Conclusion

The practical significance of neutrality, neutralism and non-alignment as forces in international politics in the Cold War period and after is not easy to measure. In Europe ‘neutrality’ remained the privilege of a few small Western-oriented countries that played only a minimal role in the diplomatic, military, economic and political evolution of the Cold War.

Moreover, while neutralism had some resonance within a number of NATO countries (most obviously France and West Germany), it never really posed a serious threat to these countries’ alignment in the East-West confrontation. When looking outside Europe, the picture is more mixed. On the face of it, one might argue that the Non-Aligned Movement had little influence, for its activities did not lead to any abatement of the Cold War, and many states in the Third World remained allied to one side or the other until the superpower competition came to its conclusion. However, if one looks more broadly at the activities of the non-aligned, it is possible to say that its impact was not negligible. One key consequence was that from the seed of the Bandung Conference there developed a growing sense of a shared consciousness between those states that constituted the Third World. The rise of Third World consciousness, as exemplified by the Non-Aligned Movement, was significant in that it forced the superpowers to compete for the favour of the new states, which resulted in increased levels of economic and military aid. In addition, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves having to couch policies in language that met Third World sensibilities.

In addition, non-alignment had an impact because in its rejection of the centrality of the Cold War paradigm it posed a positive alternative, namely the development paradigm. While it is difficult to contend that the attempts by the Non-Aligned Movement to redress the terms of trade between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ had much substantial effect, the simple fact that these issues were raised had ramifications for the way in which international politics operated.

Thus, even if the non-aligned states did not achieve major breakthroughs in their attempts to press the advanced industrialized countries to make concessions over trade and aid, they did place a number of their favoured issues firmly on the international agenda. Thus, by the time the Cold War ended, the Third World had acquired a voice in world affairs that could not be entirely ignored and had created normative changes that meant that development was a central issue in international politics.

Recommended reading

There are relatively few historical studies of non-alignment and its influence on international politics, although much more has been written from an international relations and political science perspective. Useful introductions include Peter Willetts, The Non-Aligned Movement: The Origins of a Third World Alliance (London, 1978), Robert Mortimer, The Third World Coalition in International Politics (Boulder, CO, 1984), Rikhi Jaipul, Non-Alignment: Origins, Growth and Potential for World Peace (New Delhi, 1987) and Marc Williams, Third World Cooperation: The Group of 77 in UNCTAD (London, 1990). An interesting account of the rise and fall of Third World identity is Robert Malley, The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam (Berkeley, CA, 1996). For the 1990s and globalization, see Louise Fawcett and Yezid Sayigh (eds), The Third World beyond the Cold War (Oxford, 1999).

On European neutrality, see Jürg Martin Gabriel, American Conception of Neutrality after 1941 (New York, 1989), Harto Hakovirta, East-West Conflict and European Neutrality (Oxford, 1988), Efraim Karsh, Neutrality and Small States (London, 1988), Joseph Krüzel and Michael H. Haltzel, Between the Blocs: Problems and Prospects for Europe’s Neutral and Nonaligned Countries (New York, 1989), Alan T. Leonhard (ed.), Neutrality: Changing Concepts and Practices (Lanham, MD, 1988), Hanspeter Neuhold and Hans Thalberg (eds), The European Neutrals in International Affairs (Boulder, CO, 1984), Jukka Nevakivi (ed.), Neutrality in History (Helsinki, 1993) and Victor Papacosma and Mark Rubin (eds), Europe’s Neutral and Nonaligned States: Between Nato and the Warsaw Pact (Wilmington, DE, 1988).

On Austria and Finland, see Gunter Bischof, Austria in the First Cold War, 1945-1955: The Leverage of the Weak (London, 1999) and Jussi Hanhimäki, Containing Coexistence (Kent, OH, 1997).

For American attitudes towards the Third World in general, see Scott Bills, Empire and Cold War: The Roots of US-Third World Antagonism, 1945-47 (Basingstoke, 1990), H. W Brands, The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947-1960 (New York, 1989), Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980 (New York, 1988), Zachary Karabell, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946-1962 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1999), Peter Rodman, More Precious than Peace: The Cold War and the Struggle for the Third World (New York, 1994) and Kathryn Slater and Andrew L. Johns (eds), The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World and the Globalization of the Third World (Lanham, MD, 2006). For the influence of ‘modernization’ theory on the Kennedy administration, see Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘Nation Building’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002) and for the population issue, see Matthew Connelly, ‘To Inherit the Earth: Imagining World Population from the Yellow Peril to the Population Bomb', Journal of Global History (2006), vol.1, pp. 299—319. For Soviet policy, see Margot Light (ed.), Troubled Friendships: Moscow’s Third World Ventures (London, 1993), Galia Golan, The Soviet Union and National Liberation Movements in the Third World (London, 1988) and Andrjez Korbonski and Francis Fukuyama (eds), The Soviet Union and the Third World: The Last Three Decades (Ithaca, NY, 1987). For a general overview of the linkages between superpower confrontation and the Third World, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge, 2005).

On Indian relations with the Great Powers, see Robert C.

Horn, Soviet-Indian Relations: Issues and Influence (New York, 1982), Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: The United States and India’s Economic Development, 1947-1963 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990), Anita Inder Singh, The Limits ofBritish Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship, 1947-56 (London, 1993), Robert McMahon, Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India and Pakistan (New York, 1994) and Andrew Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1947-1964 (Ithaca, NY, 2000). For readings on China and the Third World see Chapter 14.

The best book on the history of the economic relationship between the North and the South is David Fieldhouse, The West and the ThirdWorld (Oxford, 1999), but see also Stephen Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley, CA, 1985). For explanations of dependency and underdevelopment theory, see Ian Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment (Basingstoke, 1979), Vicky Randall and Robin Theobald, Political Change and Underdevelopment: A Critical Introduction to Third World Politics (Basingstoke, 1998), Thomas C. Patterson, Change and Development in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1999) and R. Kingsbury, J. Remenyi, J. McKay and J. Hunt, Key Issues in Development (Basingstoke, 2004). A useful introductory overview of the world economy since 1980 is Robert Solomon, The Transformation of the World Economy (Basingstoke, 1999).

<< | >>

↑

Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

Conclusion

More on the topic Conclusion: