Latin American Foreign Policies in the New World Order: The Active Non-Alignment Option

This important, thought-provoking contribution by leading Latin American scholars and diplomats laments that Latin America has become increasingly marginalized, losing market shares and diplomatic clout. To counter these adverse trends, the authors resurrect the Cold War concept of nonalignment for today’s more multipolar world. What they call “active nonalignment” dictates that countries pursue their national interests—not siding submissively with China, the United States, or Russia—and that Latin American countries increase their diplomatic weight by acting in concert, overcoming their evident disunity. Mexican scholar Jorge Castañeda usefully distinguishes between the Caribbean basin (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands), which more naturally aligns with the nearby United States, and South America, with its greater economic ties to China, which makes it a better candidate for nonaligned diplomacy. In the future, a more cohesive Latin America might influence global decision-making on such urgent matters as the governance structures of multilateral institutions, climate change, migration, health care, and, in some authors’ opinions, democracy and human rights.