Non-Alignment Today
A Question of Redistributing Fear and Hope More Equitably
The original non-alignment movement occured in 1961 following the Bandung Conference (Indonesia) held in 1955, which was attended by 29 countries, almost all of which had recently been liberated from European colonialism. They accounted for 54% of the world’s population, but their weight in the world economy was almost nil.
In 1955, non-alignment meant wanting to decide on the national development model without having to adhere to either of the two rival models in force at the time: the communist Soviet bloc and the capitalist Western bloc. The concept of the Third World stems from this aspiration. The rivalries between them were beginning to crystallize in the Cold War. The differences between the two models were so great that they pointed to two civilizational models. In fact, the idea of the “new man” had emerged since the beginning of the 20th century in Europe as a new civilizing idea, both in the Soviet version and in the fascist and Nazi versions, and pointed to something ideologically very different from the capitalist norm which, after 1918, was increasingly dictated by the USA. The differences between the participants are well known. The use of force and war to resolve conflicts, which had dominated international politics since the 19th century, was the most unanimous issue. The Soviet bloc had a comparative advantage in that, since the Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku (Azerbaijan) in 1920, it had recognized the role of colonial liberation movements in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. But, as S. Gopal points out, non-alignment was above all a state of mind, the spirit of Bandung. African-American journalist Richard Wright, who was present in Bandung, describes the atmosphere in Bandung thus:
“Only brown, black and yellow men who had long been made agonizingly self-conscious, under the rigors of colonial rule, of their race and their religion could have felt the need for such a meeting. There was something extra-political, extra-social, almost extra-human about it; it smacked of tidal waves, of natural forces. And the call for the meeting had not been sounded in terms of ideology. The agenda and the subject matter had been written for centuries in the blood and bones of the participants. The conditions under which these men had lived had become their tradition, their culture, their raison d’être”.
The then young countries of what is now known as the global South wanted to assert their national interests through cooperation in order to focus on them and not on the interests dictated to them by the global North. These interests included anti-colonialism, anti-racism, getting out from underdevelopment, and expanding areas of peace.
From the outset, the Non-Aligned Movement was contested by the US, since the ideas of neutrality, neutralism or non-alignment were anathema to the US, while the USSR was pushing to intensify its anti-imperialist orientation. As a result, disagreements grew and the movement lost relevance, which worsened with the end of the Cold War.
In 2024, the geopolitical and economic situation in the world is very different from 1955. What sense does it make today to talk about non-alignment? Non-alignment between what and for what? A brief overview of the current geopolitical situation will help us define the possible political content of non-alignment. I anticipate that the new non-alignment is as necessary today as it was in 1955, albeit with very different political and ideological content. I distinguish between weak non-alignment and strong non-alignment.
The geopolitical context
We live in a multipolar (or even bipolar) world, although very different from the world in 1955. Today, the two poles of geopolitical attraction are the US and China and the rivalries between them are intensifying. A new Cold War is emerging, not at all like the one that existed between the Soviet Union and the USA. In this regard, 1955 and 2024 are distinct in three main ways.
1.While the differences between the two poles were enormous in 1955, one communist and the other capitalist, to the point of pointing to different civilizational options, today these differences are much smaller. It’s true that the speeches and self-description of the regimes point to very different realities, but in reality the differences are considerably less. It is enough to remember that until very recently China was considered a strategic partner of the US, something that was never the case with the Soviet Union. Although there is debate about the nature of China’s economic regime (communism, socialism, state capitalism?), China’s evolution over the last thirty years and the role it has played in the globalization of the economy make it increasingly clear that we are dealing with two variants of the same capitalist model: on the one hand, multinational capitalism with globalized financial capital (USA) and, on the other, state capitalism with state control of the financial sector (China). Seen from this perspective, the two systems have more in common than you might think. The differences are important, but they occur within the same model of capitalist economic development. The socialist option as it was envisioned in 1955 has disappeared. And with it, its opposite has also disappeared from the economic lexicon: today we don’t speak of capitalism, but of market economy, as if the markets, which have always existed, had always been capitalist.
2.The second difference from 1955 is that at that time there was a radical difference between democratic countries (because they were multi-party) and autocratic countries (because they were one-party), even though the latter claimed to be another kind of democracy: popular democracy, developmental democracy. Today, the differences are much more tenuous given the degradation of liberal democracies over the last thirty years. It’s no stretch to say that while China is a one-party autocracy, the US is a two-party autocracy. In fact, this was stated with extraordinary foresight by President Julius Nyerere in 1991: “The United States is a democracy by some definition and not by others. It’s a plutocracy, but the native gets the vote; so it’s a democracy! But the United States is very lucky. There are two parties; but they’re really one party! Both parties agree on the basic national objectives. Internally, both of them are highly capitalist. Externally, both of them are imperialist. So, their policies don’t differ very much. It was not Kennedy who planned the Bay of Pigs. It was planned by Eisenhower and Kennedy carried it out, that is, tried to carry it out. So they basically agree.” Obviously, the differences are significant, especially on the domestic front, but in terms of geopolitics they translate into the difference between a monolithic autocracy and a pluralist autocracy.
3.The third difference from 1955 is the emergence of the ecological issue. At that time, the issue was no more than philosophical speculation in the Global North, and when it was dealt with by the countries of the Global South, it was called something else, such as the struggle for land, agrarian reform or the control of mining operations. The situation has changed radically since then and today China alone is responsible for the second largest percentage of carbon dioxide emissions, after the USA. For their part, the countries of the global South have focused their demands on the historical responsibility of the countries of the global North and, if they do not distinguish themselves by being more active in the processes of ecological transition, it is because they are often victims of these processes when adopted by the global North, the so-called energy colonialism. In short, in this area too, the two poles seem more similar than different. Non-alignment between the two poles may mean nothing more than choosing between the storm and the flood. In view of this, the new non-alignment today has many dimensions, all of which are urgent. I distinguish between two main ones, which I call, for lack of a better term, weak non-alignment and strong non-alignment.
Weak non-alignment
As I explained in my summary above, today’s multipolar world is a single system with two main variants. These include the growth of a Cold War, which, because it is unregulated (contrary to the case of the previous one), could at any moment slide into a hot war. Weak non-alignment takes place within this system without challenging it as a whole. But don’t think that the options are weak or don’t involve risks – quite the opposite. Weak or intra-systemic non-alignment has two main characteristics, both of them implying activism.
Active neutrality. Not supporting and doing everything to prevent the outbreak of war between the two blocs. Active neutrality is what used to be called neutralism. It is not just a matter of staying out of conflicts in an isolationist way and not trying to intervene in them. On the contrary, it implies active intervention policies to promote peaceful solutions and prevent wars from occurring. Given the globalization and interdependence of the economy and the world, active neutrality will be more effective if it takes place regionally and not on behalf of isolated countries. Active neutrality is asymmetrical. No one in the global South believes that China wants a war with the US. History teaches us that rising empires advance by creating zones of influence through unequal but reciprocal benefits. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is today’s most powerful affirmation of this. No one in the global South believes that Russia is a militarily expansionist country. On the contrary, it has been historically a victim of European expansionism, having been invaded twice since the 19th century by two European powers, Napoleon’s France and Hitler’s Germany. Russia is defending itself against a new form of expansionism, this time Euro-North American, NATO. In fact, the Russian-Ukrainian war, like the Israel-Palestinian war, has the same objective of stopping the USA’s great rival, China, by neutralizing its most important allies, whether Russia or Iran. Empires in decline, such as the US, assert themselves through war, when they are not even dominated by the permanent war machine fed by the military-industrial complex. Today, the US has eight hundred military bases around the world.
Active neutrality requires non-participation in military pacts, whether promoted by the US or China. It requires distancing oneself from either of them militarily and promoting peaceful mediation and negotiation initiatives, especially from a regional base, be it Africa or Latin America. The economic power of some of the countries of the global South may be enough to have some impact on stopping the looming war.
Active non-alignment. This concept was recently coined in a book by Carlos Fortin, Jorge Heine and Carlos Ominami, (Eds), Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Alignment Option (2023). First of all, it should be pointed out that active neutrality and active non-alignment are two interdependent policies – the more intense and tense the military rivalry between the US and China, the less room there is for maneuver for the countries of the global South to carry out active non-alignment policies.
Taking Latin America as the focus of their analysis, the authors point out that the adjective “active” has a strong meaning because it implies the policy of a region that today has a significant weight in the world economy and strong relations with both China (the main investor) and the US. In line with what I argue here, active non-alignment would force Latin America out of military agreements with the US because these will increasingly be geared towards forcing Latin America into active alignment with the US in all areas – military, economic, international institutions, etc.
Two complex issues emerge. On the economic front, the situation is dilemmatic. While the US continues to advocate the economic relevance of neoliberalism despite all its failures and the emergence of extremist versions (Javier Milei in Argentina, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador), China proposes a non-neoliberal capitalism with strong state intervention and state control of financial capital. In this area, it is difficult to foresee a third way. On a political level, the US is currently demanding not only alignment, but vassalage, both in Europe and Latin America. What’s more, after Hugo Chavez, Latin America has never again had a leader interested in an autonomous policy for the continent. The hope now lies with Lula da Silva, President of Brazil, undoubtedly one of the most respected leaders in the world. But Lula is obliged to focus on the country’s internal problems, given the level of destruction and institutional degradation during the Bolsonaro period and the fact that Lula has the majority of the legislature against him and only insincere tolerance from large sections of the Armed Forces.
With regard to active neutrality, perhaps the African continent has an advantage over Latin America (despite the growing US military presence in Africa), while Latin America has an advantage in active non-alignment. An articulation between Africa and Latin America could be promising in this area. For its part, India will be attentive to this development and, if it gets actively involved, the proposal of active non-alignment (perhaps combined with active neutrality) will have another strength.
Weak non-alignment contains a tension that will tend to increase over time. Just as in the original non-alignment the Soviet bloc offered advantages that were difficult to reject, so it is now with China. In fact, the idea of non-alignment is often associated with the global South and the most consistent organization of this geopolitical space is the BRICS+, in which China plays a major role. To what extent is it possible to talk about non-alignment? To some extent, India, while still belonging to the BRICS, is showing an autonomy that could be followed by other countries. As more countries (forty candidates) join the group, the political heterogeneity will also increase. In the field of weak non-alignment, we are moving towards an asymmetrical solution of greater proximity to China, but maintaining distances determined by national interests or regional loyalties. If, in essence, this is a conditional alignment, I’m sure China will accept it. The same would not be true of the US, which today, more than ever, demands unconditional alignment.
Strong non-alignment
Strong non-alignment is based on the idea that we live in a time of transition between civilizational paradigms, between the paradigm of Western civilization whose global domination began with European colonial expansion and one or more emerging paradigms that have yet to be determined. We are therefore in a time of interregnum in the sense given to it by Antonio Gramsci: the old paradigm has not yet completely died and the new one has not yet shown itself in a credible way, a time of monsters or morbid phenomena, as Gramsci added. From this paradigmatic perspective, we live in a globalized capitalist society in which officially recognized rivalries aim to perpetuate the system by changing protagonists. The changes are long-term, secular, but they can also result from catastrophes that accelerate historical processes. In most cases, the changes are quantitative for a long time and take place undetected by the geostrategic radar. At some point, however, the world is faced with a qualitative paradigm shift.
However, it is the changes within each of the variants that are significant for the human collectives that have been socialized into them, and so the dissatisfactions, demands or aspirations of these collectives rarely call into question the variant as a whole. For this to happen, external agents are needed, which in American counter-insurgency is called regime change. The asymmetry between the two variants (US and China) is that the ascendant variant (China) doesn’t need to resort to this strategy because it has other mechanisms of attraction at its disposal which, without requiring acceptance of the Chinese system, neutralize any hostility that may exist towards its political regime or its geostrategic processes and interests. In any case, the change of variant does not alter the permanence of the current civilizational paradigm based on infinite economic growth and the exploitation of labor and nature. Strong non-alignment aims to change the paradigm and therefore proposes both distance and non-alignment from either of the two current variants. As the current paradigm was born in the global North, strong non-alignment, although mostly promoted by social movements in the global South, aims to end the latter, as a logical consequence of the end of the global North. There is only a global South because there is a global North.
The specificity of strong non-alignment is the epistemic question. Basically, it’s a question of what kind of knowledge should guide us in understanding the current paradigm and in establishing the framework for its transformation. Weak non-alignment is satisfied with the epistemologies developed in the global North based on the exclusive priority of modern science/technology because it was this epistemology which, together with modern law and the modern state, legitimized the construction of the Western capitalist paradigm whose foundations weak non-alignment does not question.
On the contrary, strong non-alignment questions these foundations and, in order to do so, it cannot resort exclusively to the knowledge that underpins them. Strong non-alignment requires new epistemologies that I have called epistemologies of the South, in which the South is neither geographical nor even geopolitical. It is above all epistemic and is present in the social struggles that take place in both the geographical South and the geographical North. Very briefly, the epistemologies of the South consist in the processes of validating knowledge other than scientific knowledge, knowledge born in the struggles against modern Western domination – capitalist, colonialist, and patriarchal domination – on the part of the social groups that have suffered most from this domination: workers, colonized peoples, indigenous peoples, peasants, women. In their struggles, a plurality of knowledge has always circulated, including scientific knowledge, but also ancestral, popular, and vernacular knowledge. These non-scientific knowledges have been despised, suppressed and banned by the epistemologies of the global North, a process which I call epistemicide. The epistemologies of the South consider that modern science (itself internally very diverse) is a valid and indeed precious knowledge, but that it is not the only valid and precious knowledge, and that it must therefore be able to dialogue with other knowledges. The epistemologies of the south aim to recover these knowledges otherwise insofar as they can help us to think about and legitimize the new civilizational paradigm. It’s not about unconditional, romantic adoption or celebration of some golden age of the past to which such knowledges may be related to. It’s about investing in the epistemic diversity of the world in order to make possible a future that is fairer in relations between humans and more equitable between humans and nature.
Proposals for a strong non-alignment
1. We have the right to be equal when difference makes us inferior; we have the right to be different when equality mischaracterizes us.
2. There are no rights without duties. Duties must exist in proportion to the ability to prevent the violation of human rights and must be demanded in proportion to the consequences that may result from such a violation. Duties cannot be limited to the ethical sphere. They must be enforced by existing and future legal systems.
3. The rights of nature, understood as the vital principle that sustains human and non-human life on the planet, are recognized. The corresponding duties are incumbent on the State, communities, and citizens. The most serious violations of these rights constitute a new crime against humanity/nature: ecocide.
4. Respect for life and dignity implies recognizing the infinite diversity of ways of knowing and living (in) the world and conceiving of life, dignity, living well, and living well together.
5. The right to education must be understood as the right to know the world diversity of ways of knowing as well as rights and duties among human beings and in their relations with nature. Education, in general, and universities, in particular, must be reformed in order to intervene effectively in the dispute over narratives about the paradigmatic transition that is to follow in the next decades.
6. The different development models, including alternative development models, must give way to alternatives to development: de-mercantilization, decolonization, de-patriarchalization, and democratization. The programmed obsolescence of industrial products is prohibited.
7. The commons are all goods that must be shared by all human beings, men and women, without discrimination, as they are essential for life to flourish and dignity to prevail. The right to free access to fundamental common goods such as water, air, space, forests, rivers, seas, seeds, public space, culture, education, health, electricity, information, communication and the internet is recognized.
8. Food sovereignty must be one of the guiding principles of agricultural policy. Indigenous peoples, people descendants from slaves, and peasants have the right to their ancestral territories and their subsoil.
9. Universal basic income is one of the important instruments for combating the growing vulnerability of workers and their families, especially in view of the impact of artificial intelligence on production processes.
10. Health is a public good, not a business. Vaccines are a common, public, and universal good. They must be produced with the interests of the people in mind and made available for free and universal access. As soon as a pandemic or an emergency of equal severity is declared, all embargoes and economic sanctions that prevent the affected countries from protecting the lives of their citizens are lifted.
11. The industrial relocation of goods needed to guarantee the protection of life in the recurring emergencies that are likely to characterize the coming decades must be ensured. For the same reason, small businesses and local shops should be the main forms of distributing products to consumers.
12. Due to its ecological footprint, the international tourism industry should be less and less important in terms of wealth creation and job creation.
13. The right to urbanity is just as valid as the right to rurality. A new type of relationship between the countryside and the city is urgently needed. The countryside does not precede the city, nor does the city represent a higher stage of coexistence than the countryside. Cities must be resized and given a new meaning and dignity.
14. The public debt of peripheral countries must be canceled whenever its weight prevents them from meeting the above objectives. As soon as a pandemic or emergency of equal severity is declared, all embargoes and economic sanctions that prevent the affected countries from protecting the lives of their citizens must be lifted.
Conclusion
Weak non-alignment is the necessary condition for thinking about strong non-alignment. In turn, strong non-alignment is the utopian horizon towards which weak non-alignment must aim if it is not to become a placebo for the ills that internationalist good conscience suffers from today. Without a post-Western horizon, the struggles of non-alignment will not prevent capitalism from becoming increasingly violent towards humans and nature.
It is a question of redistributing fear and hope more equitably. Nowadays, large majorities have too much fear in the face of the vicissitudes of their daily lives and too little hope that things will get better, while a tiny minority has too much hope that the world will continue to guarantee them their privileges and too little fear that it won’t, because they are convinced that they have eliminated or co-opted their enemies. Strong non-alignment assumes that it will not be possible to restore hope to the large majorities without instilling fear in the very small minorities.