There is little doubt that 2023 was the year in which the Global South came into its own. The expansion of the BRICS that was announced at the group’s summit in Johannesburg in August; the G20 summit held in New Delhi in September, considered to be a feather in India’s diplomatic cap; the G77 + China summit held in Havana later that month; and the strong reaction of much of Africa, Asia and Latin America to the war in Gaza in the past few months—epitomised by South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague—all point in that direction.
They all underscore the degree to which the main cleavage in today’s world is not between democracy and authoritarianism, as some would have it, but rather between the North and the Global South, between the West and the Rest. The question then becomes what the implications of this are for the developing world and for India in particular.
Enter Kajal Basu’s timely piece in this newspaper, ‘Is India refusing to lead active non-alignment?’ (January 10). Basu takes up the issue of active non-alignment or ANA, a concept me and my colleagues Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami coined and set forth in a recent book, Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Alignment Option (Anthem Press), whose paperback edition is coming out now.
Drawing on the best traditions of Indian foreign policy, active non-alignment makes the case that in the current era of Great Power competition, the worst thing developing nations can do is to align themselves with one or another of these powers. On the contrary, what they need to do is to put their own national interest front and centre, evaluate each issue on its merits and act accordingly. This, of course, is a demanding diplomatic task, as it requires fine-tuned, sophisticated analysis of what is at stake. At the same time, while drawing on the traditions of the non-aligned movement or NAM, active non-alignment also adapts them to the realities on the new century.
A key factor here is what has been called the ‘wealth shift’ from the North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific. Today’s fastest growing economies, including India, are to be found in Asia, and this is where the action is. New multilateral financial institutions, such as the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (the so-called ‘BRICS Bank’) have meant that “collective financial statecraft” and South-South cooperation have replaced the diplomatie des cahiers des doléances (diplomacy of victimhood) of the Third World of yesteryears. This puts countries in the Global South in a much stronger position.
Originally crafted in Latin America in response to the growing tensions between the United States and China in that part of the world, active non-alignment also has caught on elsewhere. In Africa, the refusal of many countries to side with the West on its stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and to support the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow were proof positive that the days when Washington and Brussels could impose their views on the rest of the world are long past. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s ‘bamboo diplomacy’, that balances the good relations it holds both with Washington and Beijing, tells a similar story. The same can be said about Indonesia, which was a shoo-in to join the BRICS, but had second thoughts at the last moment and is still mulling it over.
And although Basu gets much about active non-alignment right, he is wrong when he says that it is an “almost exclusively anti-Western Axis, and indeed, works in favour of China”. That is not correct. The very basis of active non-alignment lies in keeping an equal distance from both powers, and in taking pains not to tilt in one direction or the other. The best example of this the policy followed by Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva of Brazil, who, after taking office in his third term, pointedly visited Washington before visiting Beijing, and enjoys a good rapport both with President Joe Biden and with President Xi Jinping. Active non-alignment is a pragmatic, non-ideological guide to action in a changing world.
Indeed, one of the banes of the non-aligned movement, including Latin America’s participation in it, was that at one point it was seen as tilting towards the Soviet Union, undermining much of its credibility. This takes us to the role of India in this troubled moment in world affairs. Yes, India has pointedly refused to use the term non-alignment, let alone active non-alignment, preferring to refer to multi-alignment. Yet, in the end, this is not a question of nomenclature.
On one of the great issues of our time, the war in Ukraine, and despite its membership in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or the Quad—sometimes referred to as an “Asian NATO”—India refused to condemn Russia’s action, as it has refused to endorse the unilateral Western sanctions against Moscow. At the same time, it has excellent relations with the United States. The fact that over the past year India chaired the G20 and held a highly successful summit of this group, despite the tensions affecting it, shows that it is perfectly possible to keep good relations with Washington and Moscow, while also aspiring to lead the Global South.
(Views are personal)
Jorge Heine, Research professor, Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and former Chilean ambassador to India