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Paul Stubbs is a Liverpool-born sociologist and currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia. His research interests include global social policy, policy translation, new left-green urban political movements, poverty and social exclusion, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). His new book, Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement: Social, Cultural, Political and Economic Imaginaries was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.  

In the following essay, Stubbs maps the internal contradictions of the NAM during the most contentious years of the Cold War — specifically, how Yugoslavia's motivations for participating in the movement mixed instrumentalism and idealism. Accounting for these contradictions, Stubbs asserts that the "NAM spirit" continues to offer hope and inspiration for a path that diverts from crude leftist determinism and liberal fundamentalism, serving as a basis for renewed progressive internationalism. 

1. Understanding the Non-Aligned Movement

Many of those who, in the context of the war in Ukraine, have called for a "new non-aligned movement" clearly know little or nothing about the history of that very movement. Any search for a direct link has to perform some spatiotemporal acrobatics, not least because the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), toothless and wracked by internal divisions as it is, still exists today, at least in the name. The call, clearly, is not about the current iteration but, rather, the golden age of the movement, roughly between the first summit in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in September 1961 and the summit in Havana, Cuba, in 1979, which turned out to be the last attended by socialist Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito before his death in May 1980. That iteration of NAM is also long gone, as is socialist Yugoslavia itself, of course, and that tidal wave of anti-colonial optimism within much of the Global South when another world really did seem possible. 

A close historical reading of NAM has to confront some uncomfortable but undeniable realities. Even during the most contentious years of the Cold War and North-South struggles over development pathways, NAM was sometimes more of a talking shop that faced difficulties in bridging the gap between its statements, which grew exponentially with each passing summit, and tangible actions. In this context, it matters that the summits were, very much, based on the assumption that the most important global actors were sovereign nation-states or, in the case of the representation of national liberation movements, sovereign nation-states to come. In addition, the movement was not without its internal contradictions and, indeed, Yugoslavia's motivations for participating in, and, indeed, often leading, the movement was a mix of instrumentalism – the search for new export markets after the break with the Soviet Union – and idealism – support for liberation movements which, in the case of Algeria, Palestine, Angola, and elsewhere, was real and useful. The smooth running of the summits, with contested issues kept off the agenda, was often pursued at the expense of more radical politics. The Yugoslavs, as former Minister of Foreign Affairs Budimir Lončar told me, insisted on a kind of explicit “de-ideologization” of discussions that, sometimes, resulted in consensual statements and an apparent spirit of harmony but not much substance. 

In terms of the current moment, the misreading of the role of, for example, Finland, Sweden and Austria, as if they, too, were “non-aligned”, is also problematic. The mistake is understandable and, indeed, does not detract overmuch from the point usually being made, namely that the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is not, in any way, shape or form, a guarantee of their own or wider global, security. All three countries remained “neutral” throughout the Cold War years and, although they held “observer” status in NAM, never sought full membership. It is true that, from the mid-1970s, NAM and the neutral countries worked closely together at times, not least in European security and cooperation debates. However, it needs to be acknowledged that, despite its shortcomings and contradictions, NAM pursued “active” or “positive” neutrality, believing that merely remaining neutral was not enough and attempting to work constructively to dismantle a bipolar world in which smaller, poorer or newly independent states were sucked into relations of dependency with one or other of the global hegemons. 

It is in this sense that a “NAM spirit”, perhaps even a “Belgrade spirit”, along with a “Bandung spirit” reflecting the afterlife of the Afro-Asian conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955, offers some hope. It may even serve as some kind of inspiration and catalyst for a path that diverts from two deeply problematic kinds of explanations of the war. The first is a crude “leftist” determinism that, after a half-hearted, tokenistic condemnation of Russian aggression in Ukraine, moves on to its real agenda of condemning NATO and the United States. The second is a kind of liberal fundamentalism that condemns anyone who dares even to consider that the continued existence of NATO, and its eastern enlargement, might have been a relevant, contributory factor to the conflict, albeit of a secondary order.

Newsreel footage of the 1961 Belgrade summit talks of “new vistas of hope for an anxious world” and lists the following questions as those the delegates decided to give their immediate attention to: the general situation in the world; the establishment and strengthening of international peace and security; respect for the right of nations to self-determination; the struggle against imperialism and the liquidation of colonialism and neo-colonialism; respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states and non-interference in their internal affairs; racial discrimination and the policy of apartheid; general and complete disarmament, the banning of nuclear experiments and the maintenance of military bases on foreign territory; peaceful co-existence amongst states with different social systems; the role and structure of the United Nations and the application of its resolutions; unequal economic development; and the improvement of international economic and technical co-operation. Adding climate change and ecology, forced migration, and gender equality would make this list a good starting point for drawing up a conference agenda for progressive internationalism even today.

2. The Emancipatory Afterlives of Non-Alignment

What might be some of the “emancipatory afterlives” of the Belgrade spirit that can be remembered, in the sense of put back together, albeit in a new way, as a basis for progressive internationalist ethics and praxis in this current moment of crisis? I will restrict myself to four broad themes and follow this with a brief note on two broad principles. Firstly, NAM reminds us of the need to ensure that the basis of international relations rests on “peaceful co-existence” and “the right to self-determination”. Of course, the meaning of this is far from secure, not least in the context of the primacy of nation-states and the inevitability of territorial claims and disputes continuing to arise, although, presumably, not the inevitability that these spill over into armed conflicts. Non-interference in the affairs of other states is, perhaps, a much better starting point than the rather slippery and compromised project of “the right to protect” used by global hegemons, the United States and Russia, to justify armed interventions. “Self-determination”, it seems to me, is a pivotal concept precisely because it can move from the political to the economic and social realms and constitutes a “moral force”. 

Secondly, and inextricably linked to the first principle, the importance of “general and complete disarmament”, extended beyond the domain of nuclear weapons, remains a crucial demand linked to the “peaceful resolution of conflicts” and, indeed, the possibility of reducing defence expenditures and harnessing peace dividends to improve livelihoods. The invasion of Ukraine and the arming of the Ukrainian government by NATO allies demonstrates the continued power of military-industrial complexes and the growth of “hybrid war” on both sides. By this, I mean the use of expensive and deadly long-range weapons to fight a “proxy war” together with the proliferation and multiplication of transnational arms trading and the rise of localized militias, transnational mercenaries, and a blurring of the division between combatants and non-combatants. The hybrid war combines military and non-military means, not least through “cyber-warfare”. Of course, NAM made a clear distinction between military interference in the affairs of states, on the one hand, and just wars of national liberation, on the other. Some armed resistance in Ukraine is necessary and legitimate, but the nature and form it takes matters. Reasserting the “moral authority” to global governance and reducing asymmetries of power must go hand in hand with increased effectiveness and accountability of peace-keeping, replacing the horror of so-called smart war with flexible forms of smart peace-building, including an understanding of the ways in which war and peace are gendered. 

Thirdly, a global governance architecture that is “fit for moral purpose” is needed now just as much as when, at the Cairo NAM conference of 1964, the Guinea-Bissau independence movement leader Amilcar Cabral described the United Nations as “a giant with its hands tied”. Demands for a reformed, more representative, and more responsive UN system can be traced back to even before NAM but gained new impetus at NAM summits. Socialist Yugoslavia, within NAM, played a crucial role in codifying international humanitarian and anti-discrimination laws, for example. The admission of China to the UN, the formation of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), an increase in the membership of ECOSOC (United Nations Economic and Social Council), and greater representation of the Global South in all UN bodies and agencies, were, also, real achievements. However, the abolition of veto powers in the Security Council and the prevention of global hegemons simply ignoring UN resolutions and taking unilateral action was never secured. Progressive internationalists cannot dismiss the UN as “beyond repair” but, rather, need to rethink the possibilities of a revolutionary reformist long march through the least worst set of global institutions that the world currently has. 

Fourthly, solid foundations for demands for global socio-economic justice can be found in the New International Economic Order (NIEO). This was a program of action approved at a Special Session of the UN General Assembly on 1 May 1974 and, very much, a result of strong advocacy from NAM, the G-77, and others. It was a product of very divergent world views and flexible enough to be a container in which everyone could see just what they wanted to. Nevertheless, the NIEO derived from a sense that, after colonial political domination had been defeated across much, although by no means all, of the world, the next challenge was to confront “neo-colonial” economic domination. Its focus was on radical reform to relations of trade, finance and technology both in terms of challenging economic exploitation and a sense that the “less developed” countries needed to exercise “collective self-reliance” in these domains. In terms of its social dimension, the NIEO signaled a shift in both the focus and framing of what we would now term “global social policy”, broadly from “hunger” via “poverty” to “inequality” and from a kind of “blaming the poor” discourse to a more structural understanding. Combined with discussions of scale – the importance of local, regional and transnational social relations, for example - and ideas of a “social commons”, the NIEO could contribute to framing demands for social, economic and planetary justice today.

Two less tangible elements of the Belgrade and NAM spirit relate to the importance of circuits of decolonial solidarity and affinity as well as the need to move beyond Eurocentrism, both of which should be principled building blocks for a new progressive internationalism. The contemporary left in the Global North is not at all immune from a kind of Eurocentrism that ignores the continued relevance of Europe’s bloody colonial past. Any construction of the continent or, rather, the European Union and, lately, also NATO, in the obscenity of “Euro-Atlantic integration”, as an island of liberal excellence, or “epistemic modernity”, in a sea of illiberalism and backwardness, needs to be critiqued thoroughly, I suggest. The political elites of all the post-Yugoslav countries, except when fetishizing the 60th anniversary of the Belgrade summit as occurred last year in Serbia, actively forget forms of solidarity that occurred between socialist Yugoslavia and the Global South. The spectacle of a frenzy of competing claims to “Eurowhiteness” that fails to see the invasion of Ukraine through an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist lens needs to be jettisoned and. Instead, the lessons of NAM, viewed as contradictory rather than through rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia, offer much that is valuable. 

Acknowledgements 

Comments on an earlier draft of this text by Bojan Bilić, John Clarke, Aida A Hozić, Rada Iveković and Radmila Nakarada were extremely helpful. Responsibility for the views expressed are mine alone, of course. 

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