Non-Alignment is back with a vengeance.
In recent years, the number of countries embracing this venerable approach to foreign policy has increased exponentially, making it a force to be reckoned with in world affairs. The war in Ukraine, the expansion of the BRICS group, and the conflict in Gaza have given a special impetus to its rise in a new form: Active Non-Alignment (ANA). This has gone hand-in-hand with the growing power and influence of the Global South in world politics.
In this agenda-setting book, Jorge Heine, Carlos Fortin and Carlos Ominami, explain the origins, dynamics and significance of ANA, for the future of world order. Far from a transitory expression of the current state of affairs, they argue that ANA is here to stay. It provides a powerful guide to action and a fine-tuned compass for the Global Majority, that is, the countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, to strike out and prioritize their national interests, whilst navigating the perilous waters of a troubled world in the throes of change.
Jorge Heine is a lawyer, diplomat and political scientist who specializes in the international politics of the Global South. He is currently Research Professor at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, where he directs the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He has served as a Cabinet minister in the Chilean government, and as Chile's Ambassador to China, to India and to South Africa. A past Vice-President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), he was previously the CIGI Professor of Global Governance at Wilfrid Laurier University (2007-2017), and has held visiting appointments at the universities of Konstanz, Oxford, Paris and Tsinghua. A co-founder and board member of Diplomats Without Borders, he has published 17 books. In 2023 he received the Pardee School's Adil Najam Prize for Advancing the Public Understanding of Global Affairs.
Carlos Fortin is an Emeritus Fellow and Research Associate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK and Professor at the Institute of International Studies at the University of Chile. Between 1990 and 2005 he was Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Geneva. Previously he was Director of Programmes of the South Commission and one of the lead authors of the Commission's Final Report, The Challenge to the South (1990). He is the author of nine books and more than seventy articles in academic journals and collective volumes on globalization and development, the multilateral trade regime, and the role of the State in development.
Carlos Ominami is president of the Foro Permanente de Política Exterior, a Chilean think tank, a director of the Chile 21 Foundation, and an associate fellow at the Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (IRIS) in Paris. An economist with a doctorate from the University of Paris Nanterre, he served as Chile's Minister of Economic Affairs from 1990-1992 and as a Senator from 1994-2010. He has worked as a researcher at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, and as an advisor to the French Ministry of Industry and to the French Ministry of Cooperation. A columnist for La Tercera, one of Chile's leading dailies, and a member of the Grupo de Puebla, a group of progressive Latin American leaders, he has published a dozen books both in Chile and in France.
