President Tito is too shrewd, experienced and realistic a leader to believe seriously that a non-aligned summit can at this stage make a meaningful contribution to the resolution of the West Asian and Vietnamese crises. Why has he then proposed such a conference at the end of his recent visits to Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and the UAR?
Two possible explanations are easily disposed of. The Soviet Union’s success in organising a preparatory meeting of 70 communist parties in Budapest does not revive the danger of isolation for Yugoslavia because it is no longer possible for Moscow to reassert its claim to hegemony in the international movement even if its acceptance of the principles of equality and independence of all parties and separate roads to socialism is not wholly sincere. Yugoslavia does not need co-leadership of the non-aligned world and close ties with leading Afro-Asian countries to be able to resist the pressure to conform to the Soviet line as it did during the ‘fifties.
Also on all available evidence President Nasser has been fairly successful in rehabilitating his leadership and he does not need a life-line from his old friend, Marshal Tito, for survival. President Nasser would no doubt welcome the opportunity which a non-aligned summit would give him to canvass support for the Arab cause. But he cannot seriously hope that it would in any way affect Israel’s determination to alter the June 5, 1967, frontiers in its favour.
The Yugoslav explanation for President Tito’s move is fairly straight and simple. They claim that throughout his extensive tour he found a general agreement that every effort must be made to find a political solution to the Viet Nam war and the Arab-Israeli stalemate in the larger interest of world peace and that active co-operation among non-aligned countries can prove helpful in doing so. What form this co-operation should take is open to discussion.
No Easy Task
The flaw in this reasoning is that if the proposed co-operation takes the form of a summit it is bound to acquire anti-US and anti-Israeli overtones and this possibility will discourage a number of countries from endorsing the proposal. It would not be an easy task in any case to select the participants. President Tito himself recognises that the Viet Nam and Arab-Israeli conflicts cut through old cold war alliances and that there is no point in keeping countries like Pakistan out. On this reasoning, however, it would be logical to invite not only France and Rumania but most other members of the UNO. Can such a conference be called a non-aligned summit?
It was found extremely difficult to lay down the criteria for determining which country should be invited to the non-aligned summits in Belgrade in 1961 and in Cairo in 1964. The task is likely to prove far more intractable in 1968. Even if this difficulty can be overcome the basic question will remain unanswered. Is it possible to make the concept of non-alignment meaningful in the new context?
Over the years the distinction between the concepts of non-alignment and neutrality has been blurred, often deliberately. This has come to be a major source of confusion. With the thaw in the cold war, the staggering developments in weapons technology which have made foreign bases expendable and the Russo-American detente, neither Washington nor Moscow is looking for military allies. Most countries therefore have now no choice but to remain neutral. India is one of them. But to men like Mr Nehru non-alignment summed up a whole philosophy of politics and it is in that wider sense that the continuing validity of the concept has to be judged.
Non-alignment has often been described as a “function of bipolarity”. This is true in the limited sense that during the worst phase of the cold war the super-powers needed the services of a country like India to perform certain essential services in the interest of peace. Korea and Indo-China provide the illustrations. But even then these functions could be and were in fact performed by aligned countries as well. The then British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, played a vital role at the Geneva Conference in 1954. Mr Macmillan acted as an “honest broker” between Washington and Moscow in the late ‘fifties. Canada has been associated with various peace-keeping efforts as actively as India. Moreover, in spite of all the dramatic changes that have taken place within the two principal alliance systems and in the relations between the super-powers the world has not ceased to be bipolar. Non-alignment need not be written off just on that account.
Different Story
Western commentators have repeatedly made the point that the policy of non-alignment was designed for “blackmailing” the West as well as the East into giving the maximum aid. This is too facile a criticism which surprisingly enough has found many exponents in this country as well. Facts tell a different story. Countries like Jordan, Israel, Formosa, South Korea and Pakistan have received many times as much per capita aid as India. For India in particular an alliance with the United States would have been highly rewarding in terms of economic and military assistance. Mr Nehru evolved the policy of non-alignment in search of something wholly different.
The idea that rich nations had the obligation to help poor countries was in an embryonic form when the concept of non-alignment was first enunciated. The two ideas can be said to have developed side by side. They cannot be shown to have influenced each other. But even if this wholly unjust criticism is accepted the concept of non-alignment cannot be said to have become redundant because the Russo-American competition is by no means over. It is in fact no less intense than before though it is far better controlled. The replacement by Russia of the equipment the UAR and Syria lost in the war with Israel last summer is one illustration. The Soviet willingness to buy 10,000 railway wagons from India is another.
The real difficulties lie elsewhere. These can be appreciated if it is clearly recognised that non-alignment has been a function not so much of bipolarity as of the many-faceted Afro-Asian revolution. Yugoslavia’s ranking as a leading non-alignment country should not be allowed to confuse the issue. The concept has become increasingly out of tune with the Afro-Asian reality as developments have failed to conform to the expectation of the founding fathers. Three points deserve attention.
First, the revolutionary leaders expected that in spite of the historical differences and disputes and lack of contacts in the recent past, newly independent countries of Asia and Africa would be able to work together for achieving certain common objectives. This has not been found possible in practice. The Sino-Indian border trouble, the Indo-Pakistan conflict on Kashmir, the recent Indonesian confrontation against Malaysia and the inter-Arab disputes testify to the fact that history cannot be shoved under the carpet. As the memory of the common anti-colonial struggle becomes dimmer with the passage of time the regional disputes begin to loom larger still.
Hard Way
Secondly, the revolutionary leaders had no idea of the complexity of the problems of economic growth. Even those who did not subscribe to the simplistic view that only the imperial powers had to depart and a new era of prosperity would dawn have had to learn the hard way that economic development is a prolonged and painful affair and that they cannot hope to accomplish the task at all without substantial foreign assistance and direct involvement over a period of several decades. The Chinese alternative is not open to most countries because they are not prepared to accept the necessary discipline and sacrifice. In any case the Chinese model requires a thorough restructuring of society which the ruling elites in most countries cannot even think of attempting. Some leaders, particularly Dr Sukarno and Dr Nkrumah, tried to evade reality by talking of neo-colonialism. They have been overtaken by facts of life. Along with the growing awareness of the complexity of the task of economic growth has come the realisation that most of the aid has to be sought in the West. If this leads to neo-colonialism there is no escape from it in the near future.
Finally, the most profound disillusionment in Asia and Africa has taken place in the field of culture. It has been found that traditional cultures cannot provide the basis either for effecting the necessary economic transformation or for budding nation States. These cultures are divisive. They cannot promote the idea of common citizenship. This is as true in Gambia as in India. In the case of Nigeria the federal structure has broken down because of the primacy of tribal loyalties. The need for a new value system is obvious in all Afro-Asian countries if they are to have any chance of facing up to the challenges of economic growth.
There is no and there can be no agreement among the Afro-Asian elites on the fundamental issue whether the search for a national identity is consistent with the inescapable tasks of nation building and economic development. But we hear less and less of the superior virtues of negritude or Indian spiritualism than before. The process of modernisation goes on remorselessly and whether we like it or not and whether we recognise it or not modernisation involves Westernisation. Of necessity predominantly religious cultures have to give way to secular cultures with emphasis on science and technology. The autonomy of autochthonic cultures has decreased and not increased with political independence. In the wider and more meaningful cultural and economic sense, therefore, the age of European expansion has not come to an end. Only the capitals have shifted from London and Paris to Washington and Moscow. As far as the spread of the Western value system is concerned, there is no fundamental dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both are missionaries in the same cause. The third world is facilitating their task by seeking integration in the Russo-American-European economic systems. How meaningful is it to talk of non- alignment as something different from neutrality in this context?
The Times of India, 28 February 1968