Summary of: Stephen Kotkin: The Global South: the 21st century’s great utopia

The Global South: the 21st century’s great utopia , August 19, 2026 and  On Stephen Kotkin’s New Article on the Global South  (video)

The article argues that the “Global South” is an incoherent, recycled idea that serves mainly as a tool for China, and that the best available path forward is a renewed, decolonized US-led Western order strengthened by cooperation among middle powers.

The foil: Alexander Stubb’s “Triangle of Power.” The author opens with Finland’s president, who divides the world into a Global West (liberal democracies), a Global East (China, Russia, Iran, Belarus, North Korea) and a residual Global South. Stubb argues the West’s dominance is over, the Global South is the swing vote, and a radically reformed UN (more permanent Security Council seats, no vetoes, suspension of aggressors) is the mechanism for cooperation. The author respects Stubb but calls this a utopian wager. Any such reforms would need consent from all five permanent members, including China and Russia. Stubb also never explains why the original UN failed to work as designed.

A recycled concept. “Global South” is the old “Third World” rebranded. The author traces the term from Alfred Sauvy (1952), through New Left activist Carl Oglesby (1969), to the Brandt Report (1980). That report called for massive North-to-South resource transfers, and none of its recommendations were adopted. What actually lifted over a billion people into the middle class was markets, trade, investment and technology transfer, operating within America’s security and financial architecture. Development aid largely failed. Sweden is offered as a cautionary tale about welfare-state limits, since its own Social Democrats later rolled back benefits and introduced market reforms.

No golden pre-Western order to return to. Scholars like William Dalrymple, Janet Abu-Lughod and Ayşe Zarakol describe rich pre-European trade networks and Asian sovereignty traditions. The author admires their erudition but says these were not true “world systems.” The Mongol era in particular was authoritarian and extraordinarily violent, with death estimates approaching 29 million. It is no model for the future.

Western self-doubt. Europe’s power collapsed through two self-inflicted world wars and decolonization. Its share of global GDP fell from about 46% in 1900 to about 17% today. Historians such as Geoffrey Barraclough and William McNeill (who in 1990 disowned his own Rise of the West) helped popularize writing the West’s epitaph. The author calls prematurely killing off a still-functioning order “suicidal,” especially when nothing better exists. He also faults the West broadly for inviting Communist China into the open order, which enabled China’s coercive rise.

Non-alignment never worked. The 1955 Bandung Conference was dignified and its principles were sound, but it created no lasting institutions. Its participants’ interests clashed, many weren’t elected, and many actually wanted alignment with one superpower or the other. The later Non-Aligned Movement was a rival to Bandung rather than its successor, and it has drifted toward authoritarian hosts such as Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Azerbaijan and Uganda.

Neither “south” nor “global.” Only about 800 million of the world’s 8 billion people live south of the equator. Smaller developing countries don’t want Brazil, South Africa, India or Russia speaking for them, and many are wary of China. India’s attempt to lead the Global South has failed even within South Asia. China exploits the label, the G77 and UN structures to gather symbolic support, push its claim on Taiwan, weaken human-rights norms and pose as the alternative to the West, while avoiding the costs of global leadership. Meanwhile, the author argues, the US is rebalancing its commitments rather than declining: it still holds about a quarter of global GDP. The BRICS have produced no alternative economic or security architecture.

The proposed answer: “middle-power horizontalism.” Countries like Japan, France, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, the UAE, Singapore, Finland and Sweden can build regional and cross-regional “lattice work.” Examples include India’s ties with the Gulf, Israel and Vietnam; Australia’s pacts with Japan and the EU; and the Nordic-Baltic-Dutch-UK Joint Expeditionary Force. This won’t amount to a new world order. But linked to a successfully rebalanced US, it could lead toward a “GATT 2.0” that combines trade and security. The author names three decisive questions for the future:

1. Whether the US can rebalance and fix its domestic problems.
2. Whether the EU can get unstuck.
3. Whether Chinese Communist Party rule can survive.

Closing choice. The author lays out four options:

• A romanticized pre-modern multipolarity that was violent and authoritarian.
• A non-aligned movement that never cohered.
• A Global South utopia that failed as the Third World and now mainly serves China.
• A reinvented, decolonized US-led Western order: flawed and hypocritical, but real, historically transformative, and improvable through middle powers.