Simon Radford, Aidan Irwin-Singer & Marie-Magdalena Bradova
The first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, proclaimed after his country’s independence, “We face neither East nor West: we face forward.” The recent GLOBSEC Forum in Prague brought together a star-studded lineup of the Western political and military establishment. The conference welcomed presidents and prime ministers, military leaders, and heads of major development banks to discuss issues ranging from artificial intelligence to climate change to pandemics to supply chains.
One panel, moderated by one of the authors and featuring insights from panelists from the Global South with a range of professional backgrounds, both echoed Nkrumah’s outlook and provided a central insight that Western leaders would be wise to heed. Only by moving beyond attitudes shaped by outdated, Cold War-era assumptions, the panelists argued, could the assembled leaders work together to craft lasting solutions to the challenges of our time.
The panel identified multiple challenges in how the “West”—a term that encompasses the United States, its European allies, and, in some cases, Japan, Australia, and South Korea—engages with the Global South. As Oby Ezekwesili, a former World Bank economist, pointed out, even the Cold War-era term “Global South” is problematic and fails to capture contemporary realities. A term such as “Global Majority” would more accurately reflect contemporary geopolitical realities since 88 percent of the world’s population now lives in these regions.
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