"Non–alignment returns."
The 21st century starts to define itself.
26 FEBRUARY—The Ukraine conflict as catalyst: I wonder how many people who pay attention understood a year ago that Russia’s intervention and the West’s extravagant support for the Kiev regime would prompt fundamental shifts in the global order such that the world is now a very different place and the 21st century has a very new look. It escaped me, I have to say. I didn’t see, last February, that the community of nations would lean so swiftly into a new era, or that the principles of this new era would be so clearly defined.
I certainly did not see that the good old, much-missed Non–Aligned Movement would re-emerge after the many years it has spent languishing in the wilderness of post–Cold War geopolitics. No, not with a declaration such as that the NAM promulgated first in Bandung, the mountain resort in Indonesia where Sukarno hosted its members in 1955, or in Tito’s Belgrade six years later, when it formalized as an organization. But in spirit, in the ethos non–Western nations now stand up to declare as theirs.
There are lots of way we can measure the wider consequences of the Ukraine conflict. There is Europe’s astonishing surrender of its interests to a voraciously coercive administration as it leads America into its late-imperial phase. Related to this, there are the regrettable pledges of allegiance sworn by Finland, Sweden, and Germany—three nations whose honorable, now-abandoned role was to serve as bridges between West and East.
These are realignments, each in response to the Biden regime’s decision to make Ukraine the crucible of its defense of a fading hegemony.
This radical new subservience to Washington is freighted with consequence in its own right. Born of insecurity and a profound lack of vision and imagination, it is a very bad call on the part of America’s “allies and partners” and will leave them at a considerable disadvantage as our new century progresses. Can they not hear history’s wheel turning?
But the common cause non–Western nations have discovered among themselves this past year is vastly more significant. For them, Ukraine has proven a catalyst in the chemical-lab meaning of this term: It has clarified the solution, let’s say. The Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Iranians, the Turks, the Mexicans, the Argentines, many others: They are thinking differently and more clearly now.
This is a realignment, too.
We can think of this realignment as the reemergence of nonalignment for the first time in many decades. To dot the “t’s” and cross the “i’s” here, which is how I prefer to do it, the NAM survives, with 120 members and head office at the U.N. in New York. But its presence, if not its founding ideals, has been much reduced since the Cold War’s end got the world past the East–West binaries of the previous 40–odd years.
I am not writing of a secretariat or a bureaucracy or any such thing. I mean to note the renewed prominence of the principles for which the NAM stood. Are we surprised that, as the U.S. seeks to divide the planet once again, these come to the fore? I am not. I am more in the way of very pleased.
I have noted these principles previously in this space. They are based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence Zhou En-lai drafted in the early 1950s and then took to Bandung. These are, simply stated, mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in others’ internal affairs, equality among nations, and—the point of the other four—peaceful co-existence.
Many non–Western nations have made its increasingly clear over the past few years that they adhere to these principles as the bedrock of a 21st century world order. I will once again note the Sino–Russian Joint Statement on International Relations Entering a New Era, issued—the timing is important to note—on the eve of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. If you want a declaration of the Bandung or Belgrade kind, this comes close. The NAM’s principles run all through it.
Did you follow the Group of 20 session in Bangalore last week? It is another case in point. Western media didn’t give it much coverage because it was a messy confrontation between Western and non–Western members, and the former came out looking utterly behind the curve, lost in an idea of their place in the global order that has little to do with reality at this point.
The G–20 first convened at the close of the last century and the dawn of this one. It was conceived as a step on from the Group of 7, bringing together finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 Western and non–Western nations to reflect the increasing importance of middle-income powers such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and South Africa. The theme each session is common interests: financial stability, international trade, the climate, aid to the poorest nations, and so on.
Leave it to the Americans. Led by Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, Western officials thought it was a good idea to use the occasion to bring other G–20 members in line against Russia and its intervention in Ukraine. So they spent their time cajoling others present—pretty much the rest of the G–20 not members of the Group of 7—to sign a communiqué denouncing Moscow and declaring their unified support for Kiev.
The Western contingent got nowhere. Non–Western members objected vigorously to this attempt to force them to endorse the U.S.–led campaign to isolate Russia and align behind its support for Ukraine. There was no communiqué—only a “Summary and Outcome Document” that acknowledges in so many words that the session was a bust.
Whatever you may have thought of Yellen when she spent her time fussing with interest rates as chair of the Federal Reserve, in matters of state she is a tone-deaf failure who simply cannot read the currents of global politics. Have you heard much about her oil-price cap, which was supposed to bring the world on board as the sought to U.S. imposed a ceiling on what Russia could charge for a barrel of crude? No, well, I thought not.
In Bangalore she seemed to assume that the pabulum the U.S. routinely deploys to obscure its intentions would carry the day. “Ukraine is fighting not only for their [sic] country, but for the preservation of democracy and peaceful conditions in Europe,” she asserted. Of Russia’s intervention she said, “It’s an assault on democracy and on territorial integrity that should concern all of us.”
So hollow and tired. So wanting in seriousness.
Yellen’s rhetoric did not carry the day or anything else. The non–Western nations present had made their position very clear well before Bangalore. It is important to note its nuance. No, we do not approve of the war in Ukraine. No, we are not going to condemn the Russian intervention. Yes, we understand that the West shares responsibility for provoking this conflict. Yes, the Western powers could and should have prevented it by diplomatic means before it started. Yes, we want to see this settled now via negotiation.
This is the very essence of the NAM’s principles in applied form.
Talkfests such as the G–20 are of limited interest, I realize, but what happened in lovely, well-gardened Bangalore has something important to tell us. Three things, actually.
One, we find in it Washington’s absolute inability to see the world in other than Manichean terms. A lot of Democrats thought Bush II’s “You’re with us or with the terrorists” routine after the September 11 attacks was a crude formulation. Nonsense. This was precisely Yellen’s position in the Ukraine context, fully endorsed across the board among Democrats. This is how those purporting to lead America insist on ordering the world, and to say it will get this nation nowhere in the 21st century is to put the point too mildly.
Two, Bangalore is a measure of the resolve with which non–Western nations are coming to resist Washington’s prosecution of Cold War II. The more conflict and confrontation the better between the West and non–West on this point, in my view.
Three, the U.S. and the rest of the West is not going to take kindly to the informal reemergence of the NAM as non–Western nations advance its principles. Remember, during Cold War I, those declaring themselves nonaligned between the Western and Eastern blocs were dismissed as crypto–Communists, dupes of Moscow, or foolish wanderers.
Maybe you noted reports that South Africa and Russia—I think China is in on this, too—began joint naval exercises off the South African coast earlier this month. This reflects the waxing of Moscow–Pretoria relations and there is no surprise here: The Soviets supported the African National Congress, now the governing party, in its fight against apartheid, the West having stood on the other side. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was in South Africa a month earlier for talks with his counterpart, Naledi Pandor.
So far as I have understood it, “nonaligned” means “not aligned,” not this side, not the other. Not to the Americans. Washington and the European capitals are freaked out about the naval drills and altogether the strengthening ties between South Africa and the Russian Federation. Pretoria is “moving further away from a nonaligned position,” an E.U. spokesman told The New York Times.
It was Newspeak during Cold War I and it is Newspeak this time around. You can call yourselves nonaligned as long as you align with the West. Otherwise, you are with the “them” in our “them or us” formulation.
The scene in Bangalore will be repeated many times in years to come. These occasions are to be watched and understood for what they are and are not. They will reflect one of the most essential conflicts of our time. The original NAM failed to prevent Washington’s reordering of the world into hostile blocs. Non–Western nations, stronger now even as the U.S. and the West weaken, have a vastly better chance of success this time.