More than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the brutal war Vladimir Putin ignited has transformed, as major regional conflicts often do, into a war with global ramifications. This has not, as Vladimir Putin and others claim, become a proxy war between the United States or the “collective West” (the U.S. and its European and other allies) against Russia. In the current geopolitical arena, the war is now effectively the reverse—a proxy for a rebellion by Russia and the “Rest” against the United States. The war in Ukraine is perhaps the event that makes the passing of pax Americana apparent to everyone.

In its pursuit of the war, Russia has cleverly exploited deep-seated international resistance, and in some cases open challenges, to continued American leadership of global institutions. It is not just Russia that seeks to push the United States to the sidelines in Europe, and China that wants to minimize and contain U.S. military and economic presence in Asia so both can secure their respective spheres of influence. Other countries that have traditionally been considered “middle powers” or “swing states”—the so-called “Rest” of the world—seek to cut the U.S. down to a different size in their neighborhoods and exert more influence in global affairs. They want to decide, not be told what’s in their interest. In short, in 2023, we hear a resounding no to U.S. domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.

Simply put, the torrential flow of events in the past year in the situation around Ukraine brought to the surface Russia’s existential struggle vis-a-vis the US, which in turn triggered a tectonic shift in the international landscape, one transformative aspect being the rise of the Global South and its increasingly important role in international politics.

The Biden administration wouldn’t have expected that a polarisation to isolate Russia and China would end up like this. Paradoxically, Washington’s ‘‘dual containment’’ of Russia and China, as enshrined in the Biden Administration’s National Security Strategy marked the beginning of the Global South breaking away from the control of the big powers, repositioning their international status and role, and seeking strategic self-confidence and autonomy.

Saudi Arabia is a stellar example — assuming an independent trajectory in regional hot spots such as Sudan or Syria, calibrating the world oil market through the OPEC Plus format rather than obey the diktats from Washington, and in seeking BRICS membership.

The developing countries are gaining room to manoeuvre in the game of big powers and their political influence has risen rapidly. Their diplomatic independence and strategic autonomy against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis has accelerated their rise as an emerging force in global politics in a remarkably short period of time.