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By P.K.Balachandran/Daily News
Colombo, January 23: The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which held its 19 th.,summit in Kampala Uganda last week, was formally launched in 1961 by countries emerging from the thraldom of colonial rule.
NAM embodied a common desire not to be under the tutelage of any of the Big Powers. That represented a major break from the past when weaker countries were pliant vassals of one power or the other. In that brutal world order, there was no scope for non-alignment.
But the end of colonialism after World War II and decolonization that followed, gave scope for policy choices including non-alignment.
Non-alignment appeared as a concept in the 1950s and 1960s when the world was divided into two powerful nuclear-armed blocs, one led by the US and the other by the USSR. This dichotomy necessitated non-alignment because no county, least of all the newly independent ones, to be a theatre in a nuclear war.
Non-Alignment, as envisaged by its progenitors, Pandit Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Joseph Broz Tito, Sukarno and Kwame Nkrumah, did not profess standoffishness. It stood for active involvement in world affairs but only in the cause of peace and reconciliation. Dismantling the structures of inequality and exploitation was another key objective.
The credit for enunciating the basic principles of non-alignment must go to Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who sowed the seeds of nonalignment way back in 1942, when World War II was raging. They declared that the Indian freedom movement will not support the Allies unless the British first set India free. The “Quit India” movement they launched was the first attempt to take an independent stand on an international issue like the world war. The stand was based on principles such as freedom, democracy and sovereign equality.
With post-war decolonisation, some of the new countries joined either the US-led military blocs or the Soviet-led military bloc. But the majority led by Nehru kept away from military blocs, preferring to work with both the US and the Soviet Union for economic development.
While the Soviet Union saw merit in non-alignment, the US was hostile as it expected the newly emerging countries to join the “Free World” in its crusade against communist dictatorships. But for the developing countries the Free World’s leaders were no paragons of virtue. These propped up dictatorships, toppled governments, and waged wars to pursue their interests.
The West’s unwillingness to help the new countries develop economically, disappointed. On the other hand, the USSR (and later China too) helped them develop their economies and won plaudits.
During the Cold War (from the end of World War II in 1945 till the collapse of the USSR in 1991) peace between the Western and Eastern blocs was maintained by mutual nuclear deterrence. But the non-aligned countries also contributed to peace by keeping away from the conflicts.
In Ceylon, Premier SWRD Bandaranaike asked the British to leave their air and naval bases in the island. He did not want Ceylon to be a theatre of war between the West and the USSR or China.
Like all movements, NAM too had its highs and lows. India played a very prominent role as a facilitator at the 1954 Geneva Peace Conference on Indochina. In Ceylon, Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike attained global stature by organizing a NAM summit in 1976.
But after the exit of the founding fathers, the movement did lose its voice. And within the non-aligned group itself differences arose. Ceylon did not support India during the India-China war in 1962 and the India-Pakistan war in 1971. India intervened in Sri Lanka in 1987 and imposed a controversial Accord against stiff local opposition.
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, a unipolar world emerged, with the US as the lone top dog. But this did not last long. Russia emerged from the rubble under Vladimir Putin to challenge the US. China emerged from backwardness to challenge the West on the economic and militarily plane. The unipolar world became a bipolar world with the US on side and Russia and China on the other.
As the world was in a flux, new alignments involving the Global South countries appeared on the scene. China founded the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which included India and Russia. Brazil, Russia India, China, and South Africa formed BRICS. Both shared the ideals of NAM. Forums like BRICS and NAM gave Africa a higher profile than before, given the number of countries in it. South Africa hosted the last BRICS summit and last week Uganda organized a NAM summit.
A common aim of BRICS, SCO and NAM was to challenge the hegemony of the United States, not militarily, but politically, and to establish a multi-polar world.
There are countries like India and Sri Lanka which pursue the policies of NAM in their individual capacity using different terminologies. India is now pursuing its own brand of non-alignment calling it “strategic autonomy.” As its External Affairs Minister S.Jaishankar explained “strategic autonomy” implies taking decisions on the basis of one’s national interest and not following any bloc or herd. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives are doing the same.
Under “strategic autonomy” India defied US sanctions against Russia, bought oil from it, refined it and sold it to Europe, which could not buy oil directly from Russia. All this while having a “strategic partnership” with the US. Sri Lanka is balancing India, China and US and the Maldives is balancing India and China.
Russia and China are not part of NAM, but they appreciate NAM as it is basically against US hegemony. But the US is uncomfortable with NAM’s concepts like Non-Alignment and strategic autonomy.
Matias Spektor, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says in a recent article in Foreign Affairs: “Across the globe, from India to Indonesia, Brazil to Turkey, Nigeria to South Africa, developing countries are increasingly seeking to avoid costly entanglements with the major powers, trying to keep all their options open for maximum flexibility. These countries are pursuing a strategy of hedging because they see the future distribution of global power as uncertain and wish to avoid commitments that will be hard to discharge.”
These countries do not see eye to eye with the US on most matters in world politics. For instance, they have no pathological hatred for Russia or its leader Putin. They do not see China as an evil out to upset the world order. They don’t brand countries with epithets like “Axis of Evil.” They judge countries not as a member of a herd but from their own angle.
The fact of the matter is that Russia has not been crushed, China is gaining in strength, Israel is unable to attain its objectives in Gaza, and India is going on its own chosen trajectory.
It is under these conditions that non-Western organizations like BRICS, SCO and the NAM enjoy relevance and are growing while organizations like NATO are getting weaker by the day. NAM now has 120 members. On the other hand, American-led NATO is getting weaker. And earlier organizations SEATO and CENTO collapsed long ago.
Matias Spektor suggests that the US should understand the minds of the Global South countries, their requirements, priorities, fears and apprehensions and meet their needs. The US should also be less hypocritical in its claims to be morally superior and win these countries over. The US is not doing enough to promote development in the Global South but is demanding military cooperation and that is resented.
The US’s failure to address the needs and concerns of the Global South has led to their tolerating the transgressions of Russia and China. There is an eagerness to join BRICS, SCO and NAM.
In the latest summit in Kampala, NAM took a strong stand against the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza in which 25,000 Gazans have perished to date. NAM’s stature will only go up if the genocide continues with the US turning a blind eye to it.
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