These middle powers of the global south should be the focus of U.S. policy.
Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a rare foray out of Ukraine, spending almost one week in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Hiroshima, Japan. His goal: to win the support of Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia—four major fence-sitters on Russia’s war in Ukraine. These and other leading countries of the global south have more power today than ever before. The reasons for their newfound geopolitical heft: They have more agency, they benefit from regionalization, and they can leverage U.S.-China tensions.
Middle powers today have more agency than at any time since World War II. These are countries with significant leverage in geopolitics, but they are less powerful than the world’s two superpowers—the United States and China. In the global north, they include France, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and others. With the exception of Russia, these countries do not tell us much about the shifting dynamics of power and leverage, as they remain broadly aligned with the United States.
Much more interesting are the six leading middle powers of the global south: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey. These swing states of the global south are not fully aligned with either superpower and are therefore free to create new power dynamics. All are members of the G-20 and active in both geopolitics and geoeconomics. These six also serve as a good barometer for broader geopolitical trends in the global south.
There are many reasons for the growing importance of these six states, but they can be grouped into two buckets: long-term, historical developments and and more recent global trends. Regarding the first bucket, developments since the Cold War have given these powers more agency in international relations. The Cold War entailed a stricter separation into opposing blocs, which pulled in some of today’s swing states. The subsequent era of U.S. unipolarity necessitated some fealty to Washington by almost all states. Today’s Sino-U.S. bipolarity is weaker, and all middle powers have more freedom of movement.
Second in the history bucket: The world has been deglobalizing in important ways over the past two decades, and as a result new geopolitical and geoeconomic relationships are forming at the regional level. The swing states are all regional leaders, and they become more important as power devolves to their regions. The processes of near-shoring (moving supply chains closer to home) and friend-shoring (moving them from adversaries to like-minded countries) are slowly moving some firms and trading relationships away from China to other regions, mostly in the global south. Some of the swing states of the global south will become even busier hubs of regional trade. India is the best example, as some U.S. firms are setting up production and routing new supply chains there. Energy markets are becoming more regional, which benefits Saudi Arabia. Similarly, the Saudi capital, Riyadh, is emerging as a regional financial hub. Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) emphasizes that the world is fragmenting, and in a fragmenting world regional middle powers logically play an increasingly important role.
Third, during the Cold War, India and Indonesia had just emerged from colonial rule. That limited their global role during that bipolar era. Today, the six swing states are fully autonomous actors. But they are not just a new incarnation of the Non-Aligned Movement, or other groupings dominated by the global south, such as the G-77 and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), none of which have packed much punch. Those groups all involved or involve some ideological affinity, which today’s six swing states don’t have. The absence of ideological affinity helps free these states to take a hard-core transactional approach in foreign policy, which in turn elevates their aggregate impact on international affairs.
Other drivers of swing state power flow from more recent global trends. Swing states’ power is enhanced by the leverage they gain from the competition and confrontation that increasingly characterizes U.S.-China relations. Each superpower wants the swing states to align with it, creating opportunities for swing states to play one off the other. For example, India’s power and leverage has increased dramatically since joining the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, the most important U.S.-led effort to balance China. Brazil and Indonesia have benefited from China’s eagerness to lock down deals on critical minerals, especially lithium, nickel, and aluminum. A recent study shows that while each of the six states may swing toward the United States or China on a particular issue, most of them remain relatively balanced in their allegiances. For now, they will be free in many areas to play one great power off the other. Foundational technologies, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, 5G telecommunications, and biotechnology, are the only exception; here, the middle powers probably have to make a choice between trading with the United States or China.
Similarly, the swing states of the global south, with their large and growing economies, derive leverage from international climate policies. There can be no solution to the challenges from pollution and climate impacts without the participation of these states. Carbon markets will increasingly bring resources to these middle powers, regardless of their actual impact on emissions, because Western companies need to purchase offsets as they pursue net-zero status. More broadly, policies on deforestation and decarbonization need constructive participation by the swing states—Brazil and Indonesia on deforestation and mainly India and Indonesia on decarbonization, especially relating to the use of coal. Finally, Just Energy Transition Partnerships focus on finding creative solutions to financing climate goals, with South Africa and Indonesia being the first funding recipients. Although the results of the program are mixed so far, this is an example of two middle powers taking on a leadership role on climate policy.
The six swing states have played an important role on sanctions and framing the optics of the war in Ukraine. From the very outset, they have refused to fall into line behind Western military aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. They argue that the war affects only European and not global security, and that it does not advance their national interests in development, debt reduction, food security, energy security, and other areas.
But the most important impact of these states on the war has been their leadership role in opposing—and in some instances undermining—Western sanctions on Russia. Turkey is one of several countries involved in channeling large volumes of dual-use items to Russia, violating the spirit and possibly the letter of Western sanctions. For these activities, the United States has already sanctioned four Turkish companies. Most of the other middle powers have remained firmly neutral, although South Africa tilts toward Russia. All six have maintained or increased trade and other ties with Russia since the start of the war.
The IMF projects that the Russian economy will grow by 0.7 percent this year—hardly the paralyzing impact Western nations had hoped for. The swing states have helped Russia erode the impact of sanctions and will continue to do so. They are one reason why the Kremlin seems to believe it can make a living by turning its trade south and east.
