Colombian meet to decide the future of NAM

Colombian meet to decide the future of NAM

By Rajesh Kumar

JAKARTA (JP): The ongoing 11th Non-Aligned Movement summit at
Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, will be crucial for deciding the
fate of NAM. Depending on the outcome of the summit is whether
NAM remains just a relevant organization or whether it guides and
influences the domain of international economics.

During its chairmanship, Indonesia kept NAM alive by
successfully steering clear of all doubts about the movement's
relevance. Now it will be up to its next chair, Colombia, to
guide the movement to further increase its effectiveness in the
world fora, in the UN, in the GATT and others.

The summit is expected to focus on poverty, debt, human rights
and other such issues of serious concern to the NAM member
countries. However, one of the main tasks facing the summit will
be to reach a consensus on whether the current membership of 112
nations should be increased, with a few East European countries
eager to join. Moreover, appropriate changes in the criteria (for
NAM membership) have become necessary in order to reflect the
members' common stand on problems which beset the world today,
especially their common position on the North-South dialog,
South-South Cooperation and the like.

When independent India and Indonesia started defining their
foreign policies, the Cold War loomed very large. International
politics at that time were likely to hinder both world peace on
the one hand and accelerated socioeconomic development on the
other.

Under such circumstances, the essential prerequisites for
keeping one's integrity was to refuse any predictable
relationship with the great powers, while offering, at the normal
civilized level, the fully extended hand of cooperation. This
dissociation from bloc politics or military alliances was the
policy which later came to be called "non-alignment".

This policy of non-alignment was soon regarded by other
leaders as exemplary and worthy of emulation in some respects.
President Tito of Yugoslavia adopted a similar approach after
breaking away from one of the blocs. President Nasser and many
other leaders also started treading a similar path in their
foreign policies. With the joining of Latin American and African
countries in the list of countries following a more or less
parallel policy, non-alignment became a movement.

The logic behind the formation of the movement was that if
individual states could promote their interests through non-
alignment, collective action by many non-aligned states should be
more effective. Collective action is possible only when its
member states adopt a common foreign policy approach.

The policy of non-alignment provides flexibility to the
country to produce its own synthesis, its own adaptation and its
own version of foreign doctrines. It frees a nation from the
pressures to borrow foreign models or adopt other ideologies
which may be alien to a nation's civilization or its ethos.

In a broader sense, this policy is relevant even under post-
Cold War circumstances. What has become irrelevant is the
specific meaning the policy acquired during the cold war, which
was to align with neither the Western nor communist bloc.

In fact the whole criteria, which is the basis for NAM
membership, was framed assuming that the blocs were a remaining
feature for many years to come. The visionaries were correct in
their judgment, for the world remained dominated by the two power
blocs for the next 25 years.

Moreover, the criteria which was agreed upon during the
preparatory meeting for the first NAM Conference in Cairo, June 5
to June 12, 1961, outlines the common foreign policy approach
among the NAM member countries. It is this common non-aligned
approach to international circumstances which makes the movement
effective.

Out of the five criteria for membership of NAM which remain
unaltered since its formation, only the first is broadly based.
The second criterion specifically relates to anti-colonialism.
And the last three are in the context of Cold War circumstances.
The Cold War is a decade behind us and hardly any colony remains
which is yet to be liberated. Therefore, it will be apt for the
NAM to reset or modify its existing criteria so as to reflect the
members' common approach to the present international atmosphere.

The criteria in other words acts as a diplomatic vehicle to
serve two distinctive functions, one national and the other
international. In the domestic arena, it tries to safeguard a
nation's true strength and its basic interests. The criteria
provides guidelines for behavior of nation-states in order to
protect their sovereignty, dignity and territorial integrity. In
the domain of international relations, it strives for a world in
which all nations, small or populous, rich or poor, would live
together in peace and have an equal chance to enhance their
wellbeing. Whether the Colombia summit adheres more vigorously to
these tasks is anybody's guess.

The author is a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, Jakarta.