Understanding the place and role of Latin America in the global south leads us to brief reflections on the group of countries that are labeled under this concept. At present, it is essential to highlight the heterogeneity of the global south in an order lacking full global hegemony. We observe a previously existing diversity of the third world during the cold war, although with a notable difference: the sustained economic growth of some countries of the former periphery, the increase in their attributes of international influence and their more audible voice in world forums forces be more cautious in using such metacategorization. Disaggregating and specifying this variety of the global south seems essential to us. If the third world was an observer of the Western agenda, there are more and more countries in the global south that aspire to be, without ignoring the existing power equations, formulators of the agenda.
The global south is multiregional and multidimensional and is composed of different political regimes; They do not usually have their houses completely tidy; expands and diversifies its influence in the world economy; episodically combines the interests and agency of its most active protagonists; has high levels of domestic inequality; It is deployed through external behaviors that respond to various incentives; and seeks, without necessarily systematic diplomatic coordination, a better distribution of power and influence at the global level.
Broadly speaking, it is possible to speak of countries that maintain resistance, with different levels of indocility towards the West, and countries that maintain closeness to the West with uneven levels of attachment. Now, in both cases and based on the growing US-China rivalry, a large number of nations, regardless of their capabilities, size and location, refuse to identify themselves, much less align themselves, with any of the main actors in dispute. . Although this may reflect a certain ambivalence, such prudence is explained today by international trajectories that testify to a growing dose of rationality and realism rather than the corollary of actions motivated by ideals and ideological positions.
What is evident is that the most gifted southern actors – due to their economic, diplomatic, military, technological, symbolic attributes, among others – are dissatisfied with the current order. But not everyone is, or longs to be, revisionists; which means the adoption of strategies aimed at constraining the cards offered by the poles of power and increasing paths that privilege autonomy. More than representing a systemic challenge, they are a diverse group of protagonists who operate in a dual mode: to continue ascending they need to rely on the established power nuclei, but they must also differentiate themselves from them to create their own pillars of action that reaffirm their national interests and their sovereignty. The option of taking this path through constructive regionalism may, or may not, add to such an effort. In any case, the challenge of the West, as a whole, like that of China as well, is to accept or assimilate the rise of a periphery different from that of the past and thereby not deal, as A.F.K. said in 1958. Organski in World politics, of “keeping in their place” the restless and assertive powers of the global south.
The presence of Latin America in the global south has had its specificities, whether based on its international strategic location or the intraregional differences produced by its history and ethnic-cultural identities. The Latin American reality has been marked by the conditions of asymmetry in the global power structure. It is important to highlight that the region was part of the first wave of decolonization in a historical time before the liberal system was entrenched as the predominant framework of the international order. In this sequence, Latin America enters the West as an “eccentric pole,” in the words of Octavio Paz, before the developing world, as it was known in the 1950s, had taken shape. Furthermore, this region was forced to coexist with a center of power – the USA – still in formation that, in the name of its exceptionalism, assigned itself the right of exclusive pre-eminence throughout America.
During the first decades of the 20th century, the region, with some exceptions, maintained a relative distance from the Eurocentric world and its deep crises that led to two world wars. Latin America did actively participate in the construction of post-war multilateralism that contributed to the institutionalization of an international order committed, at that time, to world peace. Such action preceded the beginning of the East-West conflict from which that architecture began to blend in, in the West, with the ideology of liberal internationalism. Latin America and Eastern Europe would be framed as opposite – presumably stable and potentially predictable – areas of influence; which became an indelible characteristic of the bipolar order of the cold war.
Bipolarity partially favored an interregional articulation of the developing world that began to take shape and expand from the second wave of decolonization. Latin America observed rather with indifference the arrival of new nations to the international community, entangled in the dynamics derived from the hegemony that the United States imposed. The strategic irrelevance did not prevent, in the south of the continent, in particular, the developmentalist ideology from gaining space by joining a critical discourse, which already prevailed in the third world, in the face of the unequal conditions of international trade. The programmatic orientations of ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) and participation in UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development) were emblematic in that trajectory. Now, it is worth clarifying that the region was conspicuous by its absence in the founding and early years of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and, with the exception of the high profile of Cuba, maintained a sporadic presence, devoid of a coordinated impulse. But this did not prevent the region from specifically sharing several of the guiding principles of the NAM, as demonstrated with Argentina’s third position formulated in the 1950s, the neutralism and independent foreign policy of Brazil in the 1960s, and the Third Worldism of Mexico in the seventies. It is crucial to emphasize that these affinities took place based on enormous differences in terms of the place occupied on the global strategic board since, with the exception of the impact produced by the Cuban revolution, the region never deserved the same attention as African and Asian countries. in the US-USSR dispute.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 represented a global liberal feast that was quickly articulated with what was designated as the third democratic wave, with reflections in different latitudes. This third wave meant the liberalization of political regimes in some thirty countries, generating new expectations of intertwining between domestic processes and transformations of the international order. The countries of Eastern Europe and several in Latin America quickly aligned themselves with the Western collective and enthusiastically held the banners of liberal internationalism. However, the material benefits made available to both regions by Western powers to mitigate the costs and adjustments of coupling with liberalism were contrasting. The countries of Eastern Europe quickly benefited from the process of inclusion in the European Union, while Latin America faced the challenges of its democratization processes simultaneously with the restrictions imposed by the opening, deregulation, privatization and foreignization of its economies. . The context of profound internal challenges did not prevent the region from advancing in the construction of an environment of peace and intraregional cooperation. It is worth mentioning the political coordination that led to the peace process in Central America, the denuclearization of the region accompanied by the non-proliferation commitments between Argentina and Brazil and, subsequently, the political-military coordination in peace operations within the framework of the UN, with notable examples such as Minustah (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) and the verification of demobilization in Colombia.
The analyzes on the points of contact between the southern regions during the first years of the post-Cold War are still limited in number and depth. It will be necessary to know in greater detail and with more understanding how Latin America, Africa and Asia coexisted with liberal triumphalism and the advance of globalization dominated by financial capital during the 1990s, still conditioned by the latent effects of bipolarity. This relative distancing is reversed by the global impact generated by September 11, 2001. The configuration of a fierce North gains visibility with the impositions of global securitization led by the US, at the same time that the South observes without reaction or greater adhesions.
The loss of strategic relevance of our region is once again evident during the war on terror promoted from Washington. After turning its back on the US call for support against international terrorism, with the exception of Colombia, a new stage of Latin American international insertion begins, stimulated by impulses for internal changes of a progressive nature. The experiences of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Bolivia and Venezuela; that is, essentially, South America, lead to a stage of proactive regionalism evidenced with the creations of Unasur (Union of South American Nations) and Celac (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States). Internal political processes meanwhile led to divisions and fractures that later became ideologically polarized and that, from 2015-2017, led to erratic, fragmented and, at times, questioning external political preferences of the liberal order itself. This produced the context of an accelerated emptying of Latin American regionalism after the brief years of proactive activism that failed to anchor innovative collective projects with a solid institutional framework. While some countries in the region strengthened their ties with poles of power that are confrontational with Western powers, mainly China and Russia in addition, others opted for acquiescence to the United States.
This new geopolitics has stimulated alarmist political readings, many of which use lenses from the Cold War of the last century. In Washington and Brussels, the easy path of identifying the nature and scope of Sino-American relations with the US-USSR dispute is common; a comparison that reproduces Manichean interpretations that leave out new complexities. There are, of course, components of the growing global dispute between the US and China that affect Latin America, but a form of pugnacity such as the Cold War that left its mark on inter-American relations is still fresh in the region: coercive diplomacy, change regime and limited sovereignty. It is worth indicating in passing that Latin American resilience in the face of such bad practices is the essence of the differences with Europe when the war in Ukraine is analyzed and debated.
The paradox of the 21st century is that we are not faced with the dilemma of being united or dominated, the crossroads of the 20th century, but trapped in the adversities imposed domestically and reinforced regionally. Meanwhile, the US (and Europe?) and China use Latin America as a space for dispute and exploitation of resources according to their needs and profitable impulses.
We will have to first ask ourselves if the global south represents a single perspective (and narrative) and if it contributes an innovative meaning to the international system in transition. This question is pertinent in the case of the countries that benefit most from globalization and defend certain principles of the Westphalian order. The second question, which may be a corollary of the previous answer, aims to question the effective spectrum of freedom and the space for initiative available to the global south, or at least some of its members. In this case, there are two uncertainties: how to evaluate the risks of excessive action? How to measure a priori the scope of its expression? What we know is that the costs of miscalculations are higher and longer lasting for countries in the global south than for those in the power circle of the global north.
However, the complexities present in the transition of international order suggest that it would be a counterproductive simplification to classify the counterpart – the global north – of the global south as a single power bloc. In fact, the poles of power that impose asymmetries on the south have diversified. We believe that for the south the possibilities of relating to the poles will vary according to the articulation between structural asymmetries and political preferences. In the case of Latin America, it is evident that the region must face the duality of dependency ties with the US and China. We believe that the range of actions –exit, voice and loyalty– proposed by Albert Hirschmann to analyze economics and politics and which refers to the type of behavior in conditions of dissatisfaction, is useful. Here we use its three alternatives.
Latin America has suddenly been included on the radar of Western powers in their interest in the global south. Two motivating forces can be detected that provide fuel and complement each other in generating that interest. On one side of the United States, concern prevails over threatened preeminence that refers, in part, to the idealizations of the Monroe Doctrine, which in 2023 will celebrate its 200th anniversary of proclamation. Foreign presences – not offensive and/or provocative statements of power and influence – such as China’s are perceived as a threat. On the other hand, Europe’s sudden attention is essentially motivated by the political disappointment caused by the lack of decisive and massive support for the war in Ukraine and its effects on differentiated perceptions between the north and the south on issues of global security and economy. international. Political-diplomatic gestures from the US and the EU indicate intentions, at least in terms of narratives, to correct past negligence considered to be the cause of the present south-north disagreement. While President Biden’s Government nods to the global south with its potential inclusion in a strategic project to regain leadership in innovation and economic growth, the EU and some European governments in particular formulate a restorative message aimed specifically at Latin America.
The application of the Hirschman model is valuable to visualize the different response options by Latin American countries based on recent history and current circumstances. The growing dissatisfaction with the West – which we highlighted at the beginning of the article – means that some governments and countries may choose not to express their discontent while waiting for the decision not to make noise, coupled with their loyalty to the US and Europe, to eventually, be compensated materially and diplomatically. Others may choose to raise the tone and content of their voice – and thus their interests – to make their criticism explicit with the expectation of being heard and taken into account because their contributions are perceived as legitimate and necessary. Still other governments and countries may prefer the exit and through that abandon following or waiting for the West since it seems to offer little or nothing in terms of the well-being of societies and internal political projects.
It is worth saying that the crisis of Latin American regionalism has become a particularly favorable condition for this range to be established. The variation of alternatives indicates several issues. On the one hand, the once claimed plurality of the region, so emphasized in the Celac political project in 2010, has been evolving, for different reasons, into sterile parceling and contrary to the community ethos; all of which has been leading to a scenario of every man for himself: a kind of costly peripheral unilateralism. Such unilateralism feeds on a generalized tendency for presidential (or personal) diplomacy, whatever the political orientation of the government, to be imposed as a common language of intraregional relations to the detriment of the instruments of bureaucratic expertise. Recent examples from the South American area reflect that this is an additional obstacle that prevents a minimum agenda of regional priorities.
Taken together, all of the above has effects that expand the short and medium-term challenges of the region since they deepen the Hirchmanian dilemmas, to the detriment of collective action that reactivates a transformative and innovative regional/global project. At the same time, and so far this century, both the US and China have become, each in their own way, centrifugal forces that do not generate positive incentives for integration and, consequently, deepen intraregional fragmentation. . When we confirm that multipolarism is an increasingly present condition in the international order, and constitutes an opportunity for the global south, we also note in the case of Latin America the challenges to take advantage of it.
Monica Hirst is a professor in the International Studies master’s program at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella, Argentina, and an independent international policy consultant. Juan Gabriel Tokatlian is vice-rector of the Torcuato di Tella University.
