At the recently held Munich Security Conference, a major concern of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members was the reluctance of the Global South to align itself with the G-7 on the war in Ukraine. Although most countries around the world condemn the Russian invasion and want the war to end (as shown in a UN vote on the subject in February 2023), very few countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America support There are political and economic sanctions imposed by the G-7 on Russia. The crisis emerging from these North Atlantic meetings and their inability to rally the rest of the world to wage a global war against Russia is this: why aren’t developing nations more like us? Why don’t they share our concern with the future of the rules-based international order, now, for the first time, in tatters due to Russian actions?
History and the Right Side of the ANA
The answer to these questions is very simple. The developing world, and especially Africa, Asia and the Middle East/West Asia, has been the site of many wars, including proxy wars, during the past 70 years. None of them were classified as a unique war that demanded global partnership to end it. Suddenly, a war breaks out in Europe, and that means all bets are off, and all countries must chip in to support Ukraine. Nevertheless, as India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has said, “Europe has to get out of its mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s.”
Unable to come to terms with the fact that developing countries are unwilling to wage an economic war against Russia (let alone provide arms and ammunition to Ukraine, as the United States and Germany recently forced Latin American countries to do) tried to inspire), the northern leaders have much to do at a loss. A recent call by the President of Ukraine for African leaders to meet him on a teleconference proved unsuccessful: only four of the 55 turned up. Ukraine’s foreign minister has gone as far as calling on Latin American and Caribbean countries to “leave behind their so-called neutrality and put themselves on the right side of history”.
Yet, at this particular juncture, what is the correct side of history?
As the international system undergoes major changes and we find ourselves on the brink of another Cold War, this time between the US and China, the last thing developing countries need to do is to take sides, positioning themselves as “others”. The game of “letting be” to use Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous phrase. It is in this context that the concept of Active Non-Alignment (ANA) has emerged.
The ANA originated in 2019 and was developed in response to the US-China struggle for supremacy in the 2020s, with Latin America caught in the middle. It was a manifesto calling for Latin American countries not to succumb to pressure from Washington or Beijing and stick to their own interests. It took a page from the honorable tradition of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), but adapted it to the imperatives of the new century, driven by the urgency of the Latin American crisis.
And the key word is “active”. It’s easy to do as you’ve been told. It is much more challenging to embrace agency and come up with a smarter and more sophisticated diplomacy that looks at issues on a case-by-case basis. And this is ANA. As it turns out, more than a futuristic proposition, it is an approach that is already being implemented in practice. Latin American governments see no contradiction in attending a week in December 2021 of the China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Ministerial Forum in Mexico City and the Democracy Summit in Washington DC That’s why
Neither have they hesitated when it comes to rejecting requests to ban Chinese telecom company, Huawei, from their 5G telecom development. So much so that the ANA has been referred to as “the region’s most important foreign policy development since the end of the Cold War”. In its year-end 2022, Foreign Policy magazine called it “the year of non-alignment”.
India’s Difficult Balancing Act
Furthermore, reactions in the Global South to the war in Ukraine show that the ANA is not confined to Latin America. The ANA originated in the context of the US–China dispute, and the conflict with Russia has its own characteristics, but shares others, including a certain dynamic of “West versus the rest”. Despite its close ties with the US in recent years and its membership in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”), India plays an important role in this, taking a clear non-aligned stance on the war. As the host and chair of this year’s G-20, India is managing the difficult balancing act of keeping this important informal grouping of developed and developing nations afloat, which, despite tensions, was able to deal with the financial crisis of 2008-09. I was helpful. This is necessary, as was evident at the recent G-20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in Bengaluru. Seventeen African countries abstained from the UN General Assembly vote to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And South Africa, the African continent’s most developed economy, took this independence from the G-7 a step further by scheduling a naval exercise with the Russian Navy and China off the country’s Indian Ocean coast, marking the anniversary of was held at approx. Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A role for BRICS
Going forward, there is no doubt that the BRICS grouping – which in many ways symbolizes the new South that has emerged in the new century – has the potential to play an important role in pursuing some kind of mediated solution to the Ukraine conflict. Brazil has indicated its interest in promoting a peaceful solution under the leadership of its President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. China has come up with its peace plan. In turn, because of its pivotal position, holding much of the international balance of power, India is in a privileged position to act as a peace broker. This is ANA. Not passive neutrality, as some would have us believe, but a pro-active attitude aimed at solving problems and meeting the needs of our troubled world.
In the end, what we have on the table are two different proposals for how to deal with this tragic war that has brought so much devastation and suffering to the people of Ukraine. One of them is to “do whatever it takes” to bring about a “Ukrainian victory and a “permanent weakening of Russia”; the other is to seek a mediation outcome, a peace settlement that is essentially a negotiated solution acceptable to both sides. Which of these will prevail will depend partly on the ability of the Global South not to involve itself in the conflict, but to aim for a brokered outcome.
This article is excerpted from a paper presented by the author at a conference, “Connected Histories, Shared Presents: Cross-Cultural Experiences Between Latin America and the Caribbean and India”, organized at the India International Centre.
George Heine is a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, and former ambassador to India. His recent book is ‘Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Aligned Alternative’.