The Valdai Club, which is one of Russia’s most prestigious think tanks and its top elite networking platform, published a detailed report by some of the brightest minds in the country on “The World Majority and Its Interests”. Its 31 pages deserve to be read in full, but for those with limited time, the present piece will summarize the most important insight shared therein. It’ll be seen that it’s a collection of pretty common observations whose importance rests in being confirmed by such top-level experts.
The report begins by searching for a definition of the “World Majority”, though with all respect to the highly esteemed authors’ efforts, it appears indistinguishable from the Global South. Both refer to the global majority that refused to submit to Western pressure to sanction Russia and/or arm Ukraine. They stood firm not due to pro-Russian reasons, but in defense of their hard-earned sovereignty. Accordingly, they’re not expected to always follow Russia’s policies, though Moscow shouldn’t take offense at this.
Their approach to the evolving international order will likely follow India’s, which pioneered the policy of multi–alignment that’s seen the world’s most populous country participate in the Quad, BRICS, and the SCO. The prioritization of national interests as each country’s leadership sincerely understands them to be will therefore characterize the World Majority’s foreign policy. They probably won’t revive the Non-Aligned Movement, however, since current divisions are far more complex than during the Old Cold War.
Instead, they’ll balance or multi-align between competing pairs of rivals in pursuit of maximum benefit from both, being very careful not to take anyone’s side except in extraordinary circumstances since this would risk weakening their strategic autonomy. This approach enables countries like India to serve as bridges between the West and its top rivals like Russia. Vietnam, Turkiye, and the Gulf States are also playing a similar role according to the report’s authors.
They also importantly observed that “the World Majority countries are not ready to propose or seriously discuss an abstract ‘new international order.’ They seek greater fairness regarding their interests, but are not willing to embark on a revolutionary path in order to achieve it.” This contradicts the wishful thinking expectations of many in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) who’ve been misled by the ideological zeal of their top influencers into imagining that the World Majority is as “revolutionary” as they are.
The World Majority envisages gradual and responsible reforms that elevate their roles in global governance with a view towards making International Relations more equitable. With few exceptions, they all participate in the global market economy and are therefore very fearful of sudden shocks to it, thus explaining why they so strongly opposed the West’s pressure to cut off their agricultural and energy trade with Russia. Had they complied, then their economies could have crashed.
The report then segued into some discussion about specific country examples such as India, the Gulf States, African countries, Southeast Asian countries, and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Readers can review each part if they’re interested but nothing too unique was shared in any of them. They all adhere to the policymaking model hitherto described, albeit with some national specificities such as varying vulnerability to Western pressure, especially in the financial and developmental realms.
For these reasons, the authors advise Russia not to overreact whenever partners implement policies that don’t perfectly align with its own, let alone when they try to multi-align between Russia and the West. Supplementary advice is that “attempts to fit them into one’s own speculative geopolitical schemes would be a mistake”, which is also relevant for the AMC. Russia should also learn more about every World Majority country since they hint near the end that it might be lacking in expertise towards some.
All in all, the most important purpose of the report is that it lent authority to the observations that some have already noticed about the World Majority/Global South and applied towards their own work, such as in this analysis here from spring 2023. There’s not much else novel about it other than being the first comprehensive collection of such observations to be published in Russia by one of its top think tanks. Even so, average readers will still benefit from at least reviewing it, which they’re encouraged to do.
