Cold War relic past its use-by date

COMMENT

Any international organisation boasting 120 member states should be a significant voice on the world stage. In the case of the Non-Aligned Movement, however, there is a distinct air of impotency.

While many nations from the developing world still participate in bulking up the Cold War relic, the force of the movement has seriously deflated.

Last year’s NAM summit in the Iranian capital of Tehran attracted delegations from most member states. Even the United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon attended.

Putting all these developing states together should be a recipe for action. But the gathering was hijacked by Iran to counterweight US-led efforts to isolate the country over their suspicious nuclear energy project.

The very fact Tehran assumes the mantle of the movement’s rotating three-year leadership, rather than a geopolitically more important country in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region, points to the growing irrelevancy and dislocated political agenda of the group.

There once was a coherent mission for the Non-Aligned Movement, formed in 1961 during the bleak days of the Cold War. Many countries simply either could not, or refused, to take sides with one of the major duelling superpowers.

The movement became an influential voice in world politics as newly independent nations stretched their political legs to take their chances in a post-colonial world without a power patron.

An expired usefulness

From the perspective of the two superpowers, any state not aligned with a rival was good news. This did not stop Washington and Moscow from fighting what were actually very hot wars inside many of the member’s territories.

Practically, a good chunk of member states were never really completely detached from Soviet or American ideology, regardless of rhetoric at the periodic summits.

Non-alignment was a noble goal for South Asia, Africa, South America and the Asia Pacific during the fearful  Cold War era. But in the first years of the 21^st century, the desire not to align within a hegemonic geopolitical/military structure is dissolving.

With so many competing strategic objectives among the NAM states, many of which are mutually exclusive, the diplomatic glue has been tough to administer.

There is also something depressingly hypocritical about a movement standing for human rights and equality while many of those member states are responsible for some of modern history’s most savage acts of violence at home.

For instance, countries such as Libya, North Korea, Iran, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Cambodia, Syria, Vietnam and Palestine are all members of the movement. Each has their own belligerent quarrel – justified or not – with the world’s only remaining Western superpower.

So the United States remains a lightning rod for members to vent their complicated anger.

Contradicting their opposition, a growing number of NAM members are actively engaging the US for economic development and stronger political ties.

Using only the latest salient example, Myanmar's president was warmly hosted this week at the White House, even though the country was a founding member of the movement.

Naypyidaw, the country's new capital, is deliberately looking beyond the outdated NAM and reaching out to the US for the first time in decades. For Myanmar, caught geographically between the two rising powers of India and China, America actually offers an important counterweight for the budding nation.

In similar ways, the Philippines and Malaysia, both signatories of the NAM, are responding to the evolving dynamics in the Asia Pacific in ways they would never have dreamed just a few decades ago.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Indonesia, Egypt and South Africa all remain members – although it would be a casual reading of history to say these nations were ever truly “non-aligned” against the US.

Struggling for relevancy 

This dissonance indicates the uncomfortable truth about post-Cold War structures. In the same way the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was a grouping for a specific time against a now-defunct Red threat, the NAM is an edifice lacking almost all reasons to exist.

The UN, with all its foibles and intricacies, is much better placed to protect the interests of vulnerable nations. Today’s world teeters on the brink of chaos in many regions. Remaining aloof from the world system, without interaction with the US, is a dangerous political position.

Ultimately, the historically anti-Western characteristics of the Non-Aligned Movement will be difficult to maintain as the new century progresses and large, growing regional powers create new strategic choices for many of the movement’s members.

If NAM is to have any clout in the coming decades it must seriously re-examine its goals. It might not ever have been expected back in 1961, but the need for such a movement probably doesn’t exist today.

Nathan Smith has a Bachelor of Communications in Journalism from Massey University and has studied international relations and conflict.