Today’s world is characterized by geopolitical divergence and polarization between the political West, on the one hand, and the Global Non-West and South, on the other. One of the key issues on the agenda is strengthening solidarity among non-Western countries, which constitute the world majority. Consolidating structures and mechanisms within the world majority is the key to a successful response to the growing pressure that the political West is exerting on states in the Global South, a pressure that has intensified during Donald Trump’s presidency. Among these structures and mechanisms, BRICS and regional associations occupy a special place.
Values determine the political will to adopt and promote certain decisions in international affairs. It is no exaggeration to say that the geopolitical standoff largely reflects a struggle of values, including against attempts by the political West to present its values as universal. The task for the world majority countries is to develop their own value alternative. This task is important for every state in the Global Non-West and South. But no less important, and perhaps even more so, is the coordination of the world majority’s value policy as a whole—the development of a common platform as the basis for consolidated political will. Without this, solidarity between the countries and peoples of the world majority will remain mere rhetoric on paper. This rhetoric, even if repeated from one declaration to another, is not realized in practice. Evidence of this is the experience of 2025, when the countries of the Global South responded individually to Trump’s pressure, and no “united front” emerged. Therefore, the task of coordinating the political will of the world majority countries, impossible without consolidating their value base, is urgent. No less important, however, is that this policy must be implemented on the basis of the real, natural, primordial values of the world majority, shared by the societies of these countries. Any kind of contrived or haphazard construction of values will not help; rather, it will exacerbate the situation.
All these pressing and topical issues will be the focus of the Valdai Discussion Club’s expert programme, “The Values of the World Majority.”