Containment and the Third World

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
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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
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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-
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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-
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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.
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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.