「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

Potolicchio: Let's zero in on the fastest riser of the Global South. What's your analysis with India?

Bremmer: India is the one that certainly the Americans feel like they've done the best job. Modi is the most popular, democratically-elected leader of any major democracy in the world. He really wants to define his international legacy as building a much stronger relationship, specifically with The United States. That is not exclusively because of, but largely because of a very deep-seated problematic relationship with China and increasingly, China's proxy Pakistan. What we've seen as Modi being on a sharp pro-US and pro-Western curve over the last decade, he did not think that The US would be easy to work with in 2014, when he became a leader.

Today, he truly thinks that The US along with Japan, are India's best partners for the economic and the technological transformation that he envisages for India. As I said, it helps that he sees China as India's number one threat and he seeks to keep China out of India's frontier economic sectors, and also believes that The United States and The West, more broadly, will help them accomplish that.

Certainly, his foreign and defense policy team shares that view. I would say, hostility towards China is bipartisan in India, the same way it is in The United States. Though, there is skepticism about The United States inside some of Modi's team, particularly from the Hindu right, because they look back at America's Pakistan legacy, the Muslim population, not surprisingly, as well as the far left, who see The United States as great Satan/imperialist. But urban youth are showing very strong pro-US sentiment. Overall, I'd argue that Indians are the most pro-US among the Global South, you see that from Pew Research.

You talk about the Quad, you talk about India's ideas of decoupling, you look at Modi's recent trip to the United States, all of the technology investment that's happening from The United States, in particular into India, so what you really see here, if that's the way you start, you say, "Wow!"

In the run-up to the G20 Summit, after consulting all sorts of countries around the Global South, they basically decided that India sees an opportunity to expand its profile, especially along the Indian Ocean, Red Sea Golf, undermining China, and securing resources for itself. It also has some low-cost, digital green technology and infrastructure stories to sell to the Global South, though it lacks resources and certainly lacks administrative capability. It is pushing for Global South-oriented solutions within the G20, which it's chairing right now. They've been organizing, essentially, a G10 of the Global South, including China in this case, especially on climate to coordinate a common agenda there. Now, I would say that secondary to the tilt towards the west, but it still is important. He does want to be the face of cooperation within the Global South, he doesn't want that to happen without India, and he certainly likes the idea of using its chairmanship of the G20 as cover.

Their ambitions, though, and their language: very modest, like what you'd see from China, 10-20 years ago. Indian diplomats, for example, they're banned from actually using the phrase "great power" or "superpower" to describe India or its ambitions. Modi likes to use this Sanskrit phrase "Vishwaguru", which means "universal teacher". It's all about leading by example. A lot of India's Global South policy, which is not what they say when they talk to the Americans, is about leading by example.

Potolicchio: Here's my most nostalgic question of the day, because the first time I ever asked you a question was "what leaders should I pay attention to that we're not paying attention to?" and you mentioned Indonesia. This was like eight-nine years ago. Indonesia, what's your analysis there?

Bremmer: First of all, Indonesia gets nowhere near the attention that India does. It's smaller, it doesn't yet have the Western investment that makes the headlines, but it's quite stable politically. It's quite proud of its role in founding, alongside India and others The Non-Aligned Movement. It also prioritizes solidarity with other Muslim countries and opposition to Israel, which comes up in its foreign policy, which has sometimes created suspicion and sensitivities around the West, in a post-colonial society. Having said all of that, Indonesia is generally less eager than a lot of Global South countries to antagonize The West. They see economic and, more recently, security ties with The United States, with Japan, as a very important counterbalance to the growing influence and the growing assertiveness of China. I would say Indonesia doesn't yet see India as so important in that regard, though over time, I expect, they will.

Potolicchio: In our quest to have my daughters' understand the world more, we have done a lot of travel to the furthest reaches of the globe with them. But we were intentionally specific in our 1 year celebration for our eldest. We cut cake on the Bosphorus, in Istanbul, Turkey, looking both East and West. Your take on this pivotal linchpin country that seemingly straddles the geopolitical divide?

Bremmer: Erdogan and many Turks want Turkey to be seen as an emerging power that is challenging the existing West-led order. The credibility for doing so given their massive economic challenges is hot as well. That underpins some of their alignment with the Global South because Erdogan wants to be the voice of the downtrodden and the unheard. You see him advocating for Palestinian rights and self-determination, arguing for a shake-up of the UN Security Council to give the rest of the world the sort of say the permanent five members have.

The US and the Europeans are both viewed with a lot of skepticism. The Turks' relationships with them are largely transactional, looking for leverage wherever they have it and you've seen a lot of that, of course, on the NATO accession conversations on the Black Sea Green Deal and the rest, on Syria, with the overarching belief that Western powers want to have hegemony over world politics and keep the developing world and right rival major countries at bay. Relations with the West are kind of a necessary evil. India is not yet a big focus for Turkey, because they're concentrating their diplomatic and commercial efforts on their immediate neighborhood, the Middle East, the eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, as well as their extensions, the Balkans, Central Asia, and some Africa. I would say that among major non-western powers, Turkey has been more focused on developing strong ties and working relations with Russia, China, and Brazil, and not so much with South Africa or India.

Of the major powers, Japan is the one exception where Turkey has enjoyed very strong relations, and they want to maintain them: some historic ties, good diplomatic relations, lots of Japanese investment and Turkish respect for Japan's economic capacity. That's been very stable.

At the beginning, I'm giving you all these reasons why the Global South is a thing, and now we're running into yeah, they all feel that way and yet, they don't have the same developed economies, the same developed diplomatic capability. What they can actually do to their day-to-day economic statecraft, their day-to-day diplomacy is necessarily more constrained than the sort of aspirational or ideological alignment that we are nonetheless seeing.