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How Middle Powers Are Navigating the U.S.–China Rivalry

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the China Global South podcast, a proud member of the Seneca Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander, and as always, I’m joined by CGSP’s managing editor, Kobus van Staden, in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Kobus.

Good afternoon.

Kobus, there is a lot going on this week. In fact, more than we can talk about in today’s show, but three very big stories that we’ve been covering at CGSP quite closely.

First and foremost, the war between Israel and Iran. We dedicated our Monday edition of the newsletter to China’s role in this. Very interesting, Kobus, that in this conflict, China came out very quickly and did not pretend to try and be a neutral arbiter, did not pretend to be kind of nonpartisan at all.

Well, they came out very quickly, backed Iran on this, framed the Israelis as the aggressor, and then also positioned the United States as manipulating all of this, which is par for the course in a lot of these types of incidents.

We’re also following another very, very big story. Xi Jinping arrived in Central Asia in Kazakhstan this week for the China plus the Central Asia 5 summit, the C plus C5 summit. He also had a bilateral on Monday with the president of Kazakhstan, and we provided coverage on that.

And finally, Kobus, I want to get your take on a very big event that took place in the Hunan capital, which is the central Chinese province of Hunan, Changsha. There is, I think it’s the fourth China-Africa Trade Expo that’s underway.

And again, the symbolism of this trade expo comes at a time when the United States now is proposing to add dozens more countries, many from Africa, to the no travel list. Then they also, the U.S. Congress, formalized the end of PEPFAR and the number of these aid programs. So two very divergent directions that the United States and China are going in. But all three are big stories that have been on the radar for us this week.

Yeah, the trade expo in Changsha is big. They signed about $11.4 billion worth of deals, around 170 deals. A bunch of deals and letters of intent and so on on the side as well. Also, a lot of high-level ministerial meetings. So Wang Yi was there and he was meeting people left and right.

So it’s very interesting to see, as you say, it’s happening on the back of a possible travel ban and on U.S. plans for a possible leader summit in, I think, September, which is going to be, with a travel ban, will the Nigerian president even be allowed into the country? You know, let’s see.

Well, I mean, it’s just, there’s such a different tone between what the U.S. and what the Chinese are doing. Again, we’re not going to take a side on which one’s better because the United States says they’re launching a new Africa strategy that’s more transaction-based, that’s focused on deals. Yet the irony, as you’re pointing out, is the new U.S. policy looks a lot like the old Chinese policy. And we’ve just seen that on full display in Changsha this week.

What’s your take on the situation between Iran and Israel? One of the things that I wrote about on Monday is the stakes for China are exceedingly high in this conflict. I think a lot of people may not fully appreciate how over the past 15 years, there has been this steady shift away from Africa towards the Persian Gulf for Chinese oil buying, to the point now where about a third to 45 percent, again, the numbers vary quite a bit, of Chinese imported energy passes through the Strait of Hormuz and comes from Persian Gulf countries.

A lot of that’s from the Saudis, the Qataris, the Emiratis, and, of course, Iran as well. If Iran does follow through with its threat, unlikely as it may be, but if it does follow through on its threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz, that would have an immediate impact on Chinese industry that relies on imported energy.

And so not only in the diplomatic realm where China is coming out so strongly in favor of Iran, but also there are very steep economic consequences for the Chinese. Those consequences make me wonder whether Iran will try and hold back on that as long as they can, because, of course, it would directly hit their own trade with China as well.

All of this, you know, I think it is interesting to see Xi Jinping’s visit to Central Asia in the context of the Iran-Israel war, because, of course, Turkmenistan, one of the C5 countries, shares a border with Iran. So this Central Asia kind of coordination, economic coordination also comes against the background of overland massive kind of logistics corridors that are being built exactly to avoid this Strait of Hormuz dilemma that China faces in the broader landscape.

So there’s this economic integration happening between China and Central Asia, but also, I think a certain amount of security colored hedging. I think that’s happening not only in relation to Israel and Iran, but also in relation to other kinds of security issues on the other side of that same zone, for example, between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

So China’s outreach to Central Asia has this double kind of economic security valence at a moment when it’s also trying to increase some of its influence in the area as Russia’s influence is shifting and kind of distracted.

It’s interesting that you bring up how these issues between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf touch on each other and overlap. We saw some discord earlier this week within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the SCO, if you’re not familiar with it, is one of these groups that the Chinese initiated along with the Russians in order to challenge, counter U.S.-led international organizations and the U.S.-led international order.

So put this in the category with the BRICS, also the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank. This is all part of this new emerging parallel international governance architecture.

Well, these groups are all operating on a consensus basis. So that is, they never publish a statement or a communique unless all of the members sign on to it. That is the claim. And that’s really a foundational difference between these groups and what the Chinese will accuse the United States of engaging in unilateralism.

OK, so it was very interesting over the weekend that the SCO issued a statement condemning Israel for the missile attacks on Iran. But the Indians were not part of that discussion. Now, remember, Pakistan is part of the SCO and so is Iran and obviously China.

And so the Indians issued a very rare statement that said, “listen, guys, we were not part of this statement. This was not appropriate at all.” And I thought that was very interesting, Kobus, that these groups like BRICS and the SCO are now starting to show some growing pains.

We saw some discord within the BRICS over some of the Africa decisions that were going to be made. And that, again, lots of African members within the BRICS. Now we’ve seen this flare-up of tensions over the statement on Israel. So just an interesting data point to follow in these emerging groups that are trying to challenge the U.S.-led international system.

I think there one factor is an ongoing long-term relationship between India and Israel specifically. That is a very interesting dynamic that I don’t know enough about personally, but that has been ongoing. Of course, then the larger historical tensions between India and Pakistan are obviously at play.

Overall, I think these bodies are – this is an interesting inflection point, I think, for these bodies. You know, overall, a body like BRICS, for example, has functioned – like they’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of member states being able to put these ongoing beefs between them kind of to the side and then using BRICS as a space for other kinds of coordination. And I think it’s been quite successful in that way.

But there’s obviously a limit to how far that can go. So it’s going to be interesting to see whether it and other similar organizations are going to have to find some form of mediation mechanism or something to kind of work out some of these disputes at some stage. And it’s not going to get easier as these groups get bigger.

So Vietnam last week was admitted as a partner country to the BRICS. Wonderful for Vietnam. We now have four Southeast Asian countries in the BRICS: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and now Vietnam. But, again, as things get bigger, there are more complicated politics.

In some ways, Kobus, it reminds me of how an opposition party is used to sitting in the back bench of parliament kind of throwing darts at the incumbent leadership. And then all of a sudden, that opposition becomes the administration and they gain power. And then governing is very different than serving as an opposition.

So in some ways, these groups are starting to move into the forefront, challenged by major real world issues that have consequences to them, like the Iran-Israel conflict. These are difficult things. But finding that consensus is going to be, I think, more challenging, not less, as groups get larger.

But all of this, what’s going on, brings to the focus the role of these middle power countries. And whether it’s at the SEO, whether it’s at the BRICS, or even those who are not part of these groups.

But there are really difficult challenges being put on presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministries throughout the global south on how to adapt to not only the great power competition between U.S. and China, but now these unfolding events.

Obviously, we’ve got Israel-Gaza.

We have Israel-Iran now.

We’ve got Russia and Ukraine, and any number of these big events.

So the folks at the South African Institute of International Affairs, your former stomping ground, together with scholars around the world, did a survey last year on foreign policies in South Africa, Brazil, India, and Germany as well.

I think there were a number of different partners. That’s why the Germans were there. And Saasaya was one of the partners among many.

They looked at how these middle powers are adapting to these rapid changes in the international environment.

Now, just a quick disclaimer.

Number one, the research for this was done last year. It was done before Donald Trump or just around the time of Donald Trump. Certainly, it did not take into account what we’re seeing right now.

But the themes and the principles that were articulated in the report seem to be extending far beyond just these current moments right now.

So, Kobus, when we look at this combination of countries—South Africa, Brazil, India, obviously three BRICS countries, and then Germany’s attitude—what’s interesting about contrasting these middle powers with Germany is it shows there’s a huge contrast in perceptions in countries in the global north and those in the global south.

Yes. And, you know, in some ways, Germany is also a kind of a classic middle power. But the survey shows that there are very distinct differences between global south middle powers and global north middle powers in relation to these issues.

It is very interesting to see, once one breaks down these different views, because this was a survey of foreign policy professionals.

A lot of some diplomats, but then particularly a lot of analysts, academics, and so on.

They were polling them in relation to what they saw, for example, as foreign policy priorities in their region and globally and so on.

So, it provides a really fascinating glimpse of how this kind of elite layer of people actually sees the world.

The report is named “Emerging Middle Powers 2025: Momentum for Middle Powers”.

Again, it looks at South Africa, Brazil, India, and Germany.

We had the pleasure, before the Iran-Israel war—so we just bear that in mind in our discussion—we had the pleasure to talk with two of the contributors to the report.

Manjit Kripalani, who is the executive director of Gateway House, the Indian Council on Global Relations, and Carlos Coelho, who is a professor at Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro.

We talked to them about the report and all of the key themes.

Let’s take a listen to our discussion with Manjit and Carlos.

Carlos, Manjit, thank you so much for taking the time to join us on the program today.

“Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.”

“Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.”

Manjit, let’s start with you.

You surveyed foreign policy scholars in four countries: Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and India.

This is a fascinating time to do that kind of research, given the huge changes that we’re seeing in the international environment.

Give us the overview of what you found in this really ambitious study that you undertook.

“When we started this project, which is about, I would say, two and a half, three years ago, we thought this was just a foundation in Germany being forward-looking and really doing some deep thinking about why the world has changed so much and why people don’t have the same kind of empathy to the West as they did before.

And the one wonderful thing was that the questions really for the survey were set by us, by Carlos, by us.

So it ended up being a report for really everybody, the rest of the world, the West.

It wasn’t just the West telling us what to do. It was wonderful.

And we thought that we found initially that there were some restraints about how people were responding, that maybe it wasn’t—I mean, people in Germany were very concerned about the Russia-Ukraine war.

And then you had a burst of candidness from the other side of the world that said, ‘It’s not our problem. We have other problems, and we have a problem to deal with.’

So, let’s tell us how this worked.

We found that over the years, even this year with this report, this has kind of accentuated, and the world is actually evening out.

It’s becoming a less imbalanced place than it used to be, according to me, from the report.

Because there is a part of the world that has now been empowered to speak up and speak out.

And there’s a voice that has been articulated.” And surveys like this simply help to further articulate this voice. So the survey is a real service for people to start articulating from different parts of the world how they feel about a certain topic in a world that is transitioning.

Carlos, one of the really interesting big picture takeaways for me from the report is quite different views of the role of the United States. About 60% of Brazilian and South African researchers thought that the U.S.’s net influence in the world is largely negative, whereas 75% of Germans thought it was largely positive.

So I was wondering, do you see this essentially as a kind of a global north-global south split of opinion? I think so. And I think it also shows maybe some of the built-up frustration from several decades of the United States as a reference point, especially in multilateral institutions.

There’s a phrase here in Portuguese that says, “if you live long enough, you get to see everything.” I don’t know if that translates well in English. But right now what we’re seeing is that, well, the staunch defender of multilateralism is China among the big competition between China and the United States. The staunch defender of international law is also China. I certainly wasn’t prepared for that when I started my studies in international relations.

I think there is a growing sense of frustration, but also a growing sense of opportunity from multi-alignment when it comes to countries like Brazil, South Africa, and I’ll leave India to Manjit, but I will include India as well. We have a brave new world coming up. We don’t know what it will be shaped like in 20, 30, or 40 years. But we can see that we’re in a changing international society, and that brings a lot of opportunities.

Carlos, we don’t know what it’s going to be like next week, much less 20 or 30 years from now. So Kobus asked about the United States, and Manjit, I would like to get your take on that from India, but I’d also like to focus on China, given that that’s the focus of our program.

Your findings said that:

• 77% of Brazilian respondents
• 73% of South African respondents

view China’s global influence positively, compared with 33% in India and 22% in Germany. That number in India today is probably lower than 33%, given the events that happened between Pakistan and India and Kashmir, and China’s unconditional support of the Pakistanis in that conflict.

But I’d like both of you to reflect on this China question and how it is, again, starkly divergent between Germany, India, and Brazil and South Africa.

Manjit, let’s start with you, and then Carlos, I’d love to get your take on it.

Well, first, the only country that actually shares a border with China is us. So we bear the brunt of China on a daily basis. Either it’s bombarding us with their products, legally or illegally, through our borders or illegally through other borders. And secondly, they’ve also surrounded us.

Now, it’s Pakistan. All the countries around India are in debt to China because of the Belt and Road. Bangladesh, which was doing okay, has been destabilized by none other than our friend the United States. So that was a real problem of this last year, and China is happily fishing in troubled waters. We have a real problem with China, and that opinion of China is never going to get any better.

The Chinese understand that. It was on its way this year to getting better. Prior to the conflict, we saw ambassadors back in each other’s countries, direct flights starting to resume, student exchanges starting to happen. There was an upswing after the 2020 Galwan incident, which put relations into a freeze for four years.

So when you say it’s never going to get better, we did see for about a year some improvement. We did, and part of it was actually Indian companies that had imported Chinese products. They needed Chinese technicians to come and help to make that work or repair it, etc. As you know, India is in a huge infrastructure build-out. Unfortunately, China has no role.

The way we work it is that we import machinery. So it comes from Siemens, but as Siemens means China, that’s how it comes through. But we don’t really directly import that much from China. At least officially, we don’t, because there’s a ban against it. So it was getting a little bit better. There were dialogues. There was conversation.

And then at Kazan, at the BRICS conference in Kazan last year in October, I think President Putin and the Brazilians really intervened to get us to talk to each other. And then things got better. But now we know, we know that China does not change. They continue to want to undermine India because the truth is, Eric, that there is only one country in the world that can actually challenge China in terms of size, in terms of economy, and in terms of smarts.

I mean, the West is very smart; it had an industrial revolution, but really, China is very insecure about India. And it will do whatever it can to undermine India. It is backed in a very, it’s a little bit vicious. The Chinese look down on us as brown people, and when you go to China, it’s very visible. So, even though we don’t look at the Chinese one way or the other; they’re just another Asian country, the Chinese need to have a way to look down on Indians for them to feel superior.

Because the truth is that a lot of China’s civilization and its knowledge came from India. We were at a dialogue and conversation last year. The Chinese sent their monks and their scholars to India to learn from India. This is only starting to be acknowledged in China now. And that, I think, is going to stop now that we’re back to where we started in 2020.

Carlos, a very different perspective in Brazil on China. Maybe you can share your reflections on how respondents in Brazil view the Chinese, which is obviously going to be very different than what Manjeet was finding in India.

Sure, well, China and India compete on several fronts, which is not the case for Brazil. Sometimes people forget that China has been the largest trading partner of Brazil since 2009. So, that has been for the last 16 years.

• Right now, roughly a third of our international trade is made with China.
• The United States is coming in number two with around 14%.
• So, China with 33% is a major part of trade for Brazil.

But we’ve also seen, in the last few years, a lot of Chinese investment in Brazil, particularly in different sectors of its infrastructure, especially in energy. Now, with other state visits from past governments and the current government to China and likewise the other way around, Brazil is not much on the radar of the United States.

With the European Union, there’s a historic issue with trade regarding agriculture because 40% of the European Union’s budget goes towards the common agriculture policy, which is a major problem for us. Even now, with the tariffs that the United States is levying against several countries, the European Union is not, and when I say European Union, it’s mostly the French, but they’re not budging on the Mercosur, European Union trade.

So, when you add it all up, it’s only natural that Brazil is turning to China. The United States is having antagonistic measures. Europe is having antagonistic measures. We turn to China.

And then it brings another question, which I’ll stop here. Manjeet, one of the interesting data points on the Indian side has been that 52% of experts in India preferred neutrality in a larger geopolitical context. As I understand it, if I have that correct, that’s an increase over time.

So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the neutrality issue and how that’s framed within India. This is something that Indians really feel very strongly about. As you know, this is the 70th year of the Bandung Conference, and Carlos and I were together in Bandung in April. It was really quite moving to see, so long ago, that what they call the third world, which is the alternate world, really envisioned an era of neutrality and non-alignment.

For India in particular, it came about because of the Russia-Ukraine war, as we’re so dependent on oil for our energy. We’re dependent on the Saudis, the Russians, and we were also dependent on the Americans. But when the war took place, the impact on our oil, fuel, fertilizer—everywhere, just really was a problem.

I think India did some good diplomacy and explained to the U.S. that we could not stop taking Russian oil because the whole country would shut down. Then there would be another major global problem on their hands.

So we worked it very well. We were able to take Russian oil. We refined it and bought it at a discount, which was great for us because it allowed our country to just run normally. We were also able to refine it and send it off to Europe, so it didn’t feel like it was coming directly from Russia, but it was coming from India.

This little duplicity actually worked very well for India to say that we are now a neutral country. For the first time ever, we kind of knew what Switzerland felt like. We need not take any side. You’re neither here nor there, and it’s a good feeling. We’re still that way; we’re still friends with Russia.

I’ll tell you something else, too. In the recent India-Pakistan conflict, the four-day conflict, there were three types of planes in play. One is the Rafale aircraft by France by Dassault. One was the China J-10C. And the Russian S-400s, the American aircraft were nowhere to be seen. The Americans keep telling us to buy the F-35s, but it’s just not a very affordable or high-performing aircraft. The Rafale didn’t do as well. The Chinese did okay. The Pakistanis leased two aircraft, but really the best were the Russian aircraft.

Until now in India, I’m pretty sure that when we make our purchases of our next aircraft, it’s not going to be European. It’s definitely not Chinese. It’s going to be the Russian ones, with the latest being the Su-57s, which are really good aircraft and perform well and are battle-tested.

So to say that in terms of our neutrality, the U.S. made an article of faith that we should buy defense equipment from them in the trade agreements that we’re doing with the U.S. We’re not going to be able to take it. We’re going to have to do the Russian ones. But I think that we will be able to manage it because of our very hard-worked neutrality and our neutral stance.

Yeah, the performance of those aircraft is a point of contention among the various players. The Indians have not said how many of their jets were downed. They acknowledge that there was a downing. The Pakistanis say that six were downed. This was, for a lot of people, what the Chinese were calling their deep-seek moment, saying that the J-10C’s performed so well and within a whole ecosystem of Chinese military tech in Pakistan.

So an interesting discussion there, especially with differing views in Pakistan and India on that story. I’d like both of you to step away from your home countries a little bit. Because India and Brazil are both very large countries that are able to assert themselves in ways that other middle powers are not.

All of this talk about non-alignment, about the spirit of Bandung, that’s great for India. That’s great for Brazil because you have the heft to do that. Panama does not have the heft to do that. Colombia does not have the heft. Neither does South Africa.

Vietnam is now in the crosshairs of the great power competition. It’s wonderful to say we don’t want to pick sides. But when the United States now literally says, “we want you to cut off your ties with China; we want you to cut off your trade with China or else you will sacrifice your relationship with us. You have to decide.” They are saying that outright. There’s no subtlety to what they’re saying.

Carlos, can you talk a little bit about what the spirit of the Bandung non-aligned conference looks like in this new era where those hard choices are being confronted by policymakers in middle-sized powers, much smaller than your own country?

So the proposal from the U.S. or what we’re hearing from the U.S. is very much not aligned with current circumstances. What we’re hearing might have worked 40 years, 30 years ago. Yet here we are, though. It may not work, but this is the reality that Panama is being confronted with. And they might end up, the U.S. might end up very frustrated with the answers that they will get, as they are right now.

Vietnam will not stop doing business with China. Between China and the United States, if they had to choose, I don’t think they would choose the United States. I think the strategy, now we all understand what the background is and everything related to tariffs has China as a target. It’s not about anything else, but the strategy doesn’t seem, you know, you’re doing it alone.

Is Europe prepared to turn their backs on Vietnam as well? Are all other countries turning their backs on the smaller countries as well?

Of course, the United States is still a very large player. The United States can still do a lot of harm, as we are seeing from the last few weeks. But I don’t think, at least when it comes to trade and to use trade as a geopolitical tool, the strategy seems a bit off.

China is the leading trade partner for more than 120 countries. So, the idea that the U.S. will isolate these smaller countries, obviously, because of its geographical position, Panama will suffer more than others. But the idea that they would do so, we’re going to come back to a moral doctrine, or that the U.S. does not, it’s all relative.

Again, I would say, the United States is still a very, very large, very, very powerful, but it doesn’t have the clout that it once had. And I think that has to be recognized.

Tobis, you’re in South Africa. You are in one of the countries that’s caught between this. What are you hearing there in terms of what Carlos and Manjid are talking about and what the report kind of reflects on non-alignment? What is Cyril Ramaphosa thinking now that he’s back home again?

Well, I guess there’s some complications there. Like, on the one hand, a lot of it is very similar. What I’m hearing is very similar to what Carlos is saying: you can’t argue with just the weight of China as a major trading partner to all of these countries.

Particularly when it’s not like they’re being offered huge trade incentives to the U.S.. Obviously, there are tariffs and so on, and they are trying to avoid the tariffs, but it’s not like the U.S. is offering this kind of China-style green lanes to try and increase trade from Africa. So, there isn’t really, you may be throwing away your largest trading partner. It’s not like that’s really being replaced or there isn’t really an offer on the table to replace that. So, that makes it difficult.

In South Africa, the issue has now been so politicized by the actual optics of the interaction between Ramaphosa and Trump, and the white refugee crisis. Another group of them moved from South Africa to the U.S., I think, this week. In South Africa specifically, I think the kind of negative perceptions of the U.S. has probably increased among some of these foreign policy professionals from the time that they were polled, I would guess.

Carlos, just saying with you, and then I’d love Manjit to also chime in. Earlier, in one of your earlier answers, you used the term multi-alignment. We recently spoke with Jorge Heiner, who’s a big proponent of active non-alignment. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about these terms.

Where are we now in the non-alignment conversation? How do we see active non-alignment versus normal non-alignment versus neutrality versus multi-alignment? “There’s a wonderful question to which I probably have a very frustrating answer.”

I hear and learn more about multi-alignment by talking to Manjit to understand the India perspective on this, because in Brazil, we always mention non-alignment and not multi-alignment. Now there is this discussion about active non-alignment. Look, I will take off the academic hat just to say that we are all talking about the same thing, which is how do we approach this complex world without tying ourselves to one party or another.

I really do think, and this has been a continuing conversation on our project with Manjit, when Indians talk about multi-alignment, it’s the same conversation that we have in Brazil when we say non-alignment. We could theorize over that, if you will, but in the end, we’re really just discussing “tomatoes, tomatoes.”

I would really argue on that, Joe. Manjit, we’d love to get your take on that. So, we’ve been thinking a lot about this. It’s non-aligned, multi-aligned, uni-aligned. It’s everything. It’s become a mishmash of countries now saying, “We don’t want a unipolar world. We want a multipolar world.” I think that’s pretty clear.

We want a world that is more equal, where everybody, big or small, has the same voice. In some sense, we’re going back to the original principles of the United Nations, where 190 countries, everyone has one vote. Unfortunately, the UN is non-functional. It’s not even dysfunctional; it’s just non-functional.

So the world is now looking. There are so many other groupings coming up. The arrival of BRICS and then BRICS+—as you know, there are 44 countries in line to become members of BRICS+. It’s quite exciting. All these countries have one view: they really do not want to lean one way or the other.

They don’t want to lean towards China, they don’t want to lean towards Russia, and they don’t want to lean towards the United States or the West. So the world is actually starting to go back to what we saw post-1945, where societies, many of them post-colonial societies, are finding their voice and place once again in the world.

So definitely, it’s a multi-aligned world. It’s a multilateral world, and there are no multipolar worlds. But to be fair, there’s a lot of diversity in the global South. Javier Malay in Argentina, certainly Nicaragua, the Philippines—they are not pursuing this non-aligned strategy. They are lining up firmly behind the Trump administration. Also, China has several countries that are similarly passionate in line with them as well.

So again, that diversity is important to acknowledge; there are a lot of countries that are looking at this non-aligned strategy, but certainly not all of them. That’s right. And to take us back to really the original definitions of what was the first world, what was the second world, which was the socialist bloc, and what was the third world, which is the alternative to the first and the second—not countries that were underdeveloped.

And so we’re going back to that. And how do you think that as the world becomes more contentious and potentially more violent, as we’re seeing in Gaza and Ukraine, any number of different conflict zones? We’ve been following on the Thai-Cambodian border.

That the Cambodian and the Thais have deployed heavy forces. There’s been now killing along that border and tensions have surged. So we’re starting to see flashpoints now in places that we didn’t see as, again, parts of the international order start to show some real strain.

As conflict becomes more, potentially more prominent, how do you think that these systems will hold, given the fact that the international architecture of the past 70, 80 years is deteriorating? Where are the institutions that these conflicts could be resolved?

Exactly. That’s a very good question. We rely too much on the old institutions. So actually, Eric, we’re now in a phase of the world where new institutions have to be built. And that’s what you’re saying. BRICS, for example, is one of them.

Well, BRICS is a kind of a filler because we have the G20 that will expand at G7. But the G7 still is keeping the rest of G14 out of the G7 or G8. They’ve thrown out one member. So now they were G8 and now they’re G7. So I think this is an important transition.

These groupings that we’re seeing:

• SCO
• AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank)
• BIMSTEC in our part of the world
• Mercosur
• Caribbean states

This is a time where you’re going to see many, many groupings because we all had to find our place. And none of these are actually institutional. They don’t have a bureaucracy. They don’t have headquarters. So we’re kind of finding our feet.

I don’t think it’s a dangerous time. We’re seeing the flashpoints because there are just more arms available because of the wars. The West has just been supplying arms because their economies, because everything was outspoken to China except defense. All that countries had was the defense industry, particularly the U.S.

And so now, there are arms everywhere. He laid on arms. You know that in Africa, laid on arms in one part of Africa and you get an insurgency in another part because those arms have moved there. This really has to stop. There has to be something about the arms.

India was very, very careful about the conflict and really restrained it to four days because we know, we’ve lived through it. We know how awful it can be. Unfortunately, the West seems to have a bloodlust about having conflict. It seems to be something that’s become part of how they think and how they view the world.

As a place for conflict, it is not. It is a place where many parts of the world are starting to talk to each other. India has had a tremendous amount of diplomatic outreach, even just now with the war. Pakistan is on it too.

But it’s really nice to see that diplomacy does work. We’ve sent out groups to several countries, four groups, small countries, big countries, everywhere. It’s important to reaffirm that diplomacy and talking does matter.

Whether we’ll see the institutions, countries are going to make their own decisions and they will find their own solutions without the United Nations because people have been working without the UN for a long time.

Carlos, one of the interesting issues that was raised by the report for me is that a lot of the respondents very strongly felt that there’s a big need to reform multilateral institutions. As Manjeet was mentioning, the UN is largely non-functional. We’re seeing a very weak World Trade Organization, for example, and so on.

But at the same time, there were very high levels of pessimism about the actual possibility of reforming these institutions. So I was wondering where that leaves us, particularly from a Global South perspective.

Manjeet was mentioning several alternative institutions kind of popping up. Is there some way in which the Global South can gain more voice in these institutions or are the institutions themselves basically not fit for purpose anymore?

Well, it’s not fit for purpose. I wouldn’t say anymore, but I would say at this time, I think what the Global South can do and continue to do is find ways. And I know this might sound like a feeble answer, but continue to work together in offering alternative strategies.

So when we talk about the non-alignment movement in Bandung, historically, this was mostly a defensive mechanism. I think we’re seeing something different now. I mean, we have to recognize that the results that we’re getting are very uneven at this point. When we talk about BRICS and then after several new countries, there’s much discussion about alternative strategies. I think what we’re seeing, for example, regarding what’s taking place in Israel and Palestine, and what we’re seeing when it comes to Ukraine and Russia, is maturity on the side of the Global South.

And I don’t mean people who expect that the Global South will align with whatever it is that mainstream North ideas are. I think what we’re seeing is maturity in the side of the Global South, as to say, “look, you have your interests. Guess what? I have my interests as well.”

So this is a major issue for you. This is not such a major issue for me. And you’re going to have to live with that. So I think what we can continue to do is work together, pressuring and exploring alternative strategies.

When we talk about exchange and currency exchange, using other currency for trade, again, this is extremely complex. When we see the data right now, it has not changed anything. It has only made the slightest dent on the dollar or the euro.

However, the fact alone that these conversations are ongoing is important. We ask ourselves, “how do we do this? How do we proceed?” I think this is very important.

This is something that, to the extent of our material capabilities, the Global South has to continue to exert its powers and its interests. The question over the currency is something that Donald Trump finds very threatening. He has, in fact, vowed to put “100 percent tariff on all the BRICS countries,” which complicates matters considering that China and India are both part of BRICS.

Nonetheless, this is an absolutely fascinating and timely report that is essential reading for anybody interested in the new geopolitics we are in today: Emerging Middle Powers Report 2025, Momentum for Middle Powers. It was written by an all-star team of analysts, including Manjit Kriplani, the executive director of Gateway House, the Indian Council on Global Relations, and Carlos Coelho, a researcher at the BRICS Policy Center and a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio.

Manjit, Carlos, thank you so much for your time and your insights today. Congratulations on the report! We are really looking forward to staying in touch with you going forward to hear more about your work and your ideas.

Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Kobus. It has been a pleasure. Thank you both. We cordially invite you to visit India and Brazil to see for yourself the alternate world that is emerging. That would be wonderful. Thanks.

Challenge accepted. Kobus, I’m so glad that you brought up the question of multi-alignment, non-alignment, and all of this, you know, following our discussion with Jorge Heine. By the way, for those of you at home who are watching and listening, Jorge Heine is a former Chilean ambassador to South Africa, India, and China. He is really the grandfather now of the new active non-alignment strategies that many developing countries are adopting.

These discussions are very timely now, given what’s going on. I am a little more skeptical than all of these guests because I think it’s going to be much more difficult for the smaller developing countries. Again, think Panama, which really doesn’t have the leverage to push back against the United States when they are confronted with this us or them prospect.

Remember when we were talking about South Africa and a gentleman by the name of Joel Pollack, who was at one point rumored to be the next** U.S. ambassador to South Africa? It didn’t turn out that way, but he was very much in favor of a tough stance. His rhetoric today on **X remains the same: “If you do business with them, then you’re not going to do business with us.”

We hear that up and down the U.S. policymaking chain of command. So, I just don’t know if it’s going to be an option for a lot of countries to remain non-aligned, particularly smaller, weaker countries that don’t have the choices that Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria, for example, have—the bigger countries.

What do you think? Extending that thought, how do you think those countries would react, considering that, as we pointed out during our discussion, many of them, even though their trade is objectively small, frequently have China as their largest trading partner?

In the case of a country like Panama, which was a dollar economy, the United States had enormous leverage, and you saw what Panama did—they had to withdraw from the Belt and Road. Again, that was more symbolism than substance. Nonetheless, the optics of this are very important, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Donald Trump took it as a big victory.

We are in a moment of political optics, and that is important. And they’re going to go where they think they have the leverage and the pressure points to do these kinds of things.

I mean, again, there’s no consistency in what the Americans are doing, because remember, in Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump said, “We’re not going to lecture you on how you treat your own people.”

And yet in South Africa, they are clearly lecturing people on how they treat their own people. So there’s all these inconsistencies. What happens in one country may not happen in another country.

I just want to get your take on one thing that it was interesting that Manjeet pointed out in the first three of these new organizations that are emerging in this new era. She talked about the SEC, which is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. She talked about BRICS. And she talked about the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

All three of those have one thing in common, Kobus. They were all initiated by the Chinese. And so I’m wondering if this is going to be a new era now for this new parallel international governance architecture that the Chinese have been talking about for several years:

• The Global Development Initiative
• The Global Civilization Initiative
• The Global Security Initiative
• The Global AI Initiative, along with the alphabet soup of new forums, which is BRICS, SEO, etc.

Do you think that this is going to be the moment where the Chinese will fill some of that void left by a dysfunctional United Nations, a WTO that doesn’t work anymore, an IMF and a World Bank that are going to be increasingly neutered by the United States? Do the Chinese, with this new governance architecture, fill that void a little bit?

Yeah, I think they probably do. You know, last week we saw the big flashy launch of a new mediation center in Hong Kong—the International Mediation Center, particularly apparently aimed at…

What is… explain what that is, by the way. I don’t know if everybody knows what a mediation center is. So mediation obviously is a way, you know, is a kind of a legal mechanism to try and find a way of resolving a dispute without having to go to full litigation.

And there’s a… there’s a big international mediation center in… there’s a big one in London, I think. And, you know, the mediation has been a very West-centric space for a long time. They now set up this mediation center in Hong Kong.

The launch was attended by representatives from more than 30 countries and many multilateral institutions. It’s apparently focused specifically on disputes between states and investors. So it sounds like it may be a way to, in a narrow China space, deal with some of the problems around Belt and Road projects.

But more broadly, I think it now sets up Hong Kong as this alternative space to work out some of these large international issues between different governments and different international investors.

So it’s not necessarily Chinese investors. I think that is an example of slowly but surely, these bodies that are located in the West that used to be spaces for the projection of Western power have now largely become stuck, you know, kind of in the way that the World Trade Organization has been.

We still need institutions to do things, so it looks like China is going to be one of these powers setting up alternative ones, maybe not displacing the original ones, but living in parallel with them, I assume.

What I think is so unfortunate is the fact that this report that they wrote, and that was done in conjunction with your former employer, SAIA, the South African Institute of International Affairs, is a very important report that will not be read by people in Beijing and Washington.

One of the things that I’ve spent most of the day today immersed in U.S. Senate committee hearings and listening to the discourse in the United States is that it’s a parallel universe. It might as well be Mars compared to what these guys are talking about.

Similarly, we have our China researcher, Han Zhen, who has been immersed in some of the discourses in Beijing, and they’ve been showing me all of the different rhetoric coming out of the Chinese and what’s happening within the think tank policy circles there. Again, just as removed from this reality as anything.

There’s no nuance in it. It’s so focused on, “If they punch me, I punch back, and they punch me, and I punch back.” That’s the focus right now. All of these concerns about middle powers and non-alignment go to any of the mainstream Chinese press, and you don’t see any of that. Go to anything in Washington, and none of it.

So the fact is that these guys are writing this, but the people who need to be reading it are not. That, to me, is the tragedy of all this. Yeah, it’s a big problem.

I think, as you say, these countries are very in a tunnel vision moment, even more than usual. Both China and the U.S. tend to, that’s kind of where they live, in tunnel vision land.

The issue that you raised earlier about these countries being forced to choose is significant. There are very strident voices coming out of both the U.S. and China regarding the issue of countries choosing. However, both sides may not like the result once these countries actually start choosing.

For a lot of these smaller countries, if your larger trading partner is China, and if your trade with the U.S., as in the case of South Africa, is significant and important to the economy but not the biggest part of the picture, that creates a dilemma.

Structurally, there are limitations in certain sectors. For example, South Africa is a big agricultural exporter, but the U.S. has a strong agricultural sector. Thus, there is a limit to how much agricultural product South Africa will be able to sell in the U.S.

In that logic, some countries are going to have to make the call, and they’ll end up trying to replace the U.S. part of their trade with other countries and call it a day, basically. There is a danger of the U.S. losing a lot of its international relations. To a certain extent, it’s the same with China, although China has this kind of economic weight.

For the U.S. stakeholders, that’s not really a big issue. There isn’t someone up at night in Washington about whether Guatemala is cutting them off. Nonetheless, it still is a concern if you’re a superpower and there’s this kind of attrition of international relationships happening in the background. I wonder what you think of that.

I think Trump is under pressure for not closing these deals, which he said was going to happen. Remember, “90 deals in 90 days” was the mantra that came out. If countries divert from the U.S. plan in some way, that could be a problem for Trump.

One of the interesting things I was thinking about when you were talking was that in an earlier era, the decision between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was an ideological battle.

• Are you Marxist?
• Are you communist?
• Are you capitalist?
• Are you democratic?

Today, as you’ve pointed out, the question is really cold, hard economics. The politicians in many of these countries who rose to power are very, very cunning politicians. To rise to power in Kenya, or through the ANC in South Africa, requires real skill.

They make these brutal decisions of who’s your friend and who’s your enemy. I think the current moment may align with the calculated nature of many of these political leaders.

As you pointed out, they’ll consider:

1. If I choose the U.S., how does that undermine my power base?
2. Regime survival will be a major theme for each of these decisions regarding whether they choose the U.S. or China.

If they choose one, if forced to choose, I believe the criteria will be:

• What’s best for my people?
• What’s best for me?

Sometimes the order of those may not be the same, but it’s not an ideological thing here. Other than Bukele in Nicaragua and Javier Milei in Argentina, which is clearly ideological, most countries will view this through the lens of realpolitik: “where is my bread buttered?”

The Colombia decision to join the Belt and Road despite intense U.S. pressure is interesting. The president of Colombia is making a calculation that this is the way to go. It will be intriguing to see country by country how these decisions unfold.

Keep an eye on Vietnam. They are currently caught between the U.S. and China. Decisions in Vietnam will likely be made by very cold, calculated balance sheets.

Absolutely. The outcomes will affect how the entire global system operates. It’s going to be interesting. We’re seeing small, almost invisible signs of large changes happening over the next few years. One thing to monitor is the rumors bubbling in Washington that the United States is interested in severely cutting back and curtailing its engagement with the United Nations—essentially an effective departure. So they would still be a member, but they would barely fund it.

They would not attend already. They’ve put Mike Waltz there, which is a backwater. He is the former national security advisor who is now the U.S. ambassador, but you don’t hear anything from him.

There’s also talk of the United States disengaging from the institutions of the World Bank and potentially the IMF as well. Maybe not a full departure, but they’re not interested in these multilateral development forums.

So I think the IMF is probably the one that is most vulnerable right now. That would change the equation quite a bit if these huge institutions that we have counted on for 80 years, at least to provide some kind of ballast in the international order, are rendered basically inoperable by the United States.

One interesting note about that, if the United States reduces its shares of the World Bank, then according to the World Bank charter, the headquarters must move to the largest shareholder’s country. So that would put the World Bank in Japan.

We could see, again, dramatic changes in the international order in the next year or two if things go down the path that we think they are.

So let me just get a final thought from you on the paper and on our discussion today and what you want people to take away from all of this, because it’s very confusing and a little bit also, I think, disconcerting and scary for people to think about a future that doesn’t have a structure that we’ve had for the past 60, 70, 80 years.

As Manjit was pointing out, this project came, you know, as run over the last few years. From my understanding, and obviously it was pushed by a German think tank. It comes from a set of conversations that was happening in Europe around the Ukraine invasion, particularly when, you know, around the kind of shock in Europe and the United States when large parts of the global South ended up not supporting their position on Ukraine.

One of the interesting findings in the report is that the only group of these foreign policy experts—so keep in mind, this is a survey of foreign policy professionals, so analysts, think tank people, academics, and then also some people in governments—the only group of those people who thought that Ukraine and the Middle East were the most notable kind of foreign policy challenges were the Europeans.

That, I think, still kind of confirms this larger shock that came out of the Ukraine invasion in Europe around this idea of like, “oh, all of these developing countries, we thought we’re on the same page as us around this issue, they’re really not on the same page as us.”

So, you know, reading this report, you get a very strong view of how different parts of the world have different issues, and that they have different priorities, and that the central priorities that you would find if you like open the New York Times and look at their main headlines, those are not necessarily replicated in the rest of the world.

This gives you a strong and concrete idea of how this kind of global perspective looks around the world. One of the strongest takeaways from it is that there is a very strong north-south split developing, and that increasingly geopolitics is going to be north-south, not east-west, I think.

You remember when India’s external affairs minister said that Europe likes to socialize its problems and privatize the global south’s problems, and that seems to be very much consistent with what you’re saying.

Well, let’s leave it there. Kobus and I will be back again next week. If you are interested in these discussions, and timely as they are, and just so important, particularly around China’s role in all of this, then you’re going to want to check out the China Global South Project and all the great work that the team in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East is doing.

You know, I was thinking just the other day, Kobus, that we have the largest team now of China-Africa analysts anywhere in the world. That’s both a sad, depressing kind of observation on the decline of China-Africa studies, but also at the same time, really just a compliment to our team and how we’ve grown over the years.

The quality of research and quality of analysis coming out of the CGSP team is just unreal. I say that with enormous pride about everything that Giraud, Obert, Njenga, Kobus, and Lucy are doing—this amazing team of analysts.

So go check us out, Chinaglobalsouth.com. Subscriptions are very affordable, starting at just $19 a month. If you are a student or teacher, email me at [email protected], and I’ll send you links for a half-off discount of a subscription.

I was just in the U.S., Kobus, and my Starbucks run for just a muffin and a venti coffee was almost $14. Okay, so I can tell you definitively that a subscription to CGSP is a better value than your daily run to Starbucks.

Yeah, and Starbucks’ muffins are not that good. We offer a tastier offer. No, and they put them in the microwave, and they’re so squishy.

Yes, you will get a lot more protein from a CGSP subscription than you will from a Starbucks run. But it’s almost arguably cheaper, too, compared to it. So definitely check us out.

So Kobus and I will be back again next week with another episode of the China Global South Podcast. Until then, for Kobus Fenstaden in Cape Town, I’m Eric Olander. Thank you so much for watching and for listening.

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