Global South defence pact reflects anti-Western geopolitical realignment amid US-led bloc fragmentation
Original framing: “Qatar, Turkiye, Pakistan and Indonesia sign ‘Badr’ defence pact” — Al Jazeera
The 'Badr' pact echoes historical patterns of Global South solidarity, such as the Bandung Conference (1955), which united Asian and African nations against colonialism and Western dominance. Similarly, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of the Cold War demonstrated how nations could resist superpower blocs while pursuing independent foreign policies. The pact also builds on more recent precedents, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has facilitated military and economic cooperation among Eurasia’s non-Western powers. However, unlike these earlier movements, the 'Badr' pact is explicitly framed around defence, reflecting the contemporary shift toward militarized responses to perceived threats—particularly from Western-led alliances like AUKUS.
The 'Badr' defence pact is less a spontaneous military alliance and more a calculated response to the erosion of Global South agency in a unipolar world.
Its roots lie in a century of anti-colonial resistance, from the Non-Aligned Movement to the rise of BRICS, yet its militarized framing risks repeating the extractive and exclusionary patterns of Western-led security architectures. The pact’s omission of indigenous knowledge, labor rights, and environmental safeguards reveals a systemic failure to address the root causes of insecurity—climate vulnerability, corporate exploitation, and social inequality—which militarism alone cannot resolve. By centering marginalized voices, historical precedents, and cross-cultural models of collective security, the 'Badr' nations could transform this agreement into a blueprint for a multipolar world that prioritizes justice over power projection. The trickster’s role here is to expose the pact’s contradictions: while it claims to defend sovereignty, it may deepen dependencies on foreign military technology and ecological degradation. The path forward lies in decoupling defence from exploitation, expanding non-military collaborations, and reclaiming indigenous wisdom as the foundation for true security.