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.