Is the Ukraine war reviving the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement?

As the Ukraine conflict has brought the great-power competition between the West and Russia to nearly Cold War dimensions and with China emerging as a strong challenger to the US dominance, many countries see non-alignment as a safer option than aligning with any major power.

Fuad Chiragov, Deputy Director at Center for Studies of the South Caucasus, a Baku-based think-tank, sees that countries like Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, which was the previous chair of the non-aligned movement, does not want to be stuck between the opposing major forces “becoming arenas or pawns in the power struggles” as it was in the Cold War.

“In response to the growing polarisation and tensions within international relations, there has been a notable resurgence in the call for a revival of the Non-Alignment Movement. Nations across the globe are expressing their desire to distance themselves from entanglements in the confrontations between traditional major powers,” Chiragov tells TRT World.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which emerged in the backdrop of the Cold War in the 1950s under the leadership of newly independent countries of the global south like India and Indonesia, has long refused to position itself behind any leading political alliance — be it the US-led NATO or anti-Western alliances like the long defunct Warsaw Pact led by Moscow in the past.

Instead of joining the political blocs under Washington or Moscow, both of which have used pressure tactics to force countries to comply with their positions, the NAM has argued that developing peaceful resolutions to conflicts through multilateralism serves the world better.

But with the end of the Cold War, the movement appeared to lose its raison d'etre, as bipolar tensions deescalated with the disbanding of the Soviet-led communist bloc. Also, the idealism and exhilaration of decolonisation that united the founders has given way to a multitude of divergent national narratives, reducing the movement’s importance in many member states.

The Ukraine conflict was another evidence of how established major powers like the US and Russia have pushed developing nations to choose one side, “echoing the dynamics of the Cold War era”, according to the Azerbaijani analyst, Chiragov. But instead, their pressure tactics have empowered “a discernible and mounting appeal for the principles of the NAM” among those nations, just like in the 1950s, he says.

A unified voice

In1955, the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations in Indonesia effectively laid the foundations of the NAM. Led by countries like India and Indonesia — two of the most powerful voices of the Global South at the time — the NAM formally came to existence in Belgrade in 1961. Back then, Belgrade was the capital of the former Yugoslavia, a communist state that aimed to follow a foreign policy independent of the Soviet Union. Many African and Asian states with a colonial legacy under the West quickly joined the NAM, which now has 120 members, the single biggest umbrella within the UN.

Richard Falk, a leading expert on international relations, believes the Ukraine war and its spillover effects, which have further polarised world politics, “have powerfully demonstrated the need for a more unified voice issuing from the Global South”, with a revival of the NAM’s objectives under a new agenda informed by changing geopolitical realities.

Despite the fact that current tensions — from the Ukraine conflict to the Pacific dispute — does not have “the sharp edges of ideological orientation” of the Cold War between the US and the USSR, common interests of many countries requires maintaining a safe distance from the geopolitical tensions under a collective movement like the NAM, according to Falk.

This new platform could be framed as ‘Reviving the Spirit of Bandung’ or ‘The Second Coming of the Non-Aligned Movement’, says the international law professor.

“Türkiye could offer Istanbul as a meeting place, solidifying its identity as a bridge between antagonistic tendencies in the 21st century,” Falk told TRT World.

Why Türkiye is interested

The Ukraine military engagement has increased the appeal of the NAM not only for its formal members like Azerbaijan, which has pursued a relatively neutral policy on Ukraine, but also Türkiye, a NATO member and an ally of Azerbaijan, which has followed a middle ground between the West and Russia, mediating between Kiev and Moscow to end the conflict.

Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was present when Azerbaijan hosted the NAM’s latest ministerial gathering, and praised the NAM’s contribution to ensure decolonisation, disarmament and its fight against racism.

Six decades later, the NAM “maintains its relevance”, said Fidan. “It’s an important platform to advocate effective multilateralism and peaceful resolution of disputes,” added the foreign minister, who was the longest-serving intelligence chief in Turkish history.

Turkish participation in the recent NAM meeting in Baku shows Ankara’s increasing interest to voice the Global South’s grievances against Western global hegemony, expanding its criticism toward the UN's unequal political structure.

“The current world order, predominantly shaped by major powers, has reached an impasse and cannot be sustained in its present form. This perspective aligns with President Erdogan's notion that the world extends beyond the influence of five major players,” says Chiragov, referring to the Turkish leader’s proposition to change the structure of the UN Security Council, which has five permanent members — the UK, France, the US, Russia and China.

Employing six decades of geopolitical experience

Despite the many pressures from major powers, many developing countries from Africa, Asia and the Americas now act more assertively than during the Cold War, when most of them were newly independent states lacking geopolitical experience.

Dawood Azami, a London-based expert on international affairs and an award-winning journalist, tells TRT World that non-alignment gives middle powers the freedom to choose their own path and avoid being dragged into conflicts that do not directly affect them.

“Non-alignment increases the bargaining power of a country with both blocs, limits their entanglement in others’ quarrels, and protects their strategic autonomy or freedom of decision-making,” says Azami.

A large number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have decided not to choose sides in the wake of the Ukraine conflict, seeing their interests better served by looking for a third way, he says.

From non-alignment to multi-alignment

Experts think that as long as the post-Cold War unipolarity of the world under the US, which followed the Cold War’s bipolarity, continues to shrink, concepts like strategic autonomy, flexible pragmatism (policies that are not driven by ideology) and calls on the UN to reform, finds a more powerful voice across the globe, reviving and transforming non-alignment towards a new future.

Harsh V Pant, Vice President of Studies and Foreign Policy at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, and a Professor of International Relations with King's India Institute at King’s College London, is one of the experts who believe that the current political atmosphere requires “issue-based alignments”, instead of the non-alignment of the Cold War.

With the US-China tensions and the Ukraine conflict giving birth to a new Great Power competition, a lot of countries want to create their own spaces to manoeuvre this rivalry, he says. “In that context, one can talk about a non-alignment approach. But I would say it’s slightly different (from the past), because these countries are, at this point, also trying to engage all sides,” Pant adds.

Across the globe, states have developed engagements with multiple sides. Even India, the leading country of the NAM, has articulated a political position in which the country finds itself no longer non-aligned, Pant tells TRT World.

“We (India) are willing to align with anyone based on issues. As a result, issue-based alignment is becoming the norm, where countries are aligning around certain issues and areas of convergence,” the professor adds.

Issue-based alignment allows countries like India to join groups like BRICS, an organisation of non-Western states, as well as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), a West-led group including the US, Australia, Japan and India, according to the professor.

It shows that today, the political stances of non-aligned countries like India are different from the non-alignment of the past, he says. “One can call it multialignment,” he frames, adding that the idea of non-alignment existed during the Cold War does not resonate with large parts of the world today.