Description
Post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, parts of the global East (especially the Baltic countries and Poland) have garnered more epistemic authority to define matters of global politics and are more firmly creeping into the global North. For instance, Estonia has to understand that the way it extends solidarity to Palestine or Ukraine is impacted by colonial relations of the past and present that have produced very different racial hierarchies and inequalities. However, in the context of global solidarity, the global East still has a special responsibility due to its own colonial relations. Writing from Estonia, we use Estonia’s understanding of solidarity with reference to Palestine and Ukraine to unpack how our understanding of coloniality matters in how we extend solidarity. We argue that a critical-relational notion of solidarity, based on different understandings of coloniality and the power relations embedded, allows us to explore these differences and make sense of global solidarity regimes. It forces us to understand power relations of coloniality and histories of colonialism which make the case why Estonia and the global East needs to express solidarity for conflicts in the global South which also cannot be simply expected the other way around.
