Few people today remember a world not dominated by the United States. For more than half a century the latter has exerted a powerful influence across much of the world. The leadership and supremacy of the United States were a decisive feature of Latin America’s twentieth-century international relations and on how its regional relations evolved. The rise of Asia in general and China, in particular, have changed this. A plurality of power sources, economic drivers, and world views have flourished in the last decade. China’s sheer material presence on the global stage is shaping the behavior of most other states. This challenges our understanding of how we conceptualize and analyze practical regional cooperation around key issues of development and conflict.

Regionalism in the twenty-first century takes place in a post-hegemonic framework, one fundamentally different from what can be seen as the hegemonic moment of the twentieth century. As of this writing, the almost complete absence of US leadership has been a remarkable aspect of the global health crisis brought about by COVID-19. This has allowed China, Russia, and India to display what has been dubbed as vaccine diplomacy. China is seeking to expand health-related infrastructure and innovation capacity as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This speaks to the country’s broader push to position itself as a global health leader. This attempt—with both geopolitical and geoeconomic significance—has been characterized as being as ambitious as the launch of the Bretton Woods institutions and the Marshall Plan in the twentieth century combined. This has the potential to accelerate the shift in balance of the global standing between the United States and its competitors. Perceptions of the United States and its position at the center of the contemporary international order vary, but they have undoubtedly shifted over the last decade. Active Non-Alignment (ANA) and pragmatic regional cooperation are key for Latin America to come to terms with new times, new structures, and new development challenges.

Regionalism in a multipolar world order has its own logic. This is what makes intelligible the confusing mix of cooperation and conflict present in Latin America.