Two Cheers for Nonalignment

Abstract

The Nonahgned Movement has come a long way: from its First Summit Meeting in Belgrade in 1961 where 25 countries had assembled, it has grown into a concourse of 86 full members which met in Colombo in August 1976 for the Fifth Summit Conference. Its membership hailed from four continents and represented a diversity of economic, social and political systems. The Fifth Summit was not only the first meeting to be held in Asia?the original habitat of nonalignment? but it was also the first to be held after the two momentous events of recent years : first, the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973 and the oil crisis, and second, the victory of the communist forces in the three Indochinese states of Vietnam, Kampuchea and Laos. The delegates to the Conference were conscious of the changed circumstances in which they found themselves. Amidst the accustomed and usual rhetoric of self-congratulation and hyperbolic statements, serious doubts were expressed by a number of nonahgned states about the relevance, vitality and drift of the nonahgned movement. At the Third Summit Conference at Lusaka in September 1970, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew noted, There is need to redefine the needs and problems of new countries in search of security and development. We must a new for nonalignment, a new validity in altered circumstance. In the intervening six years, the need to find a new relevance has become all the more obvious and pressing. Future historians of the movement might regard the Fifth Summit as a watershed in the twenty-year history of nonalignment?as a watershed that marks the end of one phase and indicates the beginning of the next in an altered key. It is a turning-point but whether the movement will actually take a new direction remains to be seen. This is an opportune time to examine the basic tenets of nonalignment and the temper of the nonahgned movement, to evaluate the role it has played in the past fifteen years and appraise the challenges that he ahead.