Description
During the Cold War, non-alignment aimed to establish a normative alternative to the dominant rationale of big power alliance/balancing that resulted in block polarization. In the currently reconfiguring international order, we argue, multi-alignment offers a revised and more finessed normativity that can provide a way forward for the governance of the commons within multipolarity. While non-alignment main concern was preventing escalation, making the preservation of the statu quo desirable; in the current context, however, global challenges (climate change, migration flows, challenges to territorial integrity) require proactivity, through global concerted action, and not reactivity, preserving the statu quo. This communication focuses on addressing this question by examining global power relations away from traditional understandings of power as domination, by focusing on the subaltern perspective of small states and their emphasis on cooperation over competition. To do so we will draw particularly from postcolonial understandings of IR, as well as sociopolitical concepts such as care, vulnerability and empowerment, all of it underpinned by specific case studies for illustration.
