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This paper explores India’s strategic positioning vis-à-vis the liberal international order (LIO), examining how India has historically both engaged with and asserted autonomy from the Western-led order. It argues that India’s evolving foreign policy—from Nehru’s non-alignment to Modi’s strategic autonomy—reflects a deliberate use of specific approaches to create space within the LIO for its unique national interests. The main argument of the paper is that India’s engagement with the LIO has not involved wholesale rejection of the extant LIO framework but rather the selective leveraging and reimagining of liberal principles to preserve India’s strategic interests while promoting a multipolar, more inclusive global order. India’s approach to the LIO from its independence to now has been marked by continuity. Since 1947, India has sought to uphold sovereignty while benefiting from liberal principles, particularly in institutional and economic domains. The paper draws on the theoretical framework of defensive realism and institutional neoliberalism to deconstruct and highlight India’s policy approach to the LIO, which is characterized by pragmatism and suggests that India could be described as a transactional power.

This paper addresses military innovation in Finland in the context of the country’s NATO integration. Finland shifted its security policy course rapidly and dramatically when it applied for NATO membership in May 2022, less than three months after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The main argument of the paper is that various military innovations are taking place as Finland – after decades of neutrality and later non-alignment policy – seeks its role within the alliance. However, those innovations are mostly incremental in nature. Many earlier fundaments of Finland’s national defence, such as conscription and models of comprehensive security and comprehensive defence, will remain in place. If they are transformed, it will happen in an evolutionary way, by adjusting existing practices, not by launching revolutions.

This paper examines the discursive recuperation of “non-aligned” histories and non-alignment—understood as the set of ideas and values behind the Non-Aligned Movement established in the 1960s1—in the interpretation of two African collections, the Museum of African Art: the Veda and Dr. Zdravko Pečar Collection (MAU) and the Museum of Yugoslavia (MY), both in Belgrade, Serbia. Non-alignment shaped socialist Yugoslavia’s foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s, positioning the country aside the socalled Third World countries and associating it with the ideologies of anti-colonialism. Since anti-colonialism has influenced the interpretation of these collections, they offer a somewhat decentred case study within the ongoing global attempts to decolonize museums. However, the presence of non-alignment in these two museums has remained discursive, meaning that it was not immediately evident in their visual representation or museum methodologies. Such dependence on the prevailing political framework made it highly responsive to shifts in broader discourse, which underwent dramatic and significant transformations over time. Beyond the end of the Cold War, which reshaped global political and economic positionings, the wars in the former Yugoslav republics during the 1990s and the formation of newly created national narrations contributed to the effacement of most Yugoslav narratives, including non-alignment. This paper builds on previous research projects (Sladojević 2012, 2014, 2017, 2022) and over two decades of immediate professional experience with both museums, broadly tracing the discursive presence of non-alignment. It emphasizes two main approaches to reviving the non-aligned narrative in these two African collections. The first is artistic and theoretical engagement, which seeks to recuperate Yugoslav legacies as emancipatory guidelines for a more equitable society. The second is the Serbian state’s current appropriation of these legacies, re-employing the Yugoslav non-aligned discourse for certain practical political gains, balancing historical meaning with redefined interpretations.

India’s policy of ‘neutrality’ in the Russia–Ukraine war is explained by its policy of multi-alignment which seeks to maximise India’s national interests and retain strategic autonomy. India has taken a ‘neutral’ stance because the Modi government highly values India’s strategic partnership with Russia and believes Moscow will play a significant role in India’s rise as a global power. India’s Indo-Pacific concept/vision and its alignments in the region are also influenced by multi-alignment. As a consequence of the Galwan Valley clash in June 2020 and the ongoing border standoff, India’s Indo-Pacific concept/vision has changed and it has aligned itself more closely to the USA. India’s rivalry with China (and Pakistan) is likely to be aggravated due to the Russia–Ukraine war leading to tensions in India–Russia ties as Moscow is likely to become increasingly reliant on Beijing, and New Delhi aligns itself more closely with Washington under the multi-alignment doctrine.

To rally support within Africa for America’s boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games, President Carter sent Muhammad Ali as his personal diplomat to Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, and Senegal in an attempt to gain political and popular support for the boycott. The mission had limited success, but it inspired a public forum across the continent for criticisms of American foreign policy toward Africa. By analyzing these discussions, primarily within the press, Ivey shows how America was interpreted in Africa and how the issues of the Cold War were considered of secondary importance to the more immediate struggle against apartheid and independent foreign policy.

Why, despite its longstanding identity as a non-aligned country, did Sweden apply for NATO membership in May 2022? Did this decision not fundamentally challenge Swedish ontological security? Conversely, could a desire to maintain ontological security somehow explain the radical policy shift? This article conceptualises the state’s self in terms of layered identity constructions, some of which are more deeply embedded while others are relatively fleeting and superficial. When these clash, the latter may have to change in order to maintain some stability in the more sedimented layers. This theoretical perspective provides insight into the empirical puzzle. The article argues that non-alignment was a relatively more superficial Swedish identity construct in the early months of 2022 than previously recognised. It finds that following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Finland’s decision to join NATO, non-alignment began to conflict with more entrenched Swedish identity constructs, thereby jeopardising the stability of the Swedish self. While Sweden’s decision to join NATO did produce ontological insecurities in parts of the population, the article concludes that the policy shift helped to restore some ontological security for those Swedes who adhere to now-dominant identity narratives.

The 1955 Afro-Asian Summit at Bandung is regarded as a pivot in the formation of Third Worldism and of coloured solidarity against Western colonialism and global white supremacy. But while this anti-imperialist spirit was no doubt present at Bandung, so were many other spirits, including those of Cold War realpolitik. We consider the different meanings of Bandung by examining the critical role Yugoslavia played in the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement in years that followed the summit. Drawing on primary historical documents, we show that Yugoslav leaders consistently failed to appreciate the racism of the international society and their own racialised privilege in it. They did appreciate, however, that performing solidarity with the decolonised and decolonising nations would bring major status rewards to Yugoslavia in the context of the East–West showdown. That self-consciously anti-imperialist and anti-colonial positions can be thickly enveloped in white ignorance suggests the need for more critical International Relations analyses of race, racism and racialised international hierarchies.

This article examines Serbia’s positioning in the East-West axis during the post-Cold War era. This is a specific example of the ‘third way’ in twenty-first century geopolitical behaviour. The small country remains non-aligned within the existing alliances of the East and the West, trying to find a balance between their influence and remaining faithful to its national interests. Although with far more modest resources, the situation of the Serbian state is reminiscent of the fate of Yugoslavia, which was among the initiators of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Relying on substantial empirical evidence, this article claims that being a small state is not an insurmountable obstacle to pursuing an assertive foreign policy, albeit at the cost of complicated relations with neighbouring countries and those geopolitical forces dominating the current world order. Summarising the Serbian experience in ‘third way’ geopolitics, a model of multiple asymmetries in interrelations between the small state and great powers is elaborated.

Indonesia, the Cold War and Non-alignment: Relations of the Early Indonesian Cabinets with the United States, 1950-1952. The Cold War initially focused on Europe but promptly spread to encompass the entire globe. By the early 1950s, the Cold War belligerents began to compete for the allegiance of the newly independent nations. Many of the newly independent nations, however, had from the outset, preferred not to choose sides in the Cold War. India, Burma and Indonesia had all purported to pursue a policy of neutralism and non-alignment in the Cold War. This paper discusses the attempts of the newly independent Republic of Indonesia to steer a policy of nonalignment in the Cold War and the challenges thereto posed by the United States' Cold War policies during the early 1950s. It traces the experiences of the Hatta, Natsir and Sukiman cabinets, 1950-1952. The central theme of the paper is the interplay between the Indonesian policy of non-alignment in the Cold War and the US policy of containment. The paper argues that despite their profession to non-alignment, the early Indonesian cabinets had leaned towards the United States. Indonesia fell with the Anglo-American economic and military orbit. Desirous of American aid, Indonesia increasingly compromised on its stance of nonalignment in the Cold War. The dilemma of dependence proved to be a major stumbling block in Indonesia's attempt to pursue non-alignment.