“What’s going on in the world?” The Global South and international security after the war in Ukraine
What role can the Global South play in international security after the war in Ukraine? In what ways can the EU build stronger relationships with the Global South to ensure a balanced post-war security order? This new edition of the “What’s going on in the world?” series of conferences will analyse the role of the Global South in the international security order.
CIDOB, Elisabets,12, 08001 Barcelona
CIDOB, with the support of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) of the European Commission.
The European Union and the West considered that Russia had violated the international security order and the European security architecture when Russia invaded Ukraine more than three years ago. Moscow and Beijing portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as an act of self-defence by Russia and claim that unjustified western sanctions have exacerbated global inflation, food supply concerns and geopolitical instability while the EU is struggling to challenge Russian and Chinese rhetoric.
The rest of the world, however, looked at the war as any other conflict going on in the world. The Global South countries have increasingly been opposed to framing the conflict as a global, rather than a European war. In fact, the Global South did not consider the war as a game-changer for an international liberal order that they already perceived as in decay and unfair. Thus, the Global South is approaching the conflict from a different perspective that may include pondering the relationship they have with great powers, avoiding engaging in great-power rivalries and demanding to re-write the post 1945 world order by, for example, restructuring of the UN Security Council. In addition, President Trump’s comeback to power is accelerating the change towards a multipolar global order where power rivalry seems to dominate international relations again.
In this context, what role can the Global South play in international security after the war in Ukraine? In what ways can the EU build stronger relationships with the Global South to ensure a balanced post-war security order? How can the restructuring of the UN Security Council help address the challenges posed by the war in Ukraine? What role do great-power rivalries play in shaping the perspectives of Global South countries on the Ukraine conflict?
In this session of the “What’s going on in the world?” series of conferences, Len Ishmael, Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South; Yan Shaohua, Associate Professor and Deputy Director at the Center for China-Europe Relations, Fudan University; and Philani Mthembu, Executive Director of the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD), will address these issues in a conversation moderated by Pol Morillas, Director of CIDOB. This dialogue is organised in the frame of the DigiDem-EU project and is part of the Post-war Europe: How can we rebuild our security architecture? series of seminars.
The session will be streamed live on CIDOB’s YouTube channel. The event will be conducted in English with simultaneous translation into Catalan.
Participants
Len Ishmael
Pol Morillas
Philani Mthembu
