In How to survive a superpower split ", The Economist (11 April 2023) outlines a changed contour of the world order, with 127 countries refusing to follow America's hymnbook on the Ukraine War (against 52 countries who do).
These 127 countries include 25 fairly large or wealthy economies (which The Economist terms T25 (T for "transactional"), such as India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, and Egypt. They represent 45% of the world’s population and 18% of global GDP., more than the European Union's.
Some 43% of the T25 merchandise trade is with the Western bloc, 19% with the China-Russia bloc and 30% with countries in neither of those camps. However, this hides the fact that China has become the largest single trading partner to almost all of these countries.
These 127 "non-aligned" countries are in the so-called "Global South". They see through the West's hypocrisy, exemplified by the $170bn in aid pledged to Ukraine in the first year of the war, equivalent to 90% of spending on all global aid in 2021 by OECD donors.
All goes to show that rhetoric aside, the world order is no longer US-led, let alone dictated by the so-called G7 advanced economies, which, US aside, consists of "middling powers". The reality is that the world order has become much more multipolar, and significantly shifting towards a closer geo-economic relationship with China. .
