Do you endorse the view that the end of Bipolarity and the rise of multiple regional organisations has made Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) more or less irrelevant?(UPSC CSE Mains 2017 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 2)
The Non-Aligned Movement is a Movement of countries representing the interests and priorities of developing countries. The Movement has its origin in the Asia-Africa Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955. Non-Aligned Movement was formed during the Cold War as an organization of States that did not seek to formally align themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union, but sought to remain independent or neutral.
With the disintegration of the USSR and the end of the cold war in 1991, non-alignment, both as an international movement and as the core of India’s Foreign Policy, lost some earlier relevance and effectiveness. However, non-alignment retained some core values and enduring idea, after the end of the cold war it started giving more importance to economic ideas.
NAM is still relevant today because of the following reasons:
- NAM was based on the principle that decolonised countries share a historical affiliation and can become powerful if they all come together. This affiliation is still relevant.
- NAM stressed on the idea that it is not necessary for small and poor countries in the world to follow any powerful country if they are able to follow any independent foreign policy.
- NAM is also based on the value of democratizing the international system by thinking about an alternative world order to address several issues such as poverty and existing inequalities.
- With the emergence of neo colonialism (use of economic, political, cultural or other pressure to influence former colonies), many newly independent nations were unable to take concrete decisions in the economic fields due to the pressure exerted by the powerful nations and organisations like the World Bank, WTO, IMF etc. Under such circumstances, NAM came forward to help these countries in trying to assert their economic rights.
- USA off late has emerged as a powerful nation. NAM has immense potentialities and experience to prevent the dominating of USA over countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
NAM was perhaps the first global-level initiative started completely by third-world countries. It enthused a sense of identity and self-determination in them and also demonstrated their capacity to be independent. According to TV Paul, NAM never got the credit it deserves. It played an important role in the decolonization of the rest of the world. It acted as a soft balancing mechanism in superpower rivalry and delegitimized the threatening behaviour of the two blocs. NAM can also be credited for creating a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. It developed multiple Nuclear Weapon Free Zones and questioned their development by superpowers. NAM used the tools of ‘naming and shaming’ against great powers. TV Paul suggests that the intellectual bias against NAM, a coalition of weaker states, is as natural and expected as there is a bias against the subaltern class movements among upper classes and upper castes in hierarchical societies.
Thus, NAM still remains an important and powerful force which aims at achieving international peace, disarmament and economic development. Non-Alignment has not lost its relevance rather it has stood the test of time. It has served the useful purpose of protecting and preserving the interest of the Third World countries well in the past, so it is also expected to serve their interest well in the future to come.
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