The birth of the Non-Aligned Movement

pan-Africanism

The belief that Africans wherever they live share common cultural and spiritual values. Pan-Africanism was an important influence on the rise of nationalist movements in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century, but after decolonization its impact waned as the new states were reluctant to compromise their independence.

see Chapter 17

In the wake of Bandung, the question for Nehru and the other non-aligned leaders was whether they should continue with their focus on Afro-Asian solidarity or seek some other more effective and coherent forum for expressing their concerns. After much deliberation, the decision was made to move towards the latter by the formation of a loose conglomeration of non-aligned states. The drift towards a more overt non-aligned stance came about for a number of reasons. One of the most important was the emergence of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Josip Tito of Yugoslavia as enthusiastic supporters of the principle of non-alignment. While they recognized that the struggle against colonialism was important, both stressed the even greater need, based on both moral and pragmatic grounds, for the non-committed states to do their utmost to try to ease the ideological confrontation between the two superpowers. This was, of course, of particular importance for Yugoslavia, owing to its exposed position in East Europe, especially after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. This emphasis on non-alignment towards the Cold War as the overriding priority clearly argued against any continuation of the attempt to follow the Afro-Asian path, for any forum based on the latter necessarily included states that were allied to the superpowers.

In addition, the cause of Afro-Asian solidarity was undermined, somewhat ironically, by the surge in the late 1950s in the number of states eligible to attend such a forum.

Another important stimulus to the emergence of the Non-Aligned Movement was that the rhetoric used by Nasser and Tito about the urgent need to dampen down Cold War tensions appeared to be confirmed by the trend in world affairs.

After all, the late 1950s witnessed a resurgence of the Cold War in the shape of the crises over Berlin and Taiwan, and in I960, following a brief period of detente, the Four-Power Summit at Paris was cancelled abruptly amid American-Russian recriminations. In addition, the fact that these years witnessed a peak in the decolonization process and the rise of national liberation movements posed a number of challenges to international stability. On the one hand, there was the problem that, while the colonial Powers were beginning to divest themselves of their possessions in Sub-Saharan Africa, in some areas they were still bent on frustrating nationalist movements and holding on to their imperial privileges, as, for instance, in the French war to maintain control of Algeria. On the other hand, there was the danger that decolonization would leave behind a power vacuum which the superpowers would seek to fill, thus bringing their Cold War baggage into regions that had previously escaped their grip. To an extent this had already taken place in the Middle East, where the collapse in British and French prestige following the Suez Crisis of 1956 had allowed the United States to develop its presence in the region, leading to its intervention in Lebanon in 1958.

detente

A term meaning the reduction of tensions between states. It is often used to refer to the superpower diplomacy that took place between the inauguration of Richard Nixon as the American president in 1969 and the Senate's refusal to ratify SALT II in 1980.

The result was that in 1961 the leading non-aligned states decided, following a preparatory meeting in Cairo, to hold a non-aligned summit in Belgrade. This conference, which met in September 1961, was attended by twenty-five states; most of the delegations were from Asia and Africa, Yugoslavia and Cyprus were the only representatives from Europe, and Cuba alone came from Latin America. Because of the absence of superpower clients, the Belgrade Summit was a far more radical affair than Bandung. Its main significance lay in two areas: first, that the states present agreed that they should form a pressure group that would focus attention on political problems, such as lowering Cold War tensions and opposing colonialism and apartheid, and, second, that they should lobby on economic development issues. In the short term both of these interests were to have an impact on international relations, but in the long term it was the economic rather than the political agenda that was to have the most influence on international politics. This might seem surprising since the non-aligned states had concentrated until this point on political issues first and foremost, but in fact there was a good reason for this, namely that it was far easier for them to cohere around their economic objectives than to achieve a political consensus. Indeed, in the years following the Belgrade summit it was by no means clear that the Non-Aligned Movement would be able to survive, for divisions over its political direction and other distractions threatened to bring about its rapid extinction.

apartheid

The Afrikaans word for racial segregation. Between 1948 and 1990 ‘apartheid’ was the ideology of the Nationalist Party in South Africa

One problem that emerged was that, for a number of reasons, India's role as the ‘leader' of the non-aligned came into question in the early 1960s. In part, this arose from Nehru's ambivalence about the non-aligned summit, for he was concerned that, by forming their own distinct group, the non-aligned were merely becoming yet another bloc in international politics. In addition, a number of the newly independent states questioned India's leadership role, because they felt that

neo-colonialism

The process whereby a colonial power grants juridical independence to a colony, but nevertheless maintains de facto political and economic control.

see Chapter 17

see Chapter 15

Congo Crisis

The civil war that took place in the Congo (the former Belgian Congo) from I960 to 1963. The crisis was caused largely by the attempt of the copper-rich province of Katanga to secede from Congo. The secession was defeated eventually by a UN force, but in the process there were scares that the dilatory UN response would lead the Congolese government to turn to the Soviet Union for support.

it was not assertive enough in regard to colonial issues. Indeed, the Indian seizure of the Portuguese colony of Goa in 1961 can be seen as an attempt by Nehru to dampen down such criticism. The most damaging development, however, was the disastrous Sino-Indian border war of October-November 1962. This conflict compromised India's international standing for, after suffering a rapid series of reverses, a deeply shaken Nehru accepted an offer of large-scale military aid from the United States and Britain. Nehru never really recovered from these humiliating experiences, and died in May 1964 a disappointed man.

While India's star waned, a major challenge to the definition of non-alignment propagated by Nehru, Nasser and Tito came from the Indonesian president, Ahmed Sukarno, who believed that the non-aligned should take on a still more radical position.

In addition, however, there was another aspect to Sukarno's position, which was that he challenged the existence of the newly established Non-Aligned Movement by reviving the cause of Afro-Asian solidarity. To a substantial degree Sukarno was put up to this by his Great Power patron, the PRC, which wished to increase its influence in the Third World. The PRC could clearly not do this in the context of a non-aligned grouping, but it had every right to attend an Afro- Asian forum. Moreover, the PRC was moved to action by its disdain for the revisionist regime in Yugoslavia and its increasingly tense relations with India.

In October 1964, partly in an effort to head off Sukarno's challenge, a second non-aligned summit was held in Cairo. This time it was attended by forty-seven governments, most of the new participants coming from the more conservative African states that had not been invited in 1961. Owing to the new mood of detente in superpower relations following the high drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was less concentration in this summit on East-West relations and more criticism aimed at intervention by the Great Powers in the Third World. This was not enough to assuage Sukarno, who was already putting into operation his plans for a second Afro-Asian conference. At a preparatory meeting in Jakarta in 1964 Ahmed Ben Bella, the president of Algeria, offered to host the conference in Algiers in 1965. However, matters did not proceed smoothly, for, in an effort to sabotage the conference, the Soviet Union got its client states to argue that it too should be invited on the grounds that it was, after all, an Asian power. Moreover, in June 1965 a coup in Algiers overthrew the government of Ben Bella and this was followed in October by the political disturbances in Indonesia that marked the start of Sukarno's fall from power. With its plans in disarray, the PRC had no choice but to call for the conference to be postponed, and with this the dream of Afro-Asian solidarity finally came to an end, while non-alignment was left licking its wounds.