During the vote on March 2, 2022 on the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, 35 countries abstained from voting, including China, which is not surprising because they are politically close to Russia, but also India, Pakistan, South Africa and Algeria. Many (if not most) countries of the so-called South did not join Western sanctions against Russia, did not openly condemn Russian aggression, nor did they publicly support Ukraine. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret their behaviour as anti-Western or pro-Russian. They simply treat the conflict as an internal dispute within the rich North. They do not want to get involved in it. They don’t want to take sides. This shows the inertial effects of the Cold War era’s non-alignment policy. It is regrettable that these countries do not see the far-reaching consequences of the conflict on the global system and the future model of international relations, including for themselves. One may regret that in their silence they suppress elementary moral instincts in politics. But non-involvement does not mean supporting aggression and breaking the norms of international law.
The Polish term „niezaangażowane” literally meaning “not engaged” is an inaccurate and even misleading term, because it results from the unfortunate translation of the word “non-aligned”. Because they were engaged during the Cold War, i.e. active and not indifferent, however they remained unallied, i.e. not tied to membership in a military bloc, a defence alliance. However, like neutrality, and perhaps even more so, non-alignment has lost much of its raison d’être in today’s conditions. And the assumption of steering functions in the non-aligned movement by authoritarian states or open dictatorships undermined its political credibility.
The doctrine of non-alignment was born after World War II in the process of decolonization taking place under the conditions of the global division of the world into two opposing blocs. The doctrine was derived from Gandhi’s teachings on pacifism and non-violence. Countries freed from the shackles of colonialism did not want to plunge into the logic of a bipolar world. At the same time, they wanted to look for a formula that would go beyond the traditionally understood neutrality, opening the field for independent activism. The driving force behind the movement was a group led by India, Indonesia, Egypt and Yugoslavia.
The beginning of the movement was assumed to be associated with the conference in Bandung in April 1955, attended by representatives of 29 countries (including six on the verge of independence). Its declared goal was to demonstrate the solidarity of Asian and African states, the community of their interests in the conditions of the contemporary world. The message was about liquidation of colonialism, democratization of international relations, opposition to attempts to re-subordinate the liberated colonies. The world was to be governed by the principles of Pancha Sila, i.e. the precepts of good conduct derived from Buddhism (to refrain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication), which were included in the preamble to the Sino-Indian Agreement of 1954 regulating the conflict over Aksai and South Tibet. Indonesian President Sukarno saw them as an alternative to socialist and capitalist methods of conducting international politics. They were a specific formula for peaceful coexistence and dispute resolution.
The five principles of Pancha Sila were translated in Bandung into 10 principles of international relations, which became the criteria for membership in the non-aligned movement: respect for human rights, sovereignty and territorial integrity, equality of races and nations, prohibition of intervention, the right to self-defence in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, no use of treaties on collective defence in the name of the egocentric interests of great powers, refraining from aggression and threats to use force, peaceful settlement of disputes, development of cooperation, respect for justice and international obligations.
The Belgrade conference in 1961 became the first summit meeting of the maturing movement, and 25 countries participated in it, including 12 from Asia, 11 from Africa, and Yugoslavia and Cuba.
From the beginning of the movement’s existence, the USSR and the socialist bloc sympathized with it. There, the initiative was treated as an anti-Western, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial venture against the dominance of the West in global politics, limiting the possibilities of the West in surrounding the socialist world with a network of alliances and anti-communist blocs. And the movement was given quiet support. Moscow sympathized with the slogans proclaimed by the movement of the elimination of social inequalities, poverty and hunger. The New Economic Order, which was born in the midst of the non-aligned movement, was a resonant slogan in the politics of the seventies and eighties of the last century.
At its peak, the non-aligned movement numbered over 130 countries (currently around 120). It exerted a significant influence on the functioning of some international organizations, such as the United Nations.
The so-called group 77 was set up there playing quite a visible role. China tried to attract it to its goals, but its importance has been declining since the 1990s.
The movement played a leading role in the process of decolonization and in promoting the principles of democratization of international relations and the new economic order. There would be no contemporary emancipation of developing countries without the non-aligned movement.
In the seventies, there was a marked shift towards anti-imperialist rhetoric (the influence of the USSR was clearly growing in the movement then). From the rostrum of the movement’s meetings resounded stentorous opposition to imperialism, neocolonialism, racism, aggression, occupation, hegemony, participation in military pacts, and permitting the creation of military bases. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused serious anxiety among a large part (and one can safely say even most part) of the movement and sparked open criticism of the USSR. For several good years, the issue divided the movement.
Nevertheless, the common denominator of interests was still solid at the time. The Palestinian question and the criticism of apartheid became a politically resilient glue for the movement.
After the collapse of the bipolar world, the raison d’être of movement clearly weakened. And the real blow to its credibility was the takeover by clearly authoritarian, if not dictatorial, states of leadership role in the movement in our millennium. The movement’s summits were hosted by Malaysia in 2003, Cuba in 2006, Egypt in 2009, Iran in 2012, Venezuela in 2016 and Azerbaijan in 2019. Its documents contained no reference to democratic values or human rights, which in the eighties could be interpreted as a deliberate paralipsis, but in modern times it has become a factor in the degeneration of the movement.
The reflexes of non-alignment (still strong) posture in the UN forum can be seen in the tendency to abstain from voting during resolutions which reveal a deep dispute between the West and Russia. This concerned not only resolutions on resolutions (including on Crimea), but also other conflicts in the post-Soviet area, or the human rights situation, e.g. in Iran or Syria. More than half a hundred members of the United Nations abstain on issues where the moral arguments appear pure and evident. Because they treat these issues as the subject of a political dispute.
Among European countries, Azerbaijan and Belarus are still members of the movement (how it relates to the membership of Belarus in the military pact, i.e. the Collective Security Treaty Organization, is a separate issue). And this fact alone is more eloquent than any comment.
Turkmenistan is also a member of the non-aligned movement. It adopted a doctrine of perpetual neutrality. It meant not joining military blocs, but it provided for the possibility of using military assistance from foreign countries. In 1995, it was even formally recognized by the UN General Assembly.
In the spring of 1993, I had the opportunity to listen to a nearly 45-minute private lecture on the subject by the Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov, aka Turkmenbashi. At that time, I accompanied Margaret af Ugglas, the Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, on a trip to the countries of Central Asia. Turkmenbashi welcomed us in a fairly narrow group. Instead of the usual conversation, the host treated us with a monologue. It was only with extraordinary effort at the end of the meeting that Minister af Ugglas managed to get the floor. I was seated at Mrs af Ugglas’ right hand. And Turkmenbashi, not knowing why, during his introductory monologue, he did not look at his vis-a-vis, that is, the minister, but he stared at me all the time. It is impossible to forget such a look, even after many years. I have not seen that peculaiar something in the eyes of any leader, and I had the opportunity to observe at least several dozen of them closely. Well, none of them, maybe except Ceausescu (in 1988) and Gaddafi (in 2001).
For Turkmenbashi, neutrality has become a cover for the extremely oppressive policy that was continued and pursued also by his successor and now by his successor’s son. Its political victims were at least a few people I knew, including the former Foreign Minister Batyr Berdiev, who then in 1993, as deputy minister, looked after me and other members of the delegation (and whose fate has been unknown for the last 20 years after he was arrested and convicted for treason).
The trip with the Baroness at that time was the beginning of my several years of involvement in the construction of bridges between the Central Asian region and the OSCE. Then, accompanying the minister, I still had to get out of Ashgabat on my own, because I stayed a day longer, and I was supposed to join the minister in Tashkent. On the way, in an unplanned way, I had to interrupt the journey in the city of Mary, surrounded by the desert, for hundreds of kilometres each way, which I previously knew only from the fact that sons of Soviet prominent people (that caused educational problems by not complying with the rules of socialist morality) were sent there for military service. There, they acquired a very useful skill of taking care of hygiene by rubbing the body with sand. Because there was almost no water there, and one could feel sand in the mouth a minute after landing.
My diplomatic activity in Central Asia in 1993-1996 was highly adventurous. I organized OSCE seminars there. We loftily called this conference diplomacy. The idea was to introduce the region to the minds of European diplomats and officials, to bring them to Dushanbe, Fergana or Bishkek so that they could learn something about the region. And these seminars required a lot of logistic prudence. I went to the first of them girded with a belly bag, in which I carried several thousand dollars in one- and five-dollar bills to cover the so-called local costs. Another time we cleverly “smuggled” back to Vienna my secretary, whose Austrian passport had been stolen on a government plane on the Urgench-Tashkent route the previous day.
Central Asia’s partnership with Europe has yet to reach cruising altitude. Local leaders counted on Western investments and money, and the West offered them (in their opinion – instead of) standards of democracy and human rights, which outside Kyrgyzstan were regarded as threatening the stability of the state. And objectively, in view of the obvious pressure from Russia and the growing pressure from China, they needed Europe there.
