On January 20, 2026, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion titled “The Global South and the Trump Challenge”. Moderator Oleg Barabanov invited participants to discuss US President Donald Trump's pressure on countries in the Global South, which has recently taken on a direct military nature in the case of Venezuela. He posed the question of how far Global South solidarity can go in response to these challenges.
Dmitry Novikov, Deputy Head of the Department of International Relations at the Higher School of Economics, believes that Trump is creating additional, often unpredictable, risks, but not new opportunities. Trump's disruption of the old rules of the game and the undermining of the international liberal order, which has had both advantages and disadvantages for the Global South, are creating a situation where there is no order at all. This state of affairs is unusual for American politics. Since the beginning of the Cold War, Washington has always had a specific policy concept in dealing with the countries of the Global South—first as part of its efforts to counter the global spread of communism, then as part of maintaining the neoliberal world order. The US no longer has such a concept. It has abandoned notions such as economic aid and development assistance. American policy in the Global South is taking the form of a not fully self-reflective, but quite predatory, postmodern imperialism. Conceptually, the US administration is turning to the past, reviving the Monroe Doctrine and archaic forms of foreign policy, seeking the cheapest possible forms of control and exploitation, Novikov noted.
Rasigan Maharajh, Director General of the Tshwane University of Technology and a research fellow at the Tellus Institute, pointed out that Donald Trump's presidency is closely linked to the “Mandate for Leadership” project, also known as “Project 2025,” which was developed by numerous American conservative organisations. According to Maharajh, by pursuing this course, the leadership of the world's largest economy is ultimately exacerbating international tensions and acting aggressively toward the Global South. Under Trump's rule, the US has withdrawn from dozens of international organisations, including UN agencies. International conventions and institutions are being destabilised. Against this backdrop, the response of individual states is insufficient; the global majority needs to unite in order to confront this new "hyper-imperialism," including through BRICS+. “It's not easy to resolve all the contradictions within this group, but cooperation is crucial,” Maharajh7 concluded.
HSE University lecturer Ana Lívia Araujo Esteves called Latin America an important area for Trump's foreign policy. She believes the current situation is hardly new – the US traditionally uses the region as a laboratory for its imperialist strategies and becomes more assertive when it senses it is losing control. Perhaps the only innovative aspect is the postmodern nature of US imperialism, with its combination of force and appeals to legal arguments. In this situation, it is crucial for Latin American countries not to give in to fear and to continue to be guided by national interests. Addressing Brazil's foreign policy experience, the researcher emphasised that the US, through tariffs, is forcing the country to negotiate with it bilaterally, leading to further fragmentation of the region and the Global South as a whole.
Marco Fernandez, Brazil's representative in the BRICS Civic Council, noted that US actions in Venezuela are far from the first precedent, citing the experience of Libya and Iraq. “The US is destroying countries all over the world,” he emphasised, adding that Democratic presidents have done the same. According to Fernandez, Trump is different only in that he directly states: “It's about oil.” The peculiarity of the situation in Latin America is that many among the Latin American elite are prepared to support Washington, the analyst asserts. At the same time, Washington’s destructive policies often alienate former supporters. Discussing possible countermeasures from the Global South and BRICS countries, Fernandez pointed to the underutilisation of its raw material advantage. For example, 85 percent of rare earth metal reserves are located in five BRICS countries – Russia, China, Vietnam, India, and Brazil. The creation of an OPEC-like organisation for such resources could be an important lever of influence over the US, he believes.
"The main challenge for the Global South is that Trump doesn't know the Global South exists," said Igor Istomin, head of the Department of Applied International Analysis at MGIMO. The question is how to make him see the Global South and begin to take it into account. Trump's actions against countries in the Global South are precisely those against individual countries. At the same time, different parts of the Global South also have very different grievances against Trump—from interference in their affairs to the denial of global benefits. This is due to the heterogeneous, fragmented nature of the Global South. Each country has its own agenda, and this is both its weakness and its strength. This has also led to an inconsistent approach to international institutions: the desire to preserve them, but to ensure that they work in the interests of the Global South. Istomin believes that the challenges created by Trump should be used as an opportunity to identify these weaknesses, overcome them, and become stronger.
Ana Esther Ceceña,
a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Research and the Graduate Program in Latin American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Geopolitics, outlined the current US strategy as a source of challenges, highlighting three main aspects. The first aspect is the claim to global technological leadership, not only in manufacturing but also in global data control. The second aspect is control over the circulation of raw materials. The most important raw materials are located outside the United States. Therefore, guaranteed access to them is crucial for Washington. This is pushing it to seek to include Latin America and Africa within its sphere of influence. The third aspect is control over critical military and trade transport routes in various regions of the world, which is particularly related to the US struggle for power in the Arctic. At the same time, in all three areas, the US is heavily relying on militarisation and the use of the military, Ceceña believes. They do not support the idea of non-intervention, preferring an approach of “justified intervention,” which contradicts the very principles of world order.
