The recently-held Munich security conference, a major concern of the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was the reluctance of the Global South to align itself with the G-7 on the war in Ukraine.
Active Non-Alignment (ANA):
- It originated in 2019 and was developed in 2020 in response to the U.S.-China struggle for primacy, in which Latin America was caught in the middle.
- It was a bit of a manifesto calling for Latin American countries not to give in to pressures from either Washington or Beijing and to stick to their own interests.
- It took a page from the tradition of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Adapted it t0 the imperatives of the new century, impelled by the urgency of the Latin American crisis.
- It turns out, more than a future-oriented proposal, it is an approach that is already being applied in practice.
- ANA has been referred to as “ the region’s most significant foreign policy development since the end of the Cold War”.
- Foreign Policy Magazine called it “the year of Non-Alignment”.
- ANA arose in the context of the U.S.-China spat.
Stand on war:
- The vast majority of countries across the world condemn the Russian invasion and wanted war to come to an end (as shown in the United Nations vote on the subject in February 2023),
- Few countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America support the political and economic sanctions on Russia imposed by the G-7.
- The developing world, and especially Africa, Asia and the Middle East/West Asia, has been the site of many wars, including those of the proxy kind, in the course of the past 70 years.
- India’s External Affairs Minister: “Europe has to grow out of its mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s.”
India’s difficult balancing act:
- India plays a key role in it, having taken a clear stand of non-alignment on the war, despite its closer ties with the U.S.
- As host and chair of this year’s G-20: India is managing the difficult balancing act of keeping this important informal group of developed and developing nations
- Seventeen African countries abstained in the UNGA vote to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- South Africa: It scheduled a naval exercise with the Russian Navy and China off the country’s Indian Ocean coast.
Way Forward
- The BRICS group embodies the New South that has emerged in the new century.
- It has the potential to play a critical role in furthering some sort of a mediated solution to the Ukraine conflict.
- India is in a privileged position to act as a peace broker.
Look for a mediated outcome, a peace agreement that would necessarily entail a compromise solution acceptable to both parties.
