The Non-Aligned Movement isn’t really a formal organization,
though it has sometimes been referred to as the Organization of
Non-Aligned States. It is a very loose group of countries with
only one thing in common – they don’t like to be told what to do
by super-powers or treaty organizations involving super-powers.
The group first met in 1961, brought together in Belgrade,
Yugoslavia, by President Josip Broz Tito (who was a bit of a
rogue in the communist bloc), India’s first prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s second president, Gamal Abdel Nasser,
Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Indonesia’s first
president, Sukarno. They felt they represented the future of the
world in a way, all of them recently liberated from imperial
rule. To varying degrees, all were in truth aligned with one or
the other of the superpowers and except for Nehru, devolved into
dictators. The Non-Aligned Movement adopted five principles set
out by India’s Nehru: Mutual respect for each other’s
territorial integrity and sov