Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The formal establishment of the non-aligned movement (NAM) was the culmination of increasing convergence of its main member states who sought a path independent of the USSR and the US in the wake of the outbreak of the Cold War in 1948. The term “non-alignment” itself was first coined by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1954. A significant step toward the development of the NAM was the Bandung Conference in 1955 in Indonesia, in which leaders of Asian and African states who had gained independence from colonial rule after World War II participated. Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito took the initiative to form the NAM while Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt were visiting Yugoslavia in July 1956. Following the split with Moscow in 1948, the Yugoslav communists were looking increasingly for cooperation with the postcolonial states in Asia and Africa to counterbalance political pressure from the USSR and the US. The founding of NAM at its first official conference in September 1961 in Belgrade was an important step in the promotion of political cooperation between a number of postcolonial states that included India, Egypt, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia, with the latter being NAM's main European member. The nation-states attending the summit in Belgrade sent a letter calling for US President John F. Kennedy and Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev to “remove the ... log in or subscribe to read full text