JORGE HEINE: The renewed impetus of active nonalignment under Trump 2.0

The US-China trade war triggered by the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration has put developing nations in a bind. Tensions between Washington and Beijing have been rising, but this unprecedented tariff escalation between the world’s two largest economies, together representing 43% of the world’s GDP, takes this to a new level.

Not just because of the trade war, but more generally, Africa has been at the receiving end of the changes in US foreign policy, with the dismantling of USAID, the de facto ending of the US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief and the announced drastic cutback in the US diplomatic presence across the continent. 

What is to be done under such circumstances? While it is easy to despair, that would be a mistake. This is a big challenge, but also an opportunity. The Trump administration’s policies are but a symptom of far broader changes in the world order.

The liberal international order in place since 1945, established by the US and based on principles such as free trade and multilateralism, is no more. Nor is the unipolar moment extant from 1991-2016, a period in which the US enjoyed unrivalled hegemony.

A different type of world order is in the making, one yet to be determined but in which power will be more evenly spread. At the centre of the dynamics of world politics now and in years to come is the US-China rivalry. 

The question for developing nations becomes how to manage this rivalry. Given this great power competition between the US and an adversary that describes itself as communist, there is a temptation to conflate this with the heydays of the Cold War.

There are some parallels, but there is one crucial difference. The Soviet Union, though a superpower with big military, ideological and technological capabilities, had a closed economy, and one that was far smaller than that of the US. Its trade, foreign investment and financial co-operation with what was then known as the Third World was limited.

This is radically different from today’s China, whose economy is far more open, is also the largest in the world in purchasing power parity terms, and is projected to soon be the largest in nominal terms. China is also the world’s leading trading nation, and the main trading partner for 130 countries. 

Thus the emergence of active nonalignment as a response to US-China competition, an approach proclaimed by SA international relations & co-operation minister Ronald Lamola as SA’s foreign policy in 2024. The term was originally coined in 2020 as a Latin American response to Trump’s pressures on the region during his first term, a time of a serious economic and health crisis and when countries in the western hemisphere were being cajoled to choose between Washington and Beijing. Active nonalignment has since spread to Africa and Asia. 

In this regard SA holds a pivotal position as an established democracy, one of the continent’s leading economies and one with a pioneering and forward-looking foreign policy. As chair of this year’s Group of 20, the group that brings together countries from the Global North and South, as well as East and West, SA is on the front line of world affairs.

As we argue in a new book co-authored with colleagues Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami, The Non-Aligned World: Striking Out in an Era of Great Power Competition, this US-China competition is what happens when a declining hegemon faces a rising power. In such situations, the hegemon will turn inward, blame the rest of the world for its troubles and erect all sorts of barriers to trade, investment and people flows.

The rising power, precisely because it needs to show it is on an upward trajectory, will in turn reaffirm its commitment to an open economy and free trade, as well as to various forms of international collaboration. This is what is happening in the US and China respectively. 

Still, both feel the need to win the “hearts and minds” of governments and peoples worldwide — one of them to demonstrate it is still on top of the heap, and the other that it is up and coming. This opens the door to active nonalignment, which starts from the premise that countries should only be guided by their own national interest, which they will put front and centre, and not give in to the pressures of others.

The grand strategy of active nonalignment is thus “playing the field”, meaning sounding out which of these powers will provide them with better conditions on any given project, be it a railway line, a dam, a port or a credit line. Simply embracing one side a priori means losing all your leverage. 

While the US is a larger, more advanced economy than China technologically and scientifically, it has a smaller public sector and is less able to target resources for international projects the way China is. The net result is that the competition is relatively balanced.

Ten years ago the notion that the US would be in the business of financing railway projects in Southern Africa would have seemed outlandish. Yet that is exactly what is happening with the Lobito Corridor, the railway line that will link Zambia to the Angolan port of that name on the Atlantic coast.

After China’s Belt & Road Initiative financed railway projects in Kenya (from Nairobi to Mombasa) and in Ethiopia (from Addis Ababa to Djibouti), the US decided it had better get in on the action or risk losing out in this competition. 

Across the Global South, from Brazil and Honduras in the Americas; Kenya, SA and Angola in Africa; and India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam in Asia, among many other countries, active nonalignment is being applied. This means playing the field but also hedging your bets, covering your back, equivocating and sending mixed signals in response to pressures from the Great Powers, and not letting yourself be cajoled into taking sides in this dispute. Active nonalignment is the best way to deal with situations of high uncertainty in which betting on the wrong horse can spell disaster. 

The world is undoubtedly going through a rocky period, and there will be winners and losers. Within the Global South, which has come into its own with special brio since 2022, the winners will be those who see opportunities in this great power competition and use them for their own benefit. There is no reason why SA should not be among these winners, if it plays its cards right. 

• Heine, a former Chilean ambassador to SA, is a research professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and co-author with Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami of ’The Non-Aligned World: Striking Out in an Era of Great Power Competition’.