The term 'Global South' has recently gained currency in usage in our global political discourse. The various conflicts we are witnessing, particularly with regard to Palestine and Ukraine, seem to divide the world, most of the times in lines with the 'developed north' and the 'developing South', though not always. This essay is meant to be a brief analysis of the reasons and implications.

I would like to cut to the chase quickly and make three points. I would like to make three points. One, I shall address the definitional issue, a sine qua non for any serious discussion on a subject. Two, I shall analyze the theory of Structural Dependency, very relevant to the Global South. And three, I shall address the possibilities of conflict between the North and south.

So, what is the 'Global South'? The term was first used during the New Left Movement of the late 1960s when I was a student. An American activist called Carl Oglesby was the first to do so. He saw the globe dichotomized into the rich north, and the poor south. He wrote that: "The North's dominance over the South converged to produce an intolerable world order."

He had followed up on the French demographer Alfred Sauvy. As Colonialism retreated in the 1950s, Sauvy in his analyses trifurcated the world. The first world, the developed global segment, comprised the United States and its allies. The second world was the socialist countries led by the Soviet Union, the rivals of the first during the Cold War. The rest comprised the third world, whether underdeveloped and developing, largely Afro-Asian States, fired by the Bandung Spirit of Afro-Asian solidarity. These countries were politically Non-aligned during the Cold War, protecting their economic interests by grouping themselves into the forum called 'G 77 and China'.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Second world, for a while called "economies in transition" dissolved. Thus, we were back to the North and South. The South struggled for a while to create a New International Economic Order (NIEO)which achieved very moderate success. Thereafter it became subsumed under the current catch- all phrase, the 'Global South'. It was a 'value-free concept', which meant it had no other connotation except a geographical description. It was also not arranged in any economic pecking order. Its identity lay in its perception as being united by the desire to change a world order. This 'world order' was being seen as being stacked against the weak. In addition, it was seen as seeking to create a level playing field in economic relations, free from any exploitative norms.

Now I come to my second point: The politico-economic philosophy underpinning the Global South known as the "theory of Structural Dependency'. Through much of recent evolving history, the existing economic relations were seen as exploitative and predatory, with the developed world benefiting at the expense of the developing and underdeveloped. Enter the "Structural dependency" theorists, mostly emanating from Latin America, like Hans Singer, Raul Prebisch, Osvaldo Sunkel, Celso Furtado, also including Africans like Samir Amin, and Asians like the Pakistani economist Mahbubul Huq. To them the former imperialist colonial countries constituted the global Metropolitan Centre and the former Colonies the periphery. A neo-imperialistic system allowed for the continued exploitation by the 'Centre' of the 'periphery' either directly, or through the aid of the "comprador elite" located in the former colonies. The structural dependency theorists were divided on how the Gordian knot of exploitation could be cut. The Neo-Marxists advocated delinkage from the north through revolution, but most others advocated reforms.

The UN, consequently, created the institution, UNCTAD for the purpose of formulating reforming ideas. I had the privilege of serving as Special Advisor to the UNCTAD Secretary General, a brilliant economic thinker, called Rubens Ricupero. UNCTAD was instrumental in persuading the free-trade oriented World Trade Organization to include 'development' as also an objective of international trade. That was a major reform since GATT, which the WTO succeeded.

Now to my third point on possibilities of conflict. The late 1980s and 1990s were seen as the golden period of globalization. It was a unipolar world where the US was the sole "hyperpower" (Vedrine). The Socialist camp collapsed had collapsed, and the principles of nearly unfettered market-capitalism, led by the WTO, became the global norm. After over 11 years of negotiation, China, reformed by Deng Xiaoping, was brought into the WTO system. The triumph of the North was now complete.

But then US hubris led to misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. A rising China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping refused to play ball. China meandered into a change. It forsook the earlier Deng Xiaoping mantra of "Hide your Capabilities and bide your time", and began to act in consonance with Xi Jinping's Zhang Guomeng or 'China Dream'. Andre Gunder Frank said what one must fear was not the rise of China, but America's reaction to it. Now it was the North That is wanting to de-link or de-risk from China. The eastward crawl of NATO caused Russia to invade Ukraine and join the China Camp. The Xi-Putin "no limits" friendship attracted the apprehension of the North. BRIC countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Council, Iran, and north Korea gradually began to form a loose coalition. US, the leader of the North clearly perceived China as challenging global Unilateralism. Typically, when a rising power confronted an established power, the potential for a Thucydides trap emerged. Thucydides, the classical Greek historian had warned: "When Athens grew strong, there was great fear in Sparta and war became inevitable".

Methods of warfighting were altering which gave an apparently weaker side advantage in asymmetric warfare. State and non-stare southern actors sharpened and honed their "network centric" tactics. Two Rand Corporation researchers, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, have done extensive research on the subject. Conventional advantages of bigger firepower were being eroded through China and others leapfrogging ahead by the acquisition of newer kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities. The earlier battle domains of land, sea and air were now expanding to include deep sea, space and cyberspace and electromagnetic spheres. Today we witness how Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are taking on Israel, despite all its US backing.

Israel is not winning the Israel-Palestinian war. Should Ukraine collapse, the invincibility of NATO would be called into question. For the first time in our annals, the South may be well on the way of developing the capacity to militarily deter the North.

We may be standing on a crossroads, therefore. On the one hand, the potentials for a horrendous conflagration can drive us to resolve the problems of Palestine, Ukraine, or Taiwan, and narrow the North South divide. On the other hand, we could be walking inexorably into a much wider war. As analysts our task is to lay out and explain the existing matrix. We can only hope that good sense will prevail, we will have learnt from the past about the horrors of war, and choose to adopt the saner option.

Ambassador Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury (Retd.) PhD, President, Cosmos Foundation and Former Foreign Advisor, Bangladesh Caretaker Government (2007-2009)