In our era of global economic interdependence, the face of geopolitics has changed.

“We will not accept a new Cold War between the United States and China”, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva declared in his victory speech in October 2022, “we will have relations with everyone.” It is a sentiment echoed by leaders across the Global South. “Malaysia’s position is clear”, announced the country’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, earlier this year to an international audience of policymakers, business leaders and diplomats. “The country remains non-aligned and will not be dragged into any global power rivalries.” 

This is a strategic sentiment shared by a growing group of nations: the pursuit of what some scholars have termed “polyalignment.” Increasingly, developing countries refuse to fall in line with one of Beijing, Washington, or Brussels. Instead, they are forcefully asserting their rights to develop trade, investment and security partnerships with whoever they wish. In doing so, they are drawing on the principles, symbols and rhetoric of the Non-Aligned Movement, the coalition of Third World countries who, during the First Cold War, chose to join neither the US nor the rival Soviet geopolitical blocs. 

As Kenyan president William Ruto stated last year in response to a CNN journalist’s question about whether the country would choose between Chinese or US investment: “we are neither facing West nor East; we are facing forward where opportunities are”—a modern twist on the famous quote from Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, who in 1960 declared that “we face neither East nor West; we face forward.” Past histories of non-alignment clearly live through the current discourse and practice of polyalignment, informing how Southern leaders interpret and navigate today’s geopolitical rivalries, as well as the risks and opportunities available to them. In doing so, however, they highlight a sobering truth: we are now entering a new era of great power competition, a Second Cold War, whose roots lie deep in the twentieth century.

During the First Cold War, spanning roughly 1947 to 1991, the primary competition between the rival geopolitical and ideological blocs took the form of containment. For nearly fifty years, the great powers competed for territorial influence while seeking to limit the expansion of their rivals. It was this era of great power rivalry that gave birth to the vision of non-alignment, an attempt on the part of Third World countries to advance their strategic autonomy and to assert the principles of self-determination. 

Today’s geopolitical rivalries, however, take place in a globalized economy far more deeply interconnected than it was at mid-century. This new Cold War is the product of the world birthed by neoliberal globalization, which brought forth both a new global interdependence between nations as well as a huge shift in the balance of power and economic activity in the global economy. The US is no longer the unchallenged global power. It is now in competition with China for trade, investment and technological supremacy. This conflict, fuelled by virulent nationalisms on both sides, has intensified greatly since the first Trump presidency, reaching new heights under the Biden administration and again under Trump 2.0. 

With this shift towards interdependence in the global economy, the very nature of geopolitics has changed. It is not simply over territorial control that powers now vie, but over the newly vital strategic networks that connect the world economy. In this sense, this Second Cold War is less about containment than it is about connectivity. The connective tissue that meshes the world economy includes global production networks (supply chains for semiconductors, quantum materials, electric vehicle batteries, “clean” tech, medical devices, and biotech products), financial networks (payments systems, financial infrastructures), digital networks (digital platforms, AI, data centres, cybersecurity), connective infrastructure networks (transport, telecoms, internet, logistics) and networks of both fossil-based and renewable energy production. The ability to shape and utilize these, or to control their strategic nodes, is the source of tremendous power and influence. To truly understand the vision of Trump’s second term, we must see in it an aggressive attempt to leverage and fortify the structural position of the US in these networks.