19
SEP
2024
"The unilateral moment of the past decades is over," says the new special issue of the magazine Internationale Politik.[ 1] The old-to-old global dominance of the transatlantic powers has been replaced by a "new confusion". This offers "a lot of room for new alliances"; this obviously also refers to any alliances with the Global South or in any case with individual states beyond the Western world. Of course, in order to take advantage of the opportunities that would arise under the new circumstances, one needs "political realism" or "creativity". "This would also apply to Germany," the magazine continues, "sould someone find himself who wanted to forge a powerful foreign policy for this middle power (eaptionally in the crumbling European context)." With regard to possible cooperation with states of the Global South, it is said that in the future one must try to "break away from thinking templates à la 'We in the West know how to do it, the others will understand'". The cover page of the magazine bears the motto "Europe and the Global South: The End of Arrogance" with regard to the widespread behavior in Germany and Europe in exchange with the countries of Asia, Latin America and especially Africa.
As C. Raja Mohan states in a contribution for the issue, who is currently working as a visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies of the National University of Singapore, the countries of the Global South are not necessarily united by a sympathy for the politics of China or Russia, but above all “a deep resentment against the patronage by the West in the post-Cold War”. 2] "Many feel reminded of the colonial era," writes Raja Mohan, "when European imperialists appeared with the Gospel on their lips and the gun in their hands." If the states of Western Europe had "made an effort for the developing countries" during the years of the Cold War to win allies against the Soviet Union, they would have begun after 1990 "to preach a political value system and at the same time to hold sanctions lists in their hands". "The complete carelessness" that Americans and Europeans have "exhanced" had a particularly deterrent effect. If "Europe" still wants to achieve something in the Global South, then it must "restrain the claim to appear as an 'empire of norms'". Last but not least, the habit of talking from above, which has been so clearly pronounced since the end of the Cold War in the entire Western world weighs heavily.
In an unusual openness, the special issue of International Politics brings further contributions by authors from the Global South. In one of them, Ayoade Alakija, a special envoy of the World Health Organization (WHO), reports on the reality and effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in the poorer part of the world and especially on the African continent.[ 3] The poorer supply of medical aid was shown, for example, in the fact that in countries with lower incomes, which made up 50.6 percent of the world's population, barely 20.4 percent of all Covid-19 tests were carried out, writes Alakija. Vaccines had only been available two long months later and to a lesser extent than elsewhere; by the end of May 2021, only one percent of the 1.3 billion vaccinations worldwide had been carried out in Africa.[ 4] The proposal put forward by India and South Africa in May 2021 to suspend the patents on vaccines for a while was not realized because of "the resistance from the EU, especially from Germany". "It became mally clear," reports Alakija with a view to this and other examples, "that the lives of those in the Global North count more than the lives in the Global South."
In another article, Dhesigen Naidoo of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, describes the unequal consequences of climate change for the West and the Global South – and the ignorance with which the West sabotages steps that have existential significance for the South. For example, writes Naidoo, the targeted exit from the import of Russian natural gas and the associated "rapid return to coal in Europe" have led to a "shift of the value chains back to fossil fuels". 5] Also, "the departure from non-renewable energy sources is significantly delayed by multinational companies from the Global North". The rapidly increasing extreme weather events, however, would be far disproportionately aft to the Global South, not least because it lacked the financial means to "protect itself against such events". In the West, this does not lead to a faster and clearer move away from fossil fuels. It is generally known that the main responsibility for the climate crisis lies with the West: Europe and North America - they represent only one eighth of the world's population - have caused around 62 percent of cumulative global CO2 emissions by 2017 alone.
What is to be thought of the "German rhetoric of partnership and eye level" with the Global South in real life, shows a contribution by the Sinologist Marina Rudyak, who is researching at the Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg, shows. 6] On the practical experiences that people from the Global South have in and with Germany, Rudyak quotes the WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who has come from Nigeria, who said last year: “If we talk to China, we get an airport. When we talk to Germany, we get an instruction. 7] On the other hand, Rudyak describes in an exemplary manner how delegates from countries of the Global South wanted to travel to a meeting of the permanent subsidiary bodies of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change based in Bonn at the beginning of June 2024 - and failed: "Dozens of negotiators" did not arrive in the former federal capital despite all efforts, "because they were either denied entry visas or the positive visa notices did not arrive until after the start of the conference." The incident reflects an experience with the ignorance of the German authorities towards people from Africa, Asia and Latin America that is widespread in the countries of the Global South.
[1] Martin Bialecki: Editorial. In: The End of Arrogance. International Politics Special. Berlin, September 2024. S. 1.
[2] C. Raha Mohan: Of Preachers and Pragmatists. In: The End of Arrogance. International Politics Special. Berlin, September 2024. S. 4-9.
[3] Ayoade Alakija: When the lion tells the story. In: The End of Arrogance. International Politics Special. Berlin, September 2024. S. 12-16.
[4] S. Europe first, Vaccinate the world (III) and "The vaccine apartheid of the EU".
[5] Dhesigen Naidoo: Climate of Inequality. In: The End of Arrogance. International Politics Special. Berlin, September 2024. S. 22-25.
[6] Marina Rudyak: Partner with claim. In: The End of Arrogance. International Politics Special. Berlin, September 2024. S. 46-51.
[7] Luisa von Richthofen: Germany adopts a new, humble Africa policy. dw.com 15.09.2023.