THE XIII NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT SUMMIT WHICH begins in Kuala Lumpur today (24 February 20030 is the last before its half a century in 2005. It has grown from a movement led by a handful of giants to an amorphous, irrelevant body of non-entities, another talking shop out of which no usefuly solution or voice could emerge. It has 114 members now, and each summit, struggles to make it return to its roots but without the collective will. It is, like many an irrelevant talking shop, one where the leaders could parade their irrelevance in distant lands at someone else's expense but little else, and for all the promises and hopes, nothing would be achieved. There is hardly a leader left with the stature to call to re-think its relevance in a world of one global superpower. NAM has become, to put it bluntly, an organisation of poachers turned gamekeepers with no idea why, but the status that comes with it too important to throw away.

The anti-colonial giants of the immediate post-war world, which began with the independence of India and Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), China, did not want to be aligned with either the US-led Free World nor the Moscow-led Communist Bloc. And set upon to set up their own group of non-aligned nations. President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, President Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt, President Sukarno of Indonesia, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru kicked off the movement in Bandung in April 1955, and in the next decade were joined by the likes of President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, President Milton Obote of Uganda, President Kwame Nkrumah of Guinea, President Sekou Toure of Guinea, President Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria, President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, President Fidel Castro of Cuba. They could not be ignored. The aligned worlds treated them with kid gloves, and their role in world affairs was as purveyors of the acknowledged middle ground.

It was a movement like no other in the second half of the 20th century. The two aligned worlds left no unstone unturned to strangle it at birth. An Air India plane that was to take the Chinese prime minister to the Bandung conference exploded in mid-air, killing all on board; at the last minute, he sent his personal assistant instead. Several faced assassination attempts, but NAM had an important role then in forcing the independence of colonial territories. It forced its way into a world where wars invariably were proxy wars in which Washington and Moscow backed opposing groups. NAM was there to stay. In Vietnam, in the 1960s, where I was a Reuter correspondent, I was deemed a non-aligned Indian from India, and given special dispensations by the US embassy and military that other Malaysians did not have. When a senior Indian journalist came to visit, the US embassy asked me to take him around, and the visit ended with us having lunch with the US ambassador. Few journalists could hope for lunch with the proconsul in those days of American hegemony.

But as the leaders faded away, many in coups d'etat, and the countries they inherited often denied of even the basic needs by the former colonial masters -- when President Sekou Toure defied France's attempt to form a commonwealth of its territories, and opted for independence, it left Guinea in high dudgeon, taking everything, even the telephones, desks and tables with them -- -- ethnic and tribal tensions, fanned by the aligned worlds, and newer members joined it, NAM lost its substance and meaning. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1989, what little of that also disappeared. With one global superpower, NAM has no place unless it re-engineers itself into a sounding board for those unhappy with the United States.

That it cannot. What is unmentioned, and impolitic to say so in genteel company, is that all but a handful of NAM's 114 members are firmly in Washington's pocket. Where else can they be when they are, but for a handful, poachers-turned-gamekeepers. Let us look at Malaysia, the host. Malaya was hostile to the Bandung Conference, would have no truck with it, firmly in the Free World Camp, and when the circumstances allowed it, helped in the destruction of one NAM giant, President Sukarno of Indonesia. Kuala Lumpur moved away from the West only in the late 1960s, and firmly only after Tun Abdul Razak became prime minister in 1971. As the British empire disintegrated in Southeast Asia, and the old promise of military help London reneged after destroying President Sukarno, Malaysia turned to a more neutral foreign policy, not out of conviction but of necessity. It was a natural gravitation after being bluntly told by the former colonial power that the country is on its own. This happened in other areas as well with other countries, and this natural gravitation ensured that it would no more be what it was.

If NAM must be relevant, it must re-invent itself. But it cannot. Its members are happy to stay bought. Pandit Nehru's daughter, when she became India's prime minister, aligned herself to Moscow and her latter day successors towards Washington. Former stalwarts in British military alliances are now firmly non-aligned, often with an understanding why. Talking with some delegates and officials here in Kuala Lumpur for the NAM summit, one gets the impression that a bureaucracy has taken over. None, even with those officials who could talk with some seriousness about where NAM is headed to, speaks of it as a "force" in world politics, but unable to explain how. There are too many ifs and buts, political posturing, the bureaucratic mode NAM operates, for it to be anything but an irrelevant talking shop. When it forgets its coming half-a-century of existance, on par with Malaysia forgetting the birth of its George Washington, Tengku Abdul Rahman, what relevance can NAM provide?

Washington ignores it. Almost all NAM members would not dare confront the United States. In this rush to war on Iraq, NAM collectively are happy to condemn Washington, but individually, as the Malaysian prime minister, said recently, though not so expressively, when rape is inevitable, what could we do? That the OIC had to schedule another meeting, after the NAM Summit, to discuss Iraq and the Middle East, is proof yet of how impotent both are. For the long and short of it is that Washington cares not for what NAM or the OIC or indeed any one else. France's principled opposition to the US rush to war, and its veto, provides some hope, and one could see, as in the recent meeting of African states in Paris, a forming of a potential bloc that could second guess every one of Washington's move. That France has a veto in the UN Security Council gives it an edge.

That is not to dismiss all NAM members. Three countries stand out: Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam. The US secretary of state, General Colin Powell, can dismiss the NAM Summit out of hand, but he cannot these three countries. He is now in Beijing in an attempt to find a solution to an impasse with North Korea, brought about by its own bullying of that small state. That he should come out to Asia to sort out a problem caused by Washington's own arrogance is proof enough about NAM's irrelevance. In happier times, he would have come to NAM instead. He now has to offer concessions before Pyongyang would budge, which threatens a nuclear retaliation on the United States, even a pre-emptive strike, if Washington come down to direct talks with it. Washington could not, in 40 years, bring President Fidel Castro to heel, and wants nothing short of the dismantling of Cuba. But it cannot ignore it. So Vietnam, which defeated the mightiest power on earth in 1975. That the United States is only worried about what these three countries is as shocking an indictment of NAM as there could be.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my

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Terbitan : 25 Feb 2003

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