Two recent speeches—one by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference in February and the other by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January—paint two vastly different pictures of the world. Rubio’s challenge to the rules-based international order contrasts with Carney’s effort to salvage it; Rubio’s insular worldview contrasts with Carney’s cosmopolitan one. But from the vantage point of the global south, they paint similar pictures.
Rubio’s speech in Munich sought to reassure European allies after the more confrontational rhetoric of last year’s speech by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance at the same conference. However, in painting the West’s golden era as a period when colonialism and imperialism thrived, it was far from reassuring for the global south. Rubio lauded the “five centuries” before the end of the Second World War as a period when the “West had been expanding” to “build vast empires extending out across the globe” while the period that followed was one of “terminal decline,” accelerated by “anti-colonial uprisings.”
Two recent speeches—one by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference in February and the other by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January—paint two vastly different pictures of the world. Rubio’s challenge to the rules-based international order contrasts with Carney’s effort to salvage it; Rubio’s insular worldview contrasts with Carney’s cosmopolitan one. But from the vantage point of the global south, they paint similar pictures.
Rubio’s speech in Munich sought to reassure European allies after the more confrontational rhetoric of last year’s speech by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance at the same conference. However, in painting the West’s golden era as a period when colonialism and imperialism thrived, it was far from reassuring for the global south. Rubio lauded the “five centuries” before the end of the Second World War as a period when the “West had been expanding” to “build vast empires extending out across the globe” while the period that followed was one of “terminal decline,” accelerated by “anti-colonial uprisings.”
Meanwhile, Carney’s much-touted speech in Davos was welcomed for its forthrightness in acknowledging the “pleasant fiction” of geopolitics while being a call to arms for middle powers to step up and play a more prominent role in the international system.
However, from the vantage of point of the global south, it was an acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of the Western-led global order. Carney noted that the U.S.-led “international rules-based order was partially false,” with the strongest exempting themselves “when convenient,” trade rules enforced “asymmetrically,” and international law “applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
These two very different speeches by Western leaders reflect something that countries in the global south have often suspected of the collective West. Whether it be through the blatant oppression of colonialism or the more subtle double standards of the postwar rules-based international order (and its post-Cold War variant, the liberal international order) there has been a consistent attempt to keep those countries down.
The question is this: How does the global south respond? Does it respond in kind and embrace the emergence of a more confrontational and bifurcated international system marked by renewed great-power competition and assertiveness? In referring to Europe and the United States as part of one “Western civilization” bound by their “Christian faith,” Rubio’s speech can be seen as a counterpart to the worldviews of China and Russia, which also see the world through a civilizational lens with their own exclusive spheres of influence.
India’s leadership ambitions in the global south are not new. They can be traced to the post-colonial period, when New Delhi sought to promote so-called “third-world solidarity” through forums such as the Bandung Conference in 1955 and the Non-Aligned Movement, established in 1961. It was a vocal critic of European efforts to reacquire their colonies after the Second World War, including Dutch “police action” in Indonesia and the First Indochina War.
Some of India’s actions are clearly self-serving. It justifies its push for greater status and recognition—from its never-ending quest for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council to its G-20 presidency in 2023 and its bid to host the COP33 climate conference in 2028—on the basis of its credentials in the global south. New Delhi wants to have a seat at key rule-making institutions, and in doing so, it seeks to offer Indian solutions to global problems.
This was evident during the late February AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. It was the first time the summit took place in a developing country—the previous ones were held in the United Kingdom, South Korea, and France—and India used its host status to frame the artificial intelligence debate through the lens of the global south. This included drawing attention to the tangible impact of AI in sectors such as health care, agriculture, education, and energy and climate issues. This echoes the position that India took when it hosted the G-20 summit in 2023, when it promoted digital public infrastructure as a means of strengthening digital inclusion and the democratization of technology.
Interestingly, in calling for the democratization of technology, India is challenging both the West and China. It is calling on the West for a more equitable distribution of power in the international system. However, it is also implicitly challenging China for leadership of the global south by offering a more open and democratic model to the one put forward by China’s one-party techno-surveillance state.
India, with an economy roughly one-fifth the size of China, lacks Beijing’s economic heft. However, what it lacks in material capabilities, it can make up for by offering an alternative worldview embedded in values of democracy, the rule of law, and multilateralism. This is the essence of India’s ambitions for the global south: It wants a greater voice for emerging economies, but it also wants to ensure that this voice complements rather than compromises the rules-based international order and works with rather than against advanced industrialized economies. India is a reformist rather than revisionist power.
To be sure, making this case will be easier said than done. Take the example of the BRICS summit, which India is set to host later this year. India will likely use its status as the bloc’s chair to downplay some of the more controversial elements of the BRICS agenda, such as the de-dollarization narrative, which has incurred the wrath of the Trump administration. (It will likely reframe this as a push to settle bilateral trade in national currencies.) New Delhi will also seek a degree of alignment between its BRICS chairmanship, the United States’ G-20 chairmanship, and France’s G-7 chairmanship.
However, India’s BRICS agenda could easily be hijacked by broader geopolitical developments. Recent U.S. military action against Venezuela and potential action against Iran could fuel a narrative that the global south is under siege from the “might is right” approach of the United States. The fact that the BRICS membership includes several countries that maintain overtly anti-Western agendas,—including China, Russia, and Iran—will also make it difficult for India to control the narrative.
Even among the founding BRICS member states—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—there is a lack of consensus on what the institution stands for. Brazil and India see the forum primarily as an economic initiative, whereas China and Russia use it to promote their broader geopolitical objectives. Beijing in particular is increasingly embedding its worldviews—rooted in its four “global” projects, the Global Development/ Security/Civilization/Governance Initiatives—into the DNA of forums representing the global south.
From New Delhi’s perspective, BRICS has been moving in the wrong direction in recent years. As its agenda has been hijacked by geopolitics, the bloc has moved away from its initial focus on development and governance. Its expanding membership has encouraged more noise but less action, with more emphasis on what it stands against rather than what it stands for.
India’s ambition for BRICS entails building on the organization’s initial achievements, including the establishment of the BRICS New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement. This would move the forum from shared grievances to shared outcomes. The slogan of India’s BRICS chairmanship—“Humanity first”—combined with a theme of “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability” may seem naïve. But it reflects an effort to offer an alternative worldview in which collaboration rather than competition or confrontation are the currency of international relations.
If India is able to seize this moment (and receive support from like-minded countries), then it can offer an alternative direction to the one being offered by the return to great-power politics.
Speaking at the unveiling of the website and logo of India’s BRICS presidency earlier this year, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar noted New Delhi’s ambition to the use the BRICS platform to contribute to “greater global welfare.” In doing so, it can operationalize its ambition to be a voice of the global south while serving as a bridge between it and the West.
