「Gゼロ」提唱者イアン・ブレマーと読み解く、グローバルサウスの正体

What is Global South?

Speaker: Dr. Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group
Interviewer: Prof. Sam Potolicchio, Founding Executive Director of American Councils For International Education's Center for Global Leadership, Lecturer at Georgetown University

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Potolicchio: Dr. Bremmer, it's turning into an annual tradition to consult you as the world gets more uncertain and unstable. Your top risk for 2023 was a "Rogue Russia". The Global South is becoming an increasingly influential player in mediating this conflict. So I ask you, how do you define the term "Global South" and why does it matter how we analyze this concept now?

Bremmer: You go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and you have this presumption of a couple of things. First, that democracy is going to be the true North of the Globe, and it's just a question of how you get folks integrated. Globalization - same thing, you're creating a global middle class over 50 years, which means that emerging markets, the developing world is becoming developed in the process of emerging, it's a transitional phase.

The last decade, if it's taught us anything, is that there are big structural challenges with that worldview. One is that we no longer have the Americans driving globalization. The second is that it's no longer clear that democracy is winning, in terms of the aspirational trajectory of different countries. Third, the developing world, most of which has indeed, gotten wealthier, nonetheless, now generally feels like they are not heading towards convergence with the West and the West isn't really trying to help them.

There are lots of reasons for that. You look at the inshoring and the friendshoring and the industrial policy in the United States and coordinated with Europe and Japan, you look at the consolidation of the G7. Suddenly, you also look at the trends towards automation, deep learning and AI in particular, and well, who's going to drive the next 20-30 years to help ensure that the Global South continues to develop, continues to emerge? Then, of course, we had three years of pandemic and they revealed preferences from The West: we're not going to help you all that much, it is every country for itself.

Then, of course, you've got the war in Russia and now, the Grain Deal that the Russians have just pulled out of. Who's going to make sure they get the grain? Who's going to make sure they get the LNG? It's going to be the wealthy countries. The poor countries are stuck with higher prices, greater starvation, and coal. Finally, you have got climate change. The countries that are going to be hit the hardest by climate change are frequently the ones that haven't even been able to benefit from the industrialization that got us the climate change. Technology for post-carbon is getting cheaper but it's not like the West is providing significant amounts of support that would allow the poorest countries to effectively make that transition.

So for all of these reasons, the so-called developing world or the lower developed nations and the middle developed nations are increasingly finding that they have something in common with each other. That commonality is that their interests are not being served in the 21st century and they don't feel like they can count on The West. Now, there's a lot of differentiation inside this grouping, of course.

China, which you would have considered to be developing sort of 10 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, you wouldn't call a part of the Global South, in part because they are so, so much more powerful, in part because they're the largest creditor to the developing world, to the Global South, in part because they're the largest carbon emitter. China is still a relatively poor country, a middle income country, $12,000 per capita, but you wouldn't refer to them as the Global South. So with all of those caveats, I do find that the Global South is an increasingly useful way to think about a growing geopolitical cleavage that is important, is disruptive, and needs to be addressed.

Certainly, when you speak to the leaders of the G7, the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese, they are all highly aware that they are largely not doing well with the Global South and they need to find a way to address that. I hear that in almost identical terms from all of those government leaders, all of them.