Geopolitics of Africa-Cuba-China Cooperation: Strategies of Balance and Tariff Evasion in the Non-Aligned Movement

This paper focuses on Africa-Cuba-China (ACC) tariffed experiences within Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) geopolitics. ACC is caught in the web of internationalising belonging, ownership of state and continental survival traits. China amplifies socialism with Chinese characteristics on the global scene and international geopolitical spaces; Cuba embodies socialist realities with communist flavours; and Africa lays stretched on the plumbline of socialism, communism, and capitalism with drooping Pan-African Ubuntu characteristics. Their tariff experiences posture unity amidst dreadful threat from United States. The paper augments that realities in balancing shared threat confirm NAM ideation of catch-up diplomacy tact. It also demonstrates how tariffs conditioned states to circumvent great power dominance amidst existing treaties and threats. Thus, why and how China leaps to being a more attractive partner within tariffed NAM geopolitics realities beckon apt rationalisation. Especially, how fallowing catch-up diplomacy has posited counter balancing as shared affluence; and why ACC partnerships as well as cooperation aren’t motivating NAM to retaliate? This research uses qualitative descriptive analysis on African-Cuban cases to embolden intra-inter-regional diplomacy of tariffed NAM states. It offers a spectrum to (re)think ACC threats, hindering multilateralism; especially how Africa views relating with Cuba, and vice versa within tariffed BRI balancing geopolitics. Observably, this predicament has continued to hinder actualisation of a liberated partnership of ACC within NAM. It explains the motivation in (counter)balancing against United States; and the nature of partnership(s) and cooperation diplomacy within NAM tariffed states.