by VIJAY PRASHAD
I was at a UN Special Session on the 50th anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The NAM was founded in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1961 as the spear of the Third World Project. For its first twenty years, the NAM played a crucial role in building up the integrity of the United Nations and placing the NAM agenda of social development and peace on the UN’s central tables. Because of the Third World Project, the UN created the International Atomic Energy Agency (1957) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (1964). These were crucial to the creation of a way for the vast mass of nations outside the Cold War between the West and the East. By the 1980s, and particularly after the debt crisis, the Third World Project collapsed and NAM went into a Rip Van Winkle sleep. It has not woken up yet.
A veteran of the NAM, Algerian diplomat Idriss Jazairy sharpened his rapier as he spoke at the Special Session. Current world powers, he stressed, have “distorted interpretations of legitimate international concepts.” In 1973, the Algerians proposed a radical measure, the New International Economic Order (NIEO), to reshape the political and economic policy between states. Jazairy was at that time the advisor to the Algerian president on International and Economic matters. NIEO was close to his heart. No wonder that it was Jazairy who told the gathering that the Third World’s thrust had gone from “seeking transformation to being told to be in compliance of norms.”
None of the Atlantic powers graced the room. They had made their peace with the UN. When Henry Kissinger gave Daniel Patrick Moynihan his brief for the UN post in 1973, he said, “We need a strategy. In principle, I think we should move things from the General Assembly to the Security Council. It is important to see that we have our confidence and nerve.” Kissinger wanted Moynihan to “get hold of the Specialized Agencies,” such as UNCTAD and UNESCO. When the UN General Assembly passed a resolution in 1975 arguing that Zionism is Racism, Moynihan used it to demonize the UN General Assembly (his memoir on his UN years is called A Dangerous Place). The U. S. proceeded to clean house, using its power to excise the NAM agenda from the UN agencies and cordoning off serious discussions from the General Assembly. The paralysis at the UN has been the greatest success of American imperial ambitions.
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Stepping away from nostalgia was the Bolivian ambassador, Angélica Navarro Llanos, who provided a polished analysis of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas). Ambassador Navarro indicated how much of the discussion about ALBA takes place around its political impact (this kind of thing was intensified the next day, when in Caracas Hugo Chavez spearheaded the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, a political alliance absent the United States and Canada that is designed to undermine the Organization of the American States). ALBA, Ambassador Navarro pointed out, also has an economic agenda – with the creation of the virtual sucre currency for cross-border trade and with the increase in mutual trade rather than reliance upon the United States and Europe for private final consumption (the Atlantic world accounts for two thirds of all such consumption, with China only able to absorb three percent).
The NAM is exhausted, but it is regional formations such as the ALBA and the new Community that offer a way ahead.
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