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"In his essay “The West’s Last Chance” (January/February 2026), Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, correctly divines the future trajectory of world order. “The global South,” he writes, “will decide whether geopolitics in the next era leans toward cooperation, fragmentation, or domination.” He’s also right in asserting that “this is the last chance for Western countries to convince the rest of the world that they are capable of dialogue rather than monologue.” Yet to have a dialogue, one must listen. The sad truth is that the West does not seem willing to listen to the global South.

The countries of the global South do not all share the dominant Western perspectives about world order. Stubb emphasizes the challenges posed by China and Russia. But many of the 3.3 billion Asians who are not Chinese, along with many of the approximately 1.5 billion people who live in Africa and the over 660 million who live in Latin America, view China and Russia differently. Western policymakers rarely try to understand why. China and Russia may loom menacingly in Western imaginations, but people in the global South do not think of them in that way—nor should they be expected to. Indeed, the rest of the world has had as much, perhaps more, to fear from the West in recent history as it has from the West’s autocratic competitors. To his credit, Stubb urges the governments of Western countries to take the demands and interests of the global South seriously. But engaging with the global South is not just an exercise in listening. It also requires Western governments to reassess their own positions and approaches to a world they have long taken for granted."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/dream-palace-west

#Geopolitics #Multilateralism #GlobalSourth #China #India #Imperialism