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 have thus more firmly aligned themselves with the Global North. 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. In the context of global solidarity, the Global East still has a heightened responsibility due to its own peripheral situatedness. 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 peripheral situatedness, allows us to explore these differences and make sense of global solidarity regimes. It invites us to a more granular reading of coloniality and histories of colonialism, making the case that Estonia and the Global East more generally, due to their more privileged peripheral situatedness, have a heightened responsibility to stand with the Global South while this cannot be expected the other way around.
