefits that U.S. hegemony has supposedly offered them, but rather as full-fledged and equal partners.
For all these reasons, no, the Global South does not owe the U.S. “some thanks,” and framing the conversation about U.S.-Global South relations in such terms—and adopting a binary or bipolar view of international relations in which to locate them—is short-sighted and even offensive. But for anyone who insists on going down that road, there is an argument to be made that the U.S. owes more than just some thanks to the Global South for all the ways it benefits the country.
Aude Darnal is a research associate in the Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program. She leads the Global South in the World Order Project, which examines prevailing assumptions about Global South countries, addresses international relations from their various perspectives, and promotes new partnerships between them and Western powers, in a period of profound changes in international power dynamics. She can be found on Twitter at @AudeDarnal.