Review: ‘Mutiny’
Peter Mertens analyses the revolt of the Global South against Western dominance and the parallel revolts within the South and the West against poverty and exploitation.
The world was in disorder, said Fiona Hill, former member of the United States National Security Council, in a speech delivered in the Estonian capital Tallinn in May last year. In numerous countries of the Global South we were witnessing the emergence among “elites and populations” of growing resistance to Western hegemony and, above all, the hegemony of the United States. Gaining ground is the conviction that the West has “imposed” an international order on the South “at a time of weakness”, a system that fails to meet its needs and its interests. Instead, they were seeing, she noted, how the transatlantic powers “dominated the international discourse”. The war in Ukraine was, Hill concedes, the most recent example. According to many in the Global South, it was not about defending Ukraine but, rather, securing the global dominance of the West, which Russia had openly called into question with the war. This was why the sanctions on Russia had received no support in the Global South. Instead, “a mutiny” was currently raging there: a “mutiny against what they see as the collective West”.
A “mutiny”? The Belgian journalist and activist Peter Mertens explores this term in his latest book, which deals with the profound upheavals in the world today. He sets out the watershed moments in which the global hegemony of the US and the West has become increasingly fragile in recent decades. Firstly in 2003, when Washington and a few allies waged a catastrophic war on Iraq in violation of international law, and were subsequently unable to establish even tolerable conditions in that country. Then, in 2008, came the global financial crisis that severely shook the credibility of the US-dominated financial system. And 2009 saw the failed Copenhagen climate summit, which only confirmed that the West would respond to the South’s fears of climate damage – like the inundation of Pacific islands and flooding across Bangladesh – not with action but with grand speeches tailored to domestic audiences. Finally, in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it became apparent that Western countries were more concerned about the patents of billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies than vaccine roll-outs for the countries of the South. Many people died there while the EU and the US stockpiled vaccines en masse. Cooperation with the West has become less and less attractive for the South.
So it is hardly surprising that today, as Fiona Hill put it, “we hear a resounding no to US domination” from the Global South – and indeed not only to that hegemon. The EU is also increasingly – and often blindly – turning the South against it. “Europe” is supposedly a “garden” in which “everything works”; much of the “rest of the world”, by contrast, is “a jungle” to be taken care of by the European “gardeners”. This metaphor, as Mertens points out, was not used by a 19th century European colonialist, but by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in October 2022. When it became clear at an EU-Latin America summit in July 2023 that the Latin American countries were not prepared to dance to the EU’s tune, Mertens was struck by a statement from a high-ranking EU diplomat: “It looks like they want to be perceived as equal partners.” What a surprise! No wonder the countries of Latin America, indeed the Global South as a whole, began to mutiny when the rise of China, India and other countries offered them alternatives to co-operation with the West, which had previously been the only option.
Mertens outlines the nature of this “mutiny”. It is a refusal by the Global South to always do the West’s bidding. This is exemplified by the fact that almost all countries in the South still refuse to support Western sanctions on Russia, or the fact that Latin America no longer bows to the EU’s demands for compliance. Not only China, but also countries like India and Brazil, as well as countries across the African continent, are increasingly going their own way. In fact, as Mertens puts it, a double “mutiny” is currently unfolding. Just as the elites of the Global South are no longer prepared to bow down to the West’s dominance, the populations in the South are not willing to put up with oppression in their own countries. Mertens recalls the case of the Brazilian landless movement MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra): while the government in Brasília is challenging Western hegemony, expropriated communities are demanding from Brazilian landowners their right to a dignified existence. He also mentions the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). It is fighting vigorously for emancipation within India, while in the world of states the government in New Delhi is opposing the discriminatory treatment of the South.
The two forms of “mutiny”, Mertens writes, are interrelated. The view of the Global South’s great struggle against Western domination should not obscure our view of the great struggles within the Global South – nor hide our view of the struggles being fought in the Western states. Mertens writes that when he was working on “Mutiny” Great Britain was experiencing the biggest strike wave for decades, triggered by an ever widening gap between rich and poor. For this is also a feature of the affluent West. In France, moreover, three million people took to the streets against cuts in their pensions, while French energy utilities and other businesses were raking in record profits. If we can succeed in fusing the mutinies in the West and the Global South there is, Mertens believes, a chance of “moving the world in the democratic, social and ecological direction this planet needs”.
“Mutiny” is one of the first books to take a comprehensive look at the current upheavals in global politics and all their implications. It is precisely by taking the side of the oppressed that this book gains its analytical insights. A German translation can be expected in autumn 2024.
Peter Mertens: Mutiny. How Our World is Tilting. New Delhi (LeftWord Books) 2024. 244 pages. 23 US dollars.
