Peripheral Autonomy in a Multipolar Order: Latin American Reactions to the War in Ukraine

The heterogeneity of Latin American stands regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has puzzled observers in Europe and the United States. Different explanations have been offered to account for the seemingly paradoxical willingness of Latin Americans to oppose the invasion when voting for United Nations resolutions, but then to refrain from condemning it discursively and to directly refuse requests to supply arms to Ukraine. This article aims to document the response of Latin American countries to the war and to assess the factors underpinning it. We show how predominant explanations fell short of providing an adequate account and argue that the region’s reaction to the war can be better understood as a pursuit of peripheral autonomy. Our study is structured as a congruence analysis, based on an eclectic array of theoretical and conceptual explanations and a corpus of qualitative and quantitative information.