From colonies to collective: ALBA, Latin American integration, and the construction of regional political power

States have long arranged themselves vertically; the fundamental ordering principle of political life remains substantially unchanged, with ‘right, as the world goes… only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must’ (Thucydides, 331).1 Modern international politics, and the system of international law that has been used instrumentally to institutionalise it, is grounded in this foundation of verticality.2 The state system has, at least since 1945, been formally ordered on the basis of the principle of the equality of states.3 Yet functionally, the state system is vertically ordered, grounded on a rule of deference by weaker Powers to more powerful ones, and the deference of all to the Great Powers.4 This fundamental ordering framework, and its repercussions, has been nicely illustrated in the earlier chapters of this collection.