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This edited volume is part of a larger project on the Global South, led by the Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy. You can find more about the project here.
The accelerating rise of the so-called Global South is reshaping the geopolitical landscape and challenging long-standing assumptions about how power is expressed in the international system. A growing number of influential states are asserting that the post–World War II order no longer reflects their interests or realities. Although the Global South is often invoked as a unified bloc, it is in fact a fluid and diverse category whose members share less a common ideology than a sense of exclusion from what they view as the world’s most elite decisionmaking arenas. This collective mood of marginalization, coupled with increasing economic and geopolitical clout, is driving these actors to demand a larger role in setting global rules on issues ranging from climate change to technology governance.
This project focuses on eight “hinge states”—Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates—whose strategic choices will profoundly shape the future of the international order. These states navigate between established Western alliances and rising revisionist powers, making their preferences critical to whether global governance systems adapt or erode. By examining their identities, interests, and diplomatic behaviors, this project offers a framework for how the United States and its partners can more effectively engage with these actors and manage great power competition.
This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this report.
