Former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere once said: “When the elephants fight, the grasshoppers die; when the elephants make love the grasshoppers die.”
It’s through this lens that many in the global South are watching the war in Ukraine, a European war that while distant, is driving a rethink of what it means to be neutral.
Historically, smaller nations have preserved their right to remain non-aligned. They did so from the 1950s to the 1970s in the context of the Cold War when the Americans and the imperialist West demanded the rest of the world choose a camp.
