Understanding Non – Alignment Movement and
Today’s World- Nuclear Perspective
After world war second, there was cold war between United States and USSR. The world was divided into two super-powers who directly did not fight yet there was a situation of making weapons, competing and being at arm’s length with one another.
The way forward
After world war second, there was cold war between United States and USSR. The world was divided into two super-powers who directly did not fight yet there was a situation of making weapons, competing and being at arm’s length with one another.
Rest of the countries that time obtained
independence, and they did not want to play the friend or enemy with any nation
which was stronger or powerful.
The Historical Perspective of NAM
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
had a precursor, the Bandung Afro-Asian. The conference was held in 1955.
The intentions were to maintain the soft balancing by weaker states towards great powers engaged in intense rivalry and conflict. As these weaker countries had little material ability to constrain superpower conflict and arms build-ups during that time.
The intentions were to maintain the soft balancing by weaker states towards great powers engaged in intense rivalry and conflict. As these weaker countries had little material ability to constrain superpower conflict and arms build-ups during that time.
To
Protect from Sliding into War-The newly emerging states under the
leadership of India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and
Indonesia’s Sukarno, and later joined by Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, adopted
a soft balancing strategy aimed at challenging the superpower excesses in a
normative manner, hoping for preventing the global order from sliding into war.
Lost
Interest - During 1970s, some of the key players,
including India, began to lose interest in the movement as they formed
coalitions with one or the other superpower to wage their conflicts with their
neighbors.
The
Reaction of the West- The Western countries often portrayed non-alignment
as pro-Soviet or ineffective and the general intellectual opposition
was the result of the Western scholarly bias against a coalitional move by the
weaker states of the international system. The international system is hierarchical and
the expectation is that the weaker states should simply abide by the dictates
of the stronger ones.
The
Nuclear Arm Race - When the Bandung meeting took place, the
world was witnessing an intense nuclear arms race, in particular,
atmospheric nuclear testing. The fear of a third world war was real.
Many crises were going on in Europe and East Asia, with the fear of escalation
lurking. More importantly, the vestiges of colonialism were still present.
“Naming”
and “shaming”
Despite all its
blemishes, the NAM and the Afro-Asian grouping acted as a limited soft
balancing mechanism by attempting to delegitimise the threatening behaviour of the
superpowers, particularly through their activism at the UN and other
forums such as the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament, as well as through
resolutions.
“Naming” and “shaming”
were their operational tools. They worked as norm entrepreneurs in the areas of
nuclear arms control and disarmament. They definitely deserve partial credit
for ending colonialism as it was practised, especially in the 1950s and 1960s
in Africa, parts of Asia and the Caribbean through their activism at the UN
General Assembly which declared decolonisation as a key objective in 1960.
In the long run some of
their goals were achieved due to a radical change in the policies of the Soviet
Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.
Impact on N-tests
The non-aligned
declarations on nuclear testing and nuclear non-proliferation especially helped
to concretise the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. They also helped create
several nuclear weapon free zones as well as formulate the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty. The tradition of ‘non-use of nuclear weapons’, or the
‘nuclear taboo’, was strengthened partially due to activism by the non-aligned
countries’ at the UN.
The non-aligned could
find solace that it took a few more decades for a leader like Mr. Gorbachev to
emerge in one of the contending superpowers, and that many of their policy
positions were adopted by him, and later partially by the U.S.
Present
Day - China, the U.S. and Russia need to be balanced
As the great powers are
once again launching a new round of nuclear arms race and territorial
expansion and militarisation of the oceans, a renewed activism by
leading global south countries may be necessary to delegitimise their imperial
ventures.
If smaller states do not
act as stopping forces now, international order could deteriorate soon which
can further lead to new forms of
cold and hot wars. China, the U.S. and Russia need to be balanced and
restrained and soft balancing by non-superpower states has a key role to play
in this.
If the present trends
continue, a military conflict in the South China Sea is likely and the naval
competition will take another decade or so to become intense, as happened in
earlier periods between Germany and the U.K. (early 1900s), and Japan and the
U.S. (1920s and 1930s).
The U.S. as the reigning
hegemon will find the Chinese takeover threatening and try different methods to
dislodge it.
The
freedom of navigation activities of the U.S. are generating
hostile responses from China, which is building artificial islets and military
bases in the South China Sea and expanding its naval interests into the Indian
Ocean.
Smaller
states would be the first to suffer if there is a war in the Asia-Pacific or an
intense Cold War-style rivalry develops between the U.S. and China. Nuclear weapons need not prevent limited wars as we found out through the
Ussuri clashes of 1969 and the Kargil conflict in 1999.
Challenges are the rise
of China and India, with their own ambitious agendas, makes it difficult that
either will take the lead in organising such a movement, China’s wedge strategy
and its efforts to tie Afro-Asian states through the Belt and Road Initiative
have limited the choices of many developing countries
The
smaller states should develop a new ‘Bandung spirit’ which
takes into account the new realities. They could engage in soft balancing of
this nature hoping to delegitimise the aggressive behaviour of the great
powers.
However, despite the
constraints, many have been able to keep China off militarily by refusing
base facilities and also smartly bargaining with India and Japan for
additional economic support. They thus are already showing some elements
of strategic autonomy favoured by the NAM.
More concrete initiatives
may have to rest with emerging states in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) grouping. Engaging China and India more intensely while
restraining the U.S. and Russia from aggravating military conflict in
Asia-Pacific can be the effort of the developing countries.
The alternative is to
leave it to the great powers to engage in mindless arms race and debilitating
interventions, which rarely create order in the regions. Restraining the
established and rising powers through institutional and normative soft
balancing may emerge as an option for developing countries in the years to
come. They still need a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru to bring them together.
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