In 2020, as Latin American nations have been contending with the triple challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, a world financial shock and U.S. coverage below the primary Trump administration, 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 notion of “active nonalignment.”
Polity Books
5 years on, the international coverage method is extra related than ever, with developments together with the rise of the World South and the fragmentation of the worldwide order, encouraging nations all over the world to reassess their relationships with each america and China.
It led Heine, together with Fortin and Ominami, to observe up on their authentic arguments in a brand new guide, “The Non-Aligned World,” printed in June 2025.
The Dialog spoke with Heine on what’s behind the push towards lively nonalignment, and the place it might lead.
For these not acquainted, what’s lively nonalignment?
Lively nonalignment is a international coverage method by which nations put their very own pursuits entrance and heart and refuse to take sides within the nice energy rivalry 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. In the present day’s rising World South may be very totally different from the “Third World” that made up the Non-Aligned Motion. International locations like India, Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia have higher financial heft and wherewithal. They thus have extra choices than up to now.
They will choose and select insurance policies in accordance with what’s of their nationwide pursuits. And since there’s competitors between Washington and Beijing to win over such nations’ hearts and minds, these seeking to promote a nonaligned agenda have higher leverage.
Conventional worldwide relations literature means that in relations between nations, you possibly can both “balance,” which means take a powerful place in opposition to one other energy, or “bandwagon” – that’s, associate with the needs of that energy. The notion was that weaker states couldn’t stability in opposition to the Nice Powers as a result of they don’t have the navy energy to take action, in order that they needed to bandwagon.
What we’re saying is that there’s an intermediate method: hedging. International locations can hedge their bets or equivocate by enjoying one energy off the opposite. So, on some points you aspect with the U.S., and others you aspect with China.
Thus, the grand technique of lively nonalignment is “playing the field,” or in different phrases, trying to find alternatives amongst what is out there within the worldwide setting. This implies being continually looking out for potential benefits and out there assets – in brief, being lively, fairly than passive or reactive.
So lively nonalignment will not be a lot a motion as it’s 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 thought of lively nonalignment. Why did you assume it was time to revisit it now?
The notion of lively nonalignment got here up through the first Trump administration and within the context of a Latin America hit by the triple-whammy of U.S. stress, a pandemic and the following recession – which in Latin America translated into the largest financial downturn in 120 years, a 6.6% drop of regional gross home product in 2020.
ANA was supposed as a information for Latin American nations to navigate these tough moments, and it led us to the publication of a symposium quantity with contributions by six former Latin American international ministers in November 2021, by which we elaborated on the idea.
Three months later, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the response to it by many nations in Asia and Africa, nonalignment was again with a vengeance.
International locations like India, Pakistan, South Africa and Indonesia, amongst others, took positions that have been at odds with the West on Ukraine. A lot of them, although not all, condemned Russian aggression but in addition needed no half within the West’s sanctions on Moscow. These sanctions have been seen as unwarranted and as an expression of Western double requirements – no sanctions have been utilized on the U.S. for invading Iraq, in fact.
After which there have been the Hamas assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing struggle within the Gaza Strip. International locations throughout the World South strongly condemned the Hamas assaults, however the West’s response to the following deaths of tens of 1000’s of Palestinians introduced residence the notion of double requirements when it got here to worldwide human rights.
Why weren’t Palestinians deserving of the identical compassion as Ukrainians? For a lot of within the World South, that query hit very onerous – 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 in opposition to Israel within the Worldwide Court docket of Justice alleging genocide, and Brazil spearheaded ceasefire efforts on the United Nations.
A 3rd improvement is the enlargement of the BRICS bloc of economies from its authentic 5 members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – to 10 members. Though China and Russia usually are not members of the World South, these different founding members are, and the BRICS group has promoted key points on the World South’s agenda. The addition of nations equivalent to Egypt and Ethiopia has meant that BRICS has more and more taken on the guise of the World South discussion board. Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a number one proponent of BRICS, is eager on advancing this World South agenda.
All three of those developments have made lively nonalignment extra related than ever earlier than.
How are China and the US responding to lively nonalignment – or are they?
I’ll offer you two examples: Angola and Argentina.
In Angola, the African nation that has acquired most Chinese language cooperation to the tune of US$45 billion, you now have the U.S. financing what is named 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 notion that the U.S. can be financing railway initiatives in southern Africa would have been thought-about unfathomable. But it has occurred. Why? As a result of China has constructed important railway traces in nations equivalent to Kenya and Ethiopia, and the U.S. realized that it was being left behind.
For the longest time, the U.S. would condemn such Chinese language-financed infrastructure initiatives by way of the “Belt and Road Initiative” as nothing however “debt-trap diplomacy” designed to saddle growing nations with “white elephants” no person wanted. However a few years in the past, that tune modified: The U.S. and Europe realized that there’s a massive infrastructure deficit in Asia, Africa and Latin America that China was stepping in to cut back – and the West was nowhere to be seen on this important space.
Briefly, the West modified it method – and nations like Angola are actually in a position to play the U.S. off in opposition to China for its personal nationwide pursuits.
Then take Argentina. In 2023, Javier Milei was elected president on a powerful anti-China platform. He stated his authorities would don’t have anything to do with Beijing. However simply two years later, Milei introduced in an Economist interview that he’s an important admirer of Beijing.
Why? As a result of Argentina has a really important international debt, and Milei knew {that a} continued anti-China stance would imply a credit score line from Beijing would possible not be renewed. The Argentinian president was below stress from the Worldwide Financial Fund and Washington to let the credit score line with China lapse, however Milei refused to take action and managed to carry his personal, enjoying each side in opposition to the center.
Milei is a populist conservative; Brazil’s Lula a leftist. So is lively nonalignment proof against ideological variations?
Completely. When individuals ask me what the distinction is between conventional nonalignment and lively nonalignment, some of the apparent issues is that the latter is nonideological – it may be utilized by individuals of the proper, left and heart. It’s a information to motion, a compass to navigate the waters of a extremely troubled world, and can be utilized by governments of very totally different 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 way of Getty Pictures
The guide talks loads in regards to the fragmentation of the rules-based order. The place do you see this heading?
There’s little doubt that the liberal worldwide order that framed world politics from 1945 to 2016 has come to an finish. A few of its bedrock ideas, like multilateralism, free commerce and respect for worldwide legislation and current worldwide treaties, have been severely undermined.
We are actually in a transitional stage. The notion of the West as a geopolitical entity, as we knew it, has ceased to exist. We now have the extraordinary scenario the place intolerant forces in Hungary, Germany and Poland, amongst different locations, are being supported by these in energy in each Washington and Moscow.
And this decline of the West has not come about due to any financial subject – the U.S. nonetheless represents round 25% of worldwide GDP, a lot because it did in 1970 – however due to the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
So we’re shifting towards a really totally different kind of world order – and one by which the World South has the chance to have far more of a task, particularly if it deploys lively nonalignment.
How have occasions since Trump’s inauguration performed into your argument?
The notion of lively nonalignment was triggered by the primary Trump administration’s stress on Latin American nations. I might argue that the measures undertaken in Trump’s second administration – the tariffs imposed on 90 nations all over the world; the U.S. leaving the Paris local weather settlement, the World Well being Group and the U.N. Human Rights Council; and different “America First” insurance policies – have solely underscored the validity of lively nonalignment as a international coverage method.
The pressures on nations throughout the World South are very sturdy, and there’s a temptation to offer 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 fulfillment. These nations which have gone down the route of giving in to Trump’s calls for solely see extra calls for after that. International locations want a special method – and that may be present in lively nonalignment.
