The Non-Aligned Movement: Formation and Cooperation

The Non-Aligned Movement, or NAM, emerged through consultations among Asian and African states, contacts among leaders and summit conferences. The 1955 Bandung Conference was an important intellectual and diplomatic foundation; the 1961 Belgrade meeting was the first Conference of Heads of State or Government of Non-Aligned Countries. Treating them as the same founding event obscures changes in participation and organizational form.

Bandung met on 18–24 April 1955, convened by Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan, with twenty-nine participating states. Its Final Communiqué set out not only political principles but exchanges of experts and trainees, technical demonstrations and cooperation among research and training institutions, recommending national liaison officers for information exchange. It advocated prior consultation on economic matters in international forums while expressly disclaiming an intention to create a regional bloc. These provisions extended cooperation from shared positions into concrete activities.

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In July 1956, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt met at Brioni. Dimić's study notes that they moved closer on issues such as peaceful coexistence but retained disagreements. Subsequent communication and coordination during crises gradually formed a core of cooperation. A single meeting did not complete the entire institutional design.

The diplomatic effort to convene a summit in 1961 gained support from Nasser, Indonesia's Sukarno and other countries. A preparatory conference in Cairo in June discussed common positions and participation criteria and chose Belgrade as the venue. On 1 September, Tito delivered the opening address there to representatives of twenty-five participating countries. Preparatory consultations, selection of participants and agenda-setting turned personal contacts among leaders into a conference capable of issuing joint declarations.

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Danger of War and Appeal for Peace, adopted on 5 September 1961, showed how the conference sought to intervene in international politics. It judged that, amid vast accumulations of nuclear weapons, great-power conflict could become a devastating war. It therefore called on the United States and Soviet Union to stop actions intensifying tension, resume negotiations to resolve disagreements, and continue pursuing disarmament and lasting peace.

The document went beyond a general aspiration. It called for direct contacts between the US president and chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers and urged non-participating states to make similar efforts. Its reasoning was that, although major decisions on war and peace lay largely with the great powers, their consequences were borne worldwide. Participants accordingly asserted a right to engage in security questions rather than accepting decisions by the two blocs on their behalf.

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Diplomatic action did not end with the declaration. In a note of 14 September 1961 to Ratan Kumar Nehru, secretary-general of India's Ministry of External Affairs, Jawaharlal Nehru explained that he and Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah had delivered the conference's message to Khrushchev and discussed it with him. This provides a traceable record of joint action following the first summit.

Nehru requested separate reports to Tito and Nasser summarizing Soviet explanations of Germany, Berlin and resumed nuclear testing, and recording the visitors' concerns and hope for an end to the tests. Individual leaders executed a joint mandate, their national diplomatic machinery organized the results, and partners received feedback: a practical chain of cooperation. The note demonstrates the exchange and Nehru's record of the response, however, not that the great powers had fulfilled commitments to peace.

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Joint missions did not mean members wished to form a bloc acting uniformly on every issue. On 23 September 1961, Nehru telegraphed V. K. Krishna Menon in New York, agreeing that a so-called Belgrade group should not be established at the UN. Concerned that too many groups would deepen separation, he asked Menon first to speak amicably with Yugoslavia's foreign minister.

This internal telegram shows that the limits of cooperation still required negotiation after the summit. States could speak together about the risk of war without abandoning independent judgment or accepting fixed bloc discipline. It also cautions against projecting all the permanent coordination methods developed later back onto a fully formed organization in 1961.

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The methodology document adopted in Cartagena in May 1996 offers a dated view of later institutionalization. It identified summits as the highest decision-making authority, maintained the practice of holding them every three years, and provided for intervening ministerial meetings to review implementation. A Coordinating Bureau in New York included all members and normally met monthly at ambassadorial level, distributing agendas in advance and coordinating national action at the UN.

The document also required thorough prior consultation and explained that consensus did not mean complete identity of views. Host countries drafted principal conference documents and sought members' comments. Operations thus relied on national diplomats, coordinating chair countries and repeated communication. These documents do not provide sufficient evidence to establish the 1961 conference's funding or a uniform membership-contribution arrangement, so later procedural provisions cannot serve as proof of the early budget. Continuity in non-aligned cooperation must be traced stage by stage through specific meetings, documents and actions.

References: [6]