What could its members now be non-aligned to? The answer turned out to be: non-aligned to the remaining world power – the US and its western allies. When the disintegration of the Soviet Union into 15 countries marked the end of the Cold War, many observers presumed that the NAM would wind itself up. The NAM anti-colonialism principle meant it gave full support to the armed struggles against settler Rhodesia, as well as apartheid Namibia and South Africa. This of course meant that there could not even be resolutions condemning human rights violations in any NAM country. They had the contradiction of respect for human rights versus abstention from intervention in other countries’ internal affairs. The Bandung principles and those of the NAM reiterated peaceful settlement of international disputes abstention from joining big power alliances and opposition to military bases in foreign countries. A significant proportion of South American, Caribbean, and south Asian states make up the rest of the members. By contrast, every state in Africa, bar the newest, South Sudan, is a member. Today, Belarus is the only European member. They resigned from the NAM when admitted to the European Union (EU). So the only NAM members in Europe were the islands of Cyprus and Malta. What tended to unite them was that almost all were ex-colonies. Muslim governments opposed the Soviet invasion Cuba supported the Soviet intervention. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, this sharply divided Muslim countries from Cuba and its friends. India and Pakistan fought four wars against each other Iraq and Iran one. Some voted with France and NATO in the United Nations on most issues others, such as Cuba, tilted towards the late Soviet Union. Historically, their heterogeneity ranged from absolute monarchs to socialist presidents. Its member states enjoy cohesion on few issues. The NAM has merely a modest coordinating office adjacent to the United Nations in New York, and even its conferences are three years or more apart. Principles and contradictionsĪ conference - in this case the XVII summit of the heads of state and government of the Non-Aligned Movement - can do no more than issue media communiqués. But a third world nationalism and opposition to western hegemony is perhaps the most consistent theme of NAM statements. So have pro-western Malaysia and socialist Cuba. Both conservative Columbia and leftist Venezuela have recently hosted NAM conferences. While the loudest current rhetoric from the NAM is anti-west, its member governments show great ideological diversity across the spectrum. NAM comprised only what its official name said: Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries. The NAM never became an organisation in the sense of the African Union, nor even the Commonwealth of Nations. We should carefully note the name “movement”. This meeting is conventionally seen as the start of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Joined by President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, they met again in Belgrade in 1961. The conference’s main themes were peaceful coexistence, and independence from colonialism and imperialism. They invited all governments who did not wish to join one of those two world power alliances. Presidents Sukarno of Indonesia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Josip Tito of Yugoslavia and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India co-hosted the Bandung Conference of 1955. The Soviet Union founded the Warsaw Pact.Īnother response among some underdeveloped countries of the third world was neutrality. The US founded the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and shorter-lived alliances. When the Cold War started in the mid-twentieth century, the two world powers - the Soviet Union and US - responded by organising their allies into rival military alliances.
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