TRICONTINENTAL
In January 2023, a reporter from Yomiuri Shimbun asked the press secretary of Japan’s foreign ministry, Hikariko Ono, for a definition of the term ‘Global South’. ‘The government of Japan does not have a precise definition of the term Global South’, she responded, but ‘it is my understanding that, in general, it often refers to emerging and developing countries’.1 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, press conference by Foreign Press Secretary Ono Hirariko, 25 January 2023, https://www.mofa.go.jp/press/kaiken/kaiken24e_000202.html.Footnote
The Japanese government struggled to find a more accurate assessment of the Global South, which it attempted to provide in the Diplomatic Bluebook 2023. In a long section on the idea of the Global South, Japanese officials acknowledge that the former Third World seemed to have developed a new mood. When the countries of the Global North, led by the United States, demanded that the countries of the Global South adopt the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) position on the war in Ukraine (namely to isolate Russia), they refused, accusing the West of ‘double standards’, since, as Japan’s foreign ministry notes, it justifies its own wars while decrying the wars of others. In light of this new mood in the Global South, Japan’s foreign ministry stated the need for a new attitude with ‘an inclusive approach that overcomes differences in values and interests’. As Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi wrote in the preface to the bluebook, ‘The world is now at a turning point in history’.2 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Diplomatic Bluebook 2023: Japanese Diplomacy and International Situation in 2022, 29 September 2023, https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/other/bluebook/2023/pdf/en_index.html, i and 3.Footnote
This turning point is exemplified by the fact that few states in the Global South have been willing to participate in the isolation of Russia, refusing, for instance, to support Western resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly. Not all the states that have refused to join the West in its crusade against Russia are ‘anti-Western’ in a political sense; rather, many of them are driven by practical considerations, such as Russia’s discounted energy prices. Whether they are fed up with being pushed around by the West or they see economic opportunities in their relationship with Russia, increasingly, countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have refused to capitulate to the pressure coming from Washington to break ties with Russia. It is this refusal and avoidance that drove France’s President Emmanuel Macron to admit that he was ‘very impressed by how much we are losing the trust of the Global South’.3
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