In his address to the United Nations in Sep- tember 1983, President Reagan-echoing John Foster Dulles-urged the world to choose sides between the United States and the Soviet Union: "The members of the United Nations must be aligned on the side ofjustice rather than injustice, peace rather than aggression, human dignity rather than subjugation."' However well this Manichean view of the world may have served to structure U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s, it is foolish and dangerous in 1983. The Soviet Union is no more the embodi- ment of evil than the United States is of good: both are societies with great accomplishments and grave flaws. It is precisely these fallacious moral absolutes that make the world so danger- ous. If one nation in the nuclear age declares another to be evil, its destruction becomes easier to justify. The relations between great powers are delicate, and the rhetoric of "good and evil," and "us and them" are of little help in manag- ing them. Worse than just politically reckless, this no- tion is bankrupt as a framework for internation- al relations. The world will not be divided into two halves again. Bipolarity ignores the political and economic realities of the rest of the world: Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean-the so-called Third World -and the other industrialized powers of Europe and Japan. At this moment in history, many of those na- tions refuse to take up battle positions on one side or another of what they regard as an artifi- cial divide. For over 20 years Third World na- tions have worked together to build a framework for international relations which avoids the trap of U.S./Soviet conflict. Their vision has given precedence to their common problems of hun- ger and poverty and their common desire to give the concept of human rights concrete meaning for their inhabitants. In Europe and Japan, po- litical leaders demand a world in which the eco- nomic and political realities of their nations are not reduced to weapons in a terminal confronta- tion between the superpowers. No amount of rosy joint communiques from the summit meetings of Western leaders can disguise this tension. The Rise of the Third World Future historians will probably regard as the most important event of the turbulent 20th cen- tury the emergence as new nations of the former colonies and neo-colonies of Europe and the United States. Before World War II, the coun- tries of Africa, Asia and much of the Near East were European colonies. The Caribbean islands belonged to Britain, France, the Netherlands or the United States. Latin American nations, though formally independent, functioned as neo-colonies of the United States. With the end of the war, the colonial empires of Europe collapsed. During the next thirty 16 NACLA ReportNa/De 1983 17 years new nations emerged from the old colonies in a wave of nationalism which rivalled in signi- ficance the birth of the European nations in the 16th and 17th centuries. But this new national- ism confronted a world in which the U.S. and the Soviets faced each other in a deadly game-- one in which, at least according to the players in Washington, there was no room for spectators. With considerable diplomatic adroitness and political courage, the new nations found ways to stay on the sidelines. Unlike the European na- tion states of three hundred years earlier, they put aside many of their own differences, sought common counsel and forged a new internation- alism. Today, those principles find expression in the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 and-above all-the United Nations. After World War II, the United States was well-positioned to take advantage of the demise of the European empires. On one hand, it en- joyed vast economic and industrial resources; on the other, it was not burdened by a long colo- nial. heritage. Hard as it may be to believe today, in 1945 the United States was widely perceived as an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist power. Ho Chi Minh, the founding father of Vietnam, modeled his country's declaration of indepen- dence from French colonialism on the American Declaration of Independence. With its own his- torical memory of British colonialism, the United States was leery of keeping colonies in the European manner. When it acquired Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War, there was debate within elite circles over the legality of possessing colonies under the U.S. Constitu- tion. In 1904, the United States granted Cuba independence, while retaining the right-in what would become the classic style of indirect colonialism-to veto any laws it did not care for. In 1946, it granted political independence to the Philippines and in the same period encouraged a limited exercise of local autonomy for Puerto Rico. But the obsession of the United States with in- ternational communism and the concomitant expansion of U.S. global influence robbed the American image of its lustre. CIA adventures in Iran and Guatemala, U.S. support for the French in Vietnam, the anti-colonial uprising in Puerto Rico in 1950 and Dulles' rigid demand that the world's nations should define them- selves for or against "Godless communism" chilled the enthusiasm of the emerging nations for U.S. tutelage. Instead, they looked to each other for solutions outside the constraints of the U.S./Soviet confrontation. The seeds of this new initiative were planted in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955 when 29 former colonies met for the first time in the absence of the European powers and the United States. THE PHILIPPINES: "What yer got?" CUBA: "Pie." THE PHILIPPINES: "Where'd yer git it?" CUBA: "Mah Uncle Sam gin it to me; and maybe ef you was halfway decent he' gin you some." R.C. Bowman, Minneapolis Tribune, 1901. Most historians credit three men with leading the process of giving a voice to the decolonized world; they were Yugoslavian president Josip Broz-better known as Tito-Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India and Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt. From their joint discussions and continuing talks with leaders of the new nations came a new doctrine called non- alignment. What the three leaders desired was the diplo- matic means to avoid Cold War alignment with- out per se creating a Third World bloc, a nation- alist agenda of radical social content with major international influence. Each of the three pre- miers had different reasons for carving out an international position beyond the U.S. and Soviet umbrella. "CL S '(ic. 3 891c eD/roN 17NACLA Report In Yugoslavia, Tito had broken with Stalin. and maintained a pro-Western foreign policy. After Stalin's death, under Khrushchev's doc- trine of peaceful coexistence, Tito reasoned that Yugoslavia's security would be best served by reducing superpower tensions. India's leaders, meanwhile, regarded their country as a major world power, less by virtue of any economic or military strength than from its moral force-in great part the legacy of Gandhi. Major power status and the obligations of mor- ality obliged India, said Nehru, to an "indepen- dent policy." Nasser had come to power in 1954 after a mil- itary coup two years earlier had overthrown a corrupt monarchy. Wishing to escape from tra- ditional patterns of Western domination with- out being absorbed into the Soviet camp, Egypt was searching for political and economic changes to benefit its impoverished population. It desired no role in the superpower face-off and had no pretensions to global power itself--a pragmatic attitude more typical of other post- colonial nations. By the end of the decade, tensions between the Soviets and the United States had worsened with the "U-2 Incident" in which a CIA spy plane was shot down. The election debate be- tween Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy centered on missile gaps and getting tough with Castro. Events in Africa in 1960 gave early warning of the importance of the new Third World nations. Sixteen nations became inde- UNCLE SAM: "It's the wind, rustling the palms." Jerry Doyle, Philadelphia Record, 1927. pendent and joined the U.N. In South Africa, police had killed 67 blacks and wounded nearly 200 at Sharpeville. In the Congo, the post-inde- pendence government had collapsed and the U.N. had been required to intervene. In Algeria, a fierce guerrilla war continued against the French. Tito visited Africa early in 1961 and found support for a meeting of like-minded radical na- tionalist states. Invitations went to leaders of 17 nations to attend a preliminary meeting in Cairo; from that, emerged a conference in Bel- grade, Yugoslavia, attended by the leaders of 25 countries, from September 16, 1961-the first meeting of the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations. Non-Alignment Since then the Movement has held six full summit meetings, and since the mid- 1970s there have been annual meetings at the ministerial level. A permanent executive, the Coordinating Bureau, was established in 1970 and later man- dated to coordinate an informal caucus at the United Nations. An official spokesperson (cur- rently Indira Gandhi) holds the position for the three years between summits. As originally for- mulated, non-alignment meant the "assertion of state sovereignty in Afro-Asia," but over the years the term has come to cover nations in the Middle East and Latin America. Its foreign policy is "peaceful coexistence, equal state rela- tions, cooperation for development and an end to colonialism." 2 Conservative critics of the movement accuse it of being no more than a repeat of the 19th cen- tury notion of diplomatic neutrality. Sympathiz- ers counter that more than a diplomatic posi- tion, non-alignment is an ideology. For some nations, it may be better described as a "coun- ter-ideology to the pressures from the 'Free World' and the 'Socialist system."'" For others, it is a way of managing internal political stress. Unlike classic neutrality, argues Peter Willets in his book The Non-Aligned Movement: The Origins of Third World Alliance, the term does not suggest a passive, isolationist policy of non-involve- ment. It opposes the Cold War, supports anti- colonial struggles and has taken sides in disputes between the developed and developing worlds. To accept the Cold War as inevitable, say the non-aligned, is "[a] view [which] reflects a 18Nov/ftcU8 1 LATIN AMERICA AND THE NON-ALIGNED Until the 1970s, Latin American and Caribbean na- tions saw the Non-Aligned Movement as irrelevant to hemispheric concerns. Foreign relations were struc- turedaroundthe "special relationship" with the United States. Cuba alone identified with and supported the new initiatives. The early 1970s saw new progressive governments in Chile and Jamaica; both joined the Non-Aligned Movement. By the end of the decade, governments of various political persuasions had become members. Today, they include Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicara- sense of hopelessness and helplessness."4 Yet even in the Cold War, the non-aligned may side with one superpower or another, provided each issue is decided "on the merits" and not as a matter of bloc support." In short, non-alignment is an active position. The Group of 77 While the Non-Aligned Movement has con- cerned itself with a new international political order, its economic counterpart has been the Group of 77. The Group derives its name from the 77 Third World countries which lobbied at the U.N. General Assembly in 1962 to win the convocation of what came to be known as UNCTAD-the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development. Over 100 countries now consider themselves to be part of the Group of 77. UNCTAD's first meeting in 1964 set the tone for the strained, sometimes angry, North-South dialogue which has persisted ever since. With the prolonged global recession of recent years, the troubled and inconclusive search for a more equitable distribution of the world's wealth has grown even more urgent. From it has emerged the plea from the countries of the South for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). In the view of the Group of 77, the prevailing economic order is obsolete and unjust. They ar- gue that internal reforms are essential in the de- veloping countries, that the international divi- sion of labor must be reorganized to give the Third World greater control over its resources, and that the activities of transnational corpora- tions must be regulated. Under the NIEO any nation will have the right to choose its own economic system without interference or exter- nal threat- including the right to regulate, ex- gua, Panama, Peru, St. Lucia, Surinam and Trinidad and Tobago, Alongside this identification with the Third World has come a relative decline in the influence of the Organi- zation of American States (OAS), created as an instru- ment of U.S. hemisphere control. The U.N. has be- come an alternative forum for countries seeking to escape from U.S. pressures. The government of Nicaragua has used the U.N. General Assembly and its new Security Council seat to gain diplomatic leverage, and the Salvadorean and Guatemalan in- surgencies have actively sought U.N. support. propriate or nationalize foreign investment. The U.N. and the Third World The United Nations has become the most im- portant and prestigious forum for the views of the Third World. As conceived by Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, the U.N. was to be a forum in which all nations would participate through a body called the General Assembly. World security, however, would be guaranteed by five nations-the United States, Great Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union-acting through a smaller body, the Security Council, in accordance with traditional spheres of influence. Post-war reality failed to support that conception, however: Britain lost its status as a world power; Western influence in China ended with Mao Zedong's communist triumph. Antagonism between Moscow and Washington essentially created two spheres of influence. In the relative stalemate that ensued, the new nations came to see the U.N. as the best vehicle for placing a new agenda before the world. In 1960, the U.N. General Assembly passed a cru- cial resolution calling for worldwide decoloniza- tion; later resolutions fixed a timetable for de- colonization and established the machinery for holding the colonial powers accountable. The number of U.N. members swelled and so did the influence of the Third World nations. They expressed that influence primarily in the General Assembly, where the principle of 'one state, one vote' operates. Real power still resides in the Security Council: though its num- bers have grown, the five original members still have veto power. Nonetheless, in diplomatic cir- cles appearances count for much. General As- 3 891c eD/rtoN 192NACA No,.d sembly resolutions cannot simply be ignored, and behind recent U.S. attacks on the U.N. lies the realization that this country has lost the abil- ity to control the institution it created. Through the United Nations, the Non- Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 have been able to act as distinct groups with a high degree of cohesion, especially on broad North- South issues. It is their resolutions which have kept the questions of the Cold War, disarma- ment and anti-colonialism at the forefront of the U.N.'s concerns. Tensions among Third World nations, including East-West tensions, have caused the influence of the Non-Aligned Move- ment to ebb and flow, especially now when there More Trouble in the Nursery. Osborn, Milwaukee Sentinell, 1907. is sharp internal debate over its tilt to the Soviet Union. Yet its role as an autonomous pole in in- ternational relations is of greater importance than ever. U.S. Policy and the Third World For the Third World, U.S. foreign policy since World War II has been a consistently de- pressing affair. When not trying to subvert them, U.S. foreign policy has tended to ignore Third World efforts to find a common stance on political and economic issues. The easiest course has been to deny the existence of the Third World as a category, a political force or an ex- pression of human needs. From the perspective of containment, countries were little more than arenas for East-West confrontation, chess pieces in that larger game where a country could be 'lost' even if it professed non-alignment. Soviet foreign policy, meanwhile, understood early on the significance and power of this new force and sought its support and friendship- undoubtedly with one eye on its conflict with the United States. Khrushchev himself proposed the decolonization resolution in the 15th session of the General Assembly in 1960. And in its ap- proaches to the Third World, the Soviet Union was not burdened by the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Its example of rapid indus- trial development out of conditions of poverty which any African or Latin American would have recognized fascinated Third World leaders. To be sure, there is diversity within the Third World, just as repeated U.S. administrations have asserted: it contains large, wealthy coun- tries and small, destitute ones; some are blessed with natural resources, others have none; in some, tiny elites control the wealth, in others there is more equitable distribution. Speaking at the Non-Aligned Summit in Havana in 1979, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere admitted that within the Group of 77, "We are not all friends. Some countries represented here are at war with one another. Our per capita income varies from $100 to $2,000 per year. Some of us have minerals; others, none. Some lack access to the sea; others are isolated by enormous oceans." But, Nyerere warned, "Divide-and- conquer is an old technique of domination. The industrialized countries are aware of its utility.' ,6 Divide-and-conquer is indeed a staple U.S. response to the Third World challenge. After the oil embargo in 1973, the United States set about dividing OPEC while offering selective conces- sions to member countries. But the oil crisis, coupled with the decline of the U.S. economy relative to its principal Western competitors, showed up the fact that the West was no longer a political or economic monolith. The 1970s brought new tests for both the Atlantic Alliance and U.S.-Japanese relations. The European countries increased their trade with the Soviet Union, while Japanese products penetrated deep into the U.S. economy. The United States and its Western allies had divergent strategies for dealing with the South. One initiative came from the United States itself-from within the elite but outside the prevailing administration consensus. That was the Trilateral Commis- 20 A LCAN Re ortNov/Dec 1983 sion, whose fate has already been discussed. The other initiative-the Brandt Commis- sion-went more radically beyond crisis man- agement and the maintenance of the status quo. Founded by Willy Brandt, head of the Socialist International and a former West German chan- cellor, it set about a systematic study of the "North-South" problem and set forth sweeping recommendations: the North, said Brandt, should give urgent attention to the demands of the Third World as a matter of its own survival. The core of the Commission-intellectually and politically-were the European Social Demo- cratic parties, which in the last decade have held office in Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, Austria, Portugal and-in the wake of long mili- tary dictatorships-in Spain and Greece. To date, the proposals of the Brandt Commission remain unimplemented, although they are ever more of a central credo for many Western Euro- pean governments. And Social Democracy, with its blend of socialist rhetoric, welfare capi- talism and internationalism, holds itself out as a progressive alternative to U.S. and Soviet bloc policies in the Third World, and especially in Latin America. 0 ca How has the Reagan Administration re- sponded to these shifting realities? Its approach to the Third World is in the classic tradition of "divide-and-conquer." It has stressed bilateral negotiations; it increases arms flows and train- ing to local armies; it invokes the "magic of the Cutting a Switch for a Bad Boy. McKee Barclay, Baltimore Sun, 1910. marketplace" when asked what is to be done. It ferociously asserts the old order and is prepared to defend it with military force. Its answer to the Third World is, "Do it our way or else!" It is still not clear how this intransigence and the new Cold War will affect the North-South dialogue, but U.S. policy shows every sign of wanting to destroy it. The position of the Third World, meanwhile, is scarcely at its brightest. Its internal unity is strained for a variety of reasons. The effectiveness of oil as a weapon has de- clined; wars between Third World nations cre- ate unpredictable problems; the gap between the resource-rich and resource-poor countries of the Third World has widened, and there is seri- ous discord over the role of the Soviet Union in Third World affairs. But the questions of world peace and social justice which gave birth to Third World coop- eration are still the most pressing questions on the world's agenda, and they will remain so un- til the end of the century. The Third World demonstrates vividly that containment is the wrong policy for the wrong time. International relations will never again be reduced to the sim- plicities of 1946; today, the interdependence of the world is not a question of polemics: it is a question of reality. 2122 WHERE THE THINKERS THINK Elite discourse at its most serious is conducted at think tanks, research centers, universities and com- missions-the incubators where ideas are born and nurtured. The most important are: THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS-New York City: Home of the WASP establishment, still the pre-eminent foreign policy center, though under serious attack from the conservative CSIS (see below). Publishes Foreign Affairs, most prestigious of the spe- cialist journals. THE GEORGETOWN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES-Washington, D.C.: Sharing its scholars with the equally conserva- tive American Enterprise Institute, CSIS is the focal point for aggressively anti-Soviet, anti-Third World in- tetlectuals. Its publication is Washington Quarterly. THE RAND INSTITUTE AND THE HUDSON IN- BTITUTE-Santa Monica and Tarrytown: Two defense studies centers, solid and established. Their research contributed valiantly to win the war in Viet- nam. THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION AND THE AMER- ICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE-Washington, D.C.: Vigilant of the Reagan Administration from a rightist perspective on general policy questions, in- cluding foreign policy. Heritage weds the New Right and the neo-conservatives, while AEI runs from the right of the Republican Party to the right of the Demo- cratic Party. INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES- San Francisco: A more esoteric institute for special- ist Reagan-watchers. Set up when Reagan left the governorship of California, its purpose was to build the network of intellectuals and studies for his presi- dential campaign. To keep track of foreign policy debates, the atten- tive reader is urged to subscribe to the specialist journals: 1. Foreign Affairs. 2. Foreign Policy, published by the Carnegie Endow- ment for Peace. Distinctly liberal, often described as the voice of the Trilateralists. 3. U.S. International Trade Commission: advises the president on trade and tariff policy, trade with the East- 4. Policy Review, house organ of the Heritage Foun- dation. 5. Commentary, voice of the neo-conservatives, edited by arch-hawk Norman Podhoretz. 6. International Security, from Harvard, bland but recommended reading. PROMOTING U.S. BUSINESS A further bureaucratic network promotes U.S. trade, aid and investment. Its components are: THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY: the third most important government department. * formulates economic, financial, tax and fiscal policy. SOffice of International Affairs, under the undersec- retary for monetary affairs, deals with international monetary, financial, commercial, trade and energy pol- icies. Sub-groups within the Office handle monetary af- fairs, trade and investment, natural resources and commodities. * oversees U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and regional development banks servicing the Third World. OFFICE OF THE U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE: located within the Office of the Presidency, with overall responsibility for trade policy; chief trade negotiator. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE: promotes trade and investment through the International Trade Ad- ministration (ITA). Has four sub-offices: International Economic Policy, Trade Administration, Trade Devel- opment, U.S. and Foreign Commercial Services. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE: has three foreign affairs functions. * Food for Peace program, providing surplus food as a form of economic aid. * Foreign Agricultural Service, operating out of em- bassies to stimulate overseas markets for U.S. agricul- tural products. 0 Office of international Cooperation and Develop- ment, promoting the use of U.S. agricultural resources and technologies. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR: through the Bureau for International Affairs, has policy input in matters af- fecting U.S. workers. Administers embassy labor at- tache program and runs technical assistance pro- grams for foreign labor unions. INDEPENDENT AGENCIES AND GOVERN- MENT CORPORATIONS: 1. The Export-lmport Bank: government-financed, en- courages exports through low interest loans. 2. U.S. International Development Cooperation Agen- cy: coordinates economic assistance through AID; manages the Trade and Development Program to en- courage U.S. private foreign investment; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) gives formal guarantees against political risks and expropriation for U.S. investors. 3. U.S. International Trade Commission: advises the president on trade and tariff policy, trade with the East- ern Bloc and unfair trade practices. 4. Peace Corps: manpower assistance programs to the Third World. 5. The Inter-American Foundation: an independent government corporation giving grants to self-help pro- grams. CONTAINMENT AND THE THIRD WORLD 1. The New York Times, September 27, 1983. 2. Peter Willets, The Non-AlignedMovement: The Origins of a Third World Alliance, (New York: Nichols Publishing Company, 1978), p. 29. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., p. 20., quoting Belgrade Conference of Heads of State or Government ofNon-Aligned Countries, (Belgrade:Jugo- slavija Publishing House, 1961), p. 270. 5. Peter Willets, The Non-AlignedMovement, p. 20. 6. Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo, Guia del TercerMundo 1981, (Lima, Peru: DESCO, 1980), p. 485-486. 7. Ibid., p. 488.
