In 2020, as Latin American international locations had been contending with the triple demanding situations of the COVID-19 pandemic, a world financial surprise and U.S. coverage beneath the primary Trump management, Jorge Heine, analysis professor at Boston College and a former Chilean ambassador, in affiliation with two colleagues, Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami, put ahead the perception of “active nonalignment.”
Polity Books
5 years on, the international coverage means is extra related than ever, with tendencies together with the upward push of the International South and the fragmentation of the worldwide order, encouraging international locations world wide to think again their relationships with each the US and China.
It led Heine, along side Fortin and Ominami, to apply up on their unique arguments in a brand new ebook, “The Non-Aligned World,” revealed in June 2025.
The Dialog spoke with Heine on what’s in the back of the rush towards energetic nonalignment, and the place it’s going to lead.
For the ones now not acquainted, what’s energetic nonalignment?
Lively nonalignment is a international coverage means by which international locations put their very own pursuits entrance and heart and refuse to take facets within the nice energy contention between the U.S. and China.
It takes its cue from the Non-Aligned Motion of the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties however updates it to the realities of the twenty first century. These days’s emerging International South could be very other from the “Third World” that made up the Non-Aligned Motion. International locations like India, Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia have larger financial heft and wherewithal. They thus have extra choices than prior to now.
They are able to select and make a selection insurance policies in keeping with what’s of their nationwide pursuits. And since there may be festival between Washington and Beijing to win over such international locations’ hearts and minds, the ones taking a look to advertise a nonaligned time table have larger leverage.
Conventional global members of the family literature suggests that during members of the family between countries, you’ll be able to both “balance,” that means take a powerful place towards every other energy, or “bandwagon” – this is, pass along side the desires of that energy. The perception used to be that weaker states couldn’t steadiness towards the Nice Powers as a result of they don’t have the army energy to take action, so that they needed to bandwagon.
What we say is that there’s an intermediate means: hedging. International locations can hedge their bets or equivocate by means of taking part in one energy off the opposite. So, on some problems you facet with the U.S., and others you facet with China.
Thus, the grand technique of energetic nonalignment is “playing the field,” or in different phrases, in search of alternatives amongst what’s to be had within the global surroundings. This implies being continuously searching for doable benefits and to be had assets – briefly, being energetic, somewhat than passive or reactive.
So energetic nonalignment isn’t such a lot a motion as this is a doctrine.
Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, proper, and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser attend the primary Convention of Non-Aligned International locations in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in September 1961.
Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Pictures
It’s been 5 years because you first got here up with the theory of energetic nonalignment. Why did you assume it used to be time to revisit it now?
The perception of energetic nonalignment got here up throughout the primary Trump management and within the context of a Latin The us hit by means of the triple-whammy of U.S. power, a virulent disease and the following recession – which in Latin The us translated into the largest financial downturn in 120 years, a 6.6% drop of regional gross home product in 2020.
ANA used to be supposed as a information for Latin American international locations to navigate the ones tough moments, and it led us to the newsletter of a symposium quantity with contributions by means of six former Latin American international ministers in November 2021, by which we elaborated on the concept that.
3 months later, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the response to it by means of many nations in Asia and Africa, nonalignment used to be again with a vengeance.
International locations like India, Pakistan, South Africa and Indonesia, amongst others, took positions that had been at odds with the West on Ukraine. Lots of them, regardless that now not all, condemned Russian aggression but in addition sought after no section within the West’s sanctions on Moscow. Those sanctions had been observed as unwarranted and as an expression of Western double requirements – no sanctions had been carried out at the U.S. for invading Iraq, after all.
After which there have been the Hamas assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing struggle within the Gaza Strip. International locations around the International South strongly condemned the Hamas assaults, however the West’s reaction to the next deaths of tens of hundreds of Palestinians introduced house the perception of double requirements when it got here to global human rights.
Why weren’t Palestinians deserving of the similar compassion as Ukrainians? For lots of within the International South, that query hit very exhausting – the concept that “human rights are limited to Europeans and people who looked like them did not go down well.”
Thus, South Africa introduced a case towards Israel within the World Courtroom of Justice alleging genocide, and Brazil spearheaded ceasefire efforts on the United Countries.
A 3rd building is the growth of the BRICS bloc of economies from its unique 5 contributors – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – to ten contributors. Even if China and Russia aren’t contributors of the International South, the ones different founding contributors are, and the BRICS workforce has promoted key problems at the International South’s time table. The addition of nations similar to Egypt and Ethiopia has intended that BRICS has an increasing number of taken at the guise of the International South discussion board. Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a number one proponent of BRICS, is excited about advancing this International South time table.
All 3 of those tendencies have made energetic nonalignment extra related than ever sooner than.
How are China and the USA responding to energetic nonalignment – or are they?
I’ll provide you with two examples: Angola and Argentina.
In Angola, the African nation that has gained maximum Chinese language cooperation to the music of US$45 billion, you currently have the U.S. financing what’s referred to as the Lobito Hall – a railway line that stretches from the japanese border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Angola’s Atlantic coast.
Ten years in the past, the perception that the U.S. can be financing railway initiatives in southern Africa would were regarded as unfathomable. But it has came about. Why? As a result of China has constructed important railway traces in international locations similar to Kenya and Ethiopia, and the U.S. discovered that it used to be being left in the back of.
For the longest time, the U.S. would condemn such Chinese language-financed infrastructure initiatives by the use of the “Belt and Road Initiative” as not anything however “debt-trap diplomacy” designed to saddle creating countries with “white elephants” no person wanted. However a few years in the past, that music modified: The U.S. and Europe discovered that there’s a giant infrastructure deficit in Asia, Africa and Latin The us that China used to be stepping in to scale back – and the West used to be nowhere to be observed on this essential house.
In brief, the West modified it means – and international locations like Angola are actually ready to play the U.S. off towards China for its personal nationwide pursuits.
Then take Argentina. In 2023, Javier Milei used to be elected president on a powerful anti-China platform. He mentioned his executive would don’t have anything to do with Beijing. However simply two years later, Milei introduced in an Economist interview that he’s a really perfect admirer of Beijing.
Why? As a result of Argentina has an overly important international debt, and Milei knew {that a} endured anti-China stance would imply a credit score line from Beijing would most likely now not be renewed. The Argentinian president used to be beneath power from the World Financial Fund and Washington to let the credit score line with China lapse, however Milei refused to take action and controlled to carry his personal, taking part in all sides towards the center.
Milei is a populist conservative; Brazil’s Lula a leftist. So is energetic nonalignment proof against ideological variations?
Completely. When other folks question me what the variation is between conventional nonalignment and energetic nonalignment, one of the vital evident issues is that the latter is nonideological – it may be utilized by other folks of the precise, left and heart. This can be a information to motion, a compass to navigate the waters of a extremely stricken international, and can be utilized by means of governments of very other ideological hues.
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Argentina President Javier Milei on the 66th Summit of leaders of the Mercosur buying and selling bloc in Buenos Aires on July 3, 2025.
Luis Robayo/AFP by the use of Getty Pictures
The ebook talks so much in regards to the fragmentation of the rules-based order. The place do you spot this heading?
There’s no doubt that the liberal global order that framed international politics from 1945 to 2016 has come to an finish. A few of its bedrock ideas, like multilateralism, loose industry and admire for global legislation and current global treaties, were critically undermined.
We are actually in a transitional degree. The perception of the West as a geopolitical entity, as we knew it, has ceased to exist. We’ve got the abnormal scenario the place intolerant forces in Hungary, Germany and Poland, amongst different puts, are being supported by means of the ones in energy in each Washington and Moscow.
And this decline of the West has now not come about as a result of any financial factor – the U.S. nonetheless represents round 25% of worldwide GDP, a lot because it did in 1970 – however as a result of the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
So we’re transferring towards an overly other form of international order – and one by which the International South has the chance to have a lot more of a job, particularly if it deploys energetic nonalignment.
How have occasions since Trump’s inauguration performed into your argument?
The perception of energetic nonalignment used to be caused by means of the primary Trump management’s power on Latin American international locations. I’d argue that the measures undertaken in Trump’s 2d management – the price lists imposed on 90 international locations world wide; the U.S. leaving the Paris local weather settlement, the Global Well being Group and the U.N. Human Rights Council; and different “America First” insurance policies – have handiest underscored the validity of energetic nonalignment as a international coverage means.
The pressures on international locations around the International South are very sturdy, and there’s a temptation to present in to Trump and align with U.S. But, all indications are that merely giving in to Trump’s calls for isn’t a recipe for luck. The ones international locations that experience long past down the course of giving in to Trump’s calls for handiest see extra calls for after that. International locations desire a other means – and that may be present in energetic nonalignment.
