The movement got fractured from its own contradictions. It struggled to find relevance since the Cold War ended. The countries that underwent the most significant changes – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria – are all members of NAM
domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”
The times have changed. The end of the cold war in the early 1990s; the temporary Russian occupation of Afghanistan, which is now under the US tutelage; disintegration of Yugoslavia; improving relationship among the USA, Cuba and Iran; Saudi Arabia and Kuwait receiving US military protection; Vietnam getting closer to the US; the growing tension between India and Pakistan and, finally, the rise of China as a super economic and diplomatic power have made the non-aligned movement practically toothless and also meaningless as the Us-led military blocks such as the South East Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO) and Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). Even the most powerful Us-led 28-member North-atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is facing a challenge from its most trusted ally, Turkey. It was probably the most unthinkable development in NATO that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could take the initiative to visit a long diplomatic rival, Russia, earlier this month to meet President Vladimir Putin at St. Petersburg to engage Turkey in a new military and economic relationship with Russia after last month’s failed coup. US Secretary of State John Kerry was so upset that he said NATO would assess whether Turkey upholds democratic values amid a wave of arrests tied to the attempt by a group of Turkish military rebels to overthrow Erdogan. Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952.
NAM may have been a good idea in 1961. It represented nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’ members and contained 55 per cent of the world population. Membership is particularly concentrated in countries that were part of the Third World. But, not all members were non-aligned. Many were informally aligned with either the US or the then Soviet Union, the two super powers. The movement got fractured from its own contradictions. It struggled to find relevance since the Cold War ended. The emergence of “Arab Spring” that nearly convulsed West Asian republics affected several Nam members in the region directly. The countries that underwent the most significant changes – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria – are all members of NAM. And, they are now less sure about how an anti-us campaign will help restore their economy and a viable political system.
The latest development in Turkey, which has pledged to help Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria, growing anti-islamist sentiment in the US, Britain and EU and China’s claim of the South China Sea are a blow to all old fashioned alliances. Including NATO, the only surviving post-cold war military treaty. Honestly, old NAM has little role to play in the current world. India would probably do well by playing a more positive and cohesive role in an emerging economy block such as BRICS. Prime Minister Modi and India’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj would do well to devote more attention to BRICS than spend their valuable time and resources on NAM.