The Global South shifts in US strategy from periphery to strategic infrastructure—central to security, but instrumentally included without agency
The United States (US) National Security Strategy (NSS) is conventionally read as a policy statement reflecting presidential priorities at a given moment. This paper advances a different claim: the NSS should be understood as a theoretical artefact of grand strategy, one that reveals how the UScognitively maps the international system, ranks regions within it, and assigns them functional roles. In this sense, the NSS is not merely descriptive or programmatic; it is constitutive. It produces a hierarchical ordering of world politics through narrative emphasis, textual allocation, and strategic framing.
If grand strategy operates as an ordering logic rather than a checklist of policies, this paper treats the NSS as a discursive mechanism of hierarchy construction. Regions are rendered central or peripheral not only through material commitments but also according to how they are written into the strategic imagination. The paper’s central theoretical claim isthat between 2017 and 2025, the Global South has undergone a profound conceptual reclassification in US strategy: from being a selectively engaged periphery of great-power competition, it has increasingly become a strategic infrastructure upon which US economic security, geopolitical consolidation, and competitive resilience increasingly depend.
Regions are rendered central or peripheral not only through material commitments but also according to how they are written into the strategic imagination.
This shift does not signal a move toward equality, partnership, or multipolar recognition. Rather, it signals a deeper form of instrumental incorporation—where the Global South becomes strategically central as it increasingly is subordinated to US geopolitical imperatives. This argument intervenes in debates on hierarchy, agency, and power in contemporary international relations by demonstrating that centrality and subordination are not opposites but can coexist within modern grand strategy.
In strategic studies, priority is rarely declared explicitly. It is encoded through repetition, narrative depth, and functional integration into overarching strategic objectives. Regions that are woven into multiple strategic domains—security, economics, technology, supply chains—are treated as structurally significant. Those confined to narrow or episodic frames are rendered secondary, regardless of their objective importance.
This paper draws on three overlapping theoretical literatures.
First, it engages with work on hierarchy in international order, which emphasises that global politics is not flat but structured through status, authority, and differential agency. Hierarchy is sustained not only by coercion or institutions, but by narratives that normalise unequal roles.
Second, it speaks to scholarship on economic statecraft and weaponised interdependence, which highlights how control over networks, flows, and infrastructure has become central to power in the 21st century. In this framework, regions matter less as sovereign actors and more as nodes within strategic systems.
Regions that are woven into multiple strategic domains—security, economics, technology, supply chains—are treated as structurally significant.
Third, it builds on postcolonial and critical IR insights regarding the Global South’s historical positioning as an object rather than a subject of strategy. What is new in the contemporary period is not marginalisation, but functional centralisation without political empowerment.
By reading the NSS through these lenses, the paper shows how the US grand strategy has evolved toward a model in which hierarchy is maintained not through exclusion, but through managed inclusion.
The 2017 NSS marked a reassertion of competitive realism. The international system is described as an arena of enduring rivalry among sovereign states, with China and Russia positioned as primary challengers. Cooperation is conditional; institutions are instrumental; regions are evaluated in terms of their contribution to US’s relative power.
Within this worldview, the Global South appears as a strategic periphery. Its importance is derivative rather than intrinsic, defined by exposure to instability, susceptibility to influence, or usefulness in balancing rivals.
India represents a partial exception. The 2017 NSS explicitly “welcomes India’s emergence as a leading global power,” a formulation that grants status while firmly situating it within US strategic logic. India is elevated not as a representative of the Global South, but as an outlier, an actor selectively extracted from it. This exceptionalism reinforces hierarchy rather than dissolving it.
ASEAN’s marginal presence reflects scepticism toward consensus-based regionalism. Despite Southeast Asia’s centrality, ASEAN is not treated as a strategic actor capable of shaping outcomes. Its near invisibility underscores the NSS’s preference for controllable alignments over autonomous regional institutions.
India is elevated not as a representative of the Global South, but as an outlier, an actor selectively extracted from it.
Africa’s more substantial textual presence does not indicate a higher status. Instead, it reflects securitisation. Africa matters because it produces risks: terrorism, governance vacuums, and external penetration by rivals. This framing situates Africa as a problem to be managed, not as a partner in order construction.
Latin America, framed through the “Western Hemisphere,” functions primarily as a security buffer. Migration, crime, and border control dominate the narrative. The region’s relevance lies in its proximity to the US rather than strategic role.
The 2017 NSS thus reflected a hierarchical model in which the Global South was selectively engaged, episodically instrumentalised, and largely external to the core functioning of US power.
By 2025, this peripheral logic became increasingly untenable. The international system described in the NSS is one of fragmented globalisation, supply-chain vulnerability, climate stress, and prolonged great-power rivalry. Security is no longer defined primarily in military terms, but as the resilience of economic, technological, and infrastructural systems.
This reconceptualisation produces a qualitative shift in how the Global South is positioned.
Latin America and the Western Hemisphere become a core arena of consolidation. The region is integrated across domains, migration governance, energy security, near-shoring, and competition with rival powers. This multi-issue integration marks a decisive elevation in priority. The hemisphere is no longer outside US security; it is constitutive of it.
Africa undergoes a parallel transformation. While instability narratives persist, Africa is increasingly framed as a strategic hinge in global supply chains, particularly for critical minerals and energy transitions. The region’s importance derives from its material centrality to the global political economy. Yet this recognition remains instrumental. Africa is valued for what it provides, not for its political agency or leadership.
Africa undergoes a parallel transformation. While instability narratives persist, Africa is increasingly framed as a strategic hinge in global supply chains, particularly for critical minerals and energy transitions.
India’s reduced textual emphasis reflects normalisation rather than marginalisation. Its role as a central Indo-Pacific actor is assumed. However, this normalisation also reveals constraints. India is embedded within coalition architectures designed to balance China, not framed as an autonomous pole in a pluralistic order.
ASEAN’s complete absence is perhaps the most telling indicator of strategic evolution. It signals declining U.S. faith in multilateral, consensus-based regionalism in favour of bilateral and minilateral arrangements that maximise flexibility and control. Southeast Asia remains vital, but ASEAN as an institution is no longer seen as strategically useful.
The comparative analysis reveals a critical paradox at the heart of contemporary US grand strategy. The Global South is more central to US national security than at any point in the post–Cold War era. It is discussed more extensively, integrated more deeply, and treated as indispensable to US competitiveness. Yet this centrality does not translate into empowerment.
Instead, the Global South is reimagined as strategic infrastructure: a set of material, demographic, and geopolitical foundations upon which US power increasingly rests. This represents a shift from marginalisation to managed incorporation, from neglect to dependence, but not from hierarchy to equality.
The Global South is more central to US national security than at any point in the post–Cold War era.
This finding contributes to IR theory by challenging the assumption that inclusion signals progress toward a more egalitarian order. It shows how modern hierarchy operates through integration rather than exclusion, and how power is exercised through control over systems rather than territories.
Thus, the NSS reflects a world moving beyond unipolarity without arriving at genuine multipolar pluralism. The Global South is no longer outside the system; it is embedded within it, as an object of strategy rather than a co-author of global rules. Recognising this dynamic is essential for understanding the future trajectory of global order and the limits of contemporary strategic inclusion.
Gurjit Singh has served as India's ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia, ASEAN and the African Union.
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Gurjit Singh has served as Indias ambassador to Germany Indonesia Ethiopia ASEAN and the African Union. He is the Chair of CII Task Force on ...
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