The US is losing the Global South: How to reverse course

On its present course, the U.S. is set to be overtaken by China as the world’s leading influencer within the next 25 years. 

Chinese influence has already surpassed the U.S. in 61 countries due to its substantial trade, investment and development assistance, according to a study we made of influence between pairs of states from 1960 onward with forecasts through mid-century across economic, political and security dimensions. China’s “inroads” include particularly Africa and Central and Southeast Asia in addition to eroding U.S. advantages virtually everywhere else.

Today, the Middle East is no longer fully ensconced in the U.S.’s sphere of influence in view of Beijing’s latest diplomatic coup reestablishing Saudi and Iranian ties and Saudi Arabia’s forthcoming entry into the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, referred to by some as a “semi-alliance” of several large Eurasian countries.  And Western support for Ukraine — while the morally and strategically correct choice — has established conditions for further Chinese geopolitical gains in Africa. Western funds previously slated for humanitarian aid on the continent are expected to be redirected toward Kyiv, and Beijing seems poised to fill this gap with its Global Development Initiative.

The persistent loss of U.S. influence to China over the past two decades is the backstory behind the U.S. and West’s failure to lead global public opinion on Ukraine. In both the first and latest United Nations General Assembly votes demanding an end to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, India, the world’s largest democracy, abstained from voting alongside more than 30 other countries. 

The gap between the Global South and the U.S. is much deeper than understood, as shown by a February 2023 survey of major Western and Global South publics. The Global South distrusts the Biden administration’s division of the world into democracy versus authoritarianism. For them, the world is already multipolar, and the U.S. and Europe are just one of the poles. Western publics, instead, see the world as divided in two — a Western bloc and a Russian-Chinese one — and believe it is the moral duty of the rest of the world to back the West. 

Yet, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategic failures in Ukraine and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s parallel mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic have left open a narrow window of opportunity for the U.S. to regain lost strategic ground over roughly the next five years, according to our latest research. China’s rise has slowed and Russia’s decline accelerated due to the recent blows dealt to their respective economies. To make the most of this temporary reprieve from relative American decline, U.S. policymakers must abandon protectionist trade policies carried over from the Trump administration. And they must re-gear U.S. diplomatic efforts more broadly, working more closely and earnestly with leaders in the Global South. Without such efforts, the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy could face increased headwinds, for example.  

This will require a re-think of the present U.S. grand strategy. Concepts such as “integrated deterrence” — the White House and U.S. Department of Defense’s term for “the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their hostile activities outweigh their benefits” — must be reconfigured into less adversarial terms. Geopolitical influence is a product of economic, political and security-related interactions that need not be weaponized unless necessary. The Biden administration’s aversion to “traditional” trade agreements offering greater mutual market access hands an advantage to the Chinese. And states do not need, or at least should not be forced, to pick sides in a great power competition they would rather be left out of.

If the U.S. instead reorients its national security strategy toward one of further investing in American strengths — including innovation, diversity and broad-based prosperity — then it will be able to confidently see its influence rising once again, producing greater receptivity by the Global South so long the U.S. accepts a multipolar order. This will require finding ways to support blue-collar Americans while resisting the urge for increased trade protectionism, which harms economic growth and reduces U.S. influence capacity abroad. It will mean accepting migrants to maintain a favorable U.S. demographic balance. And, assuming favorable economic growth in the coming years, it will require an increased budget for U.S. foreign aid — the clearest signal of American goodwill. Meanwhile, the U.S. must reinvigorate its ties with rising regional powers, such as India and the United Arab Emirates, to build American influence capacity via multilateral collaboration rather than unilaterally.

At stake is the very shape of the international order. As it stands, we are on the path toward a growing gap between the West and Global South. We have a choice between a world where “might makes right” as much of the world remains ambivalent toward naked aggression and a truly international “rules-based international order” that can tackle global challenges, such as climate change. The latter is a vision for the world that could be destroyed by a doubling-down on trade protectionism, tighter restrictions on migration and further “moral panic” over China. Indeed, Putin is counting on it.

Collin Meisel is the associate director of Geopolitical Analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, a Geopolitics and Modeling Expert at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, and a Nonresident Fellow at the Stimson Center.

Jonathan Moyer is the director of the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, assistant professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Mathew Burrows is a program lead and distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub.