Stronger Non-Aligned Movement

xsampa

Banned
The Non-Aligned Movement is an association of countries not formally aligned with any superpower. It was founded during the Cold War in 1956 to prevent India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Egypt and Ghana from being drawn into the increasingly tense Cold War. At the Bandung Conference, the movement achieved recognition from figures such as Indonesia's President Sukarno and Zhou Enlai with its pledge to remain neutral. Over the decades, its membership expanded and its original goals became increasingly difficult to achieve. Many members had close ties to the superpowers in one way or another and members fought each other in wars. After the cold war, the movement lost its original purpose and has repurposed itself as opposing what it sees as Western hegemony and neoliberal economic policies. How could the movement have a stronger impact in achieving its original goal of neutrality?
 
The Non-Aligned Movement is an association of countries not formally aligned with any superpower. It was founded during the Cold War in 1956 to prevent India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Egypt and Ghana from being drawn into the increasingly tense Cold War. At the Bandung Conference, the movement achieved recognition from figures such as Indonesia's President Sukarno and Zhou Enlai with its pledge to remain neutral. Over the decades, its membership expanded and its original goals became increasingly difficult to achieve. Many members had close ties to the superpowers in one way or another and members fought each other in wars. After the cold war, the movement lost its original purpose and has repurposed itself as opposing what it sees as Western hegemony and neoliberal economic policies. How could the movement have a stronger impact in achieving its original goal of neutrality?
Maybe a widespread technological, developement, scientific and cultural exchange program ? Maybe with Yugoslavia exporting technological know how
 
All the members are weak (and if they want to get strong they need superpower backing), and have no genuine national interest in helping the other members which might as well be on the moon given the distances
 
I have always seen the NAM as a joke. AFAIK, a few countries have dropped out of the movement and signed treaties of alliance with Western powers.
 
Two things I can think of that might help the movement: 1. Italy remains neutral in WW2 and stands strong against US overtures to fully align with the Western Bloc. 2. Not mutually exclusive with #1 necessarily, but 1 makes this less likely. A France that is stronger or less open to the US even more than OTL. Either a right wing government that has the political will to maintain French independence in foreign affairs and stubbornly holds Algeria and due to other aggravating factors drops out of NATO, or a left wing government that is ideologically opposed to the US, but isn't crazy enough to align with the Soviets, and thus joins the NAM.
 

xsampa

Banned
Two things I can think of that might help the movement: 1. Italy remains neutral in WW2 and stands strong against US overtures to fully align with the Western Bloc. 2. Not mutually exclusive with #1 necessarily, but 1 makes this less likely. A France that is stronger or less open to the US even more than OTL. Either a right wing government that has the political will to maintain French independence in foreign affairs and stubbornly holds Algeria and due to other aggravating factors drops out of NATO, or a left wing government that is ideologically opposed to the US, but isn't crazy enough to align with the Soviets, and thus joins the NAM.
The NAM was primarily anticolonial, so both France and Italy would have to drop their colonies before the NAM would even think of accepting them.
 
India and the Arab world drifted toward the Soviet Bloc, and Indonesia and Iran were both pro-American from the '60s onward. A viable non-aligned bloc would degenerate into a de facto sphere of influence around a third great power if it's going to be more than a symbolic voting bloc in the General Assembly.

A neutral, fascist Italy with a series of Mediterranean client states and lil buddies (ex. independent on paper Italian Albania), and ideologically sympathetic anti-communist dictators is one way to get a non-aligned movement. There's a Stresa survives TL like this where Mussolini joins the allies and creates a sub-block of the west including Franco, Salazar, and the Shah in Iran.

A nationalist or more immediately neutral China is another other way to get a serious Non-Aligned Movement. China doesn't have the industrial base of the USSR or the USA, but it has the sheer size to become a major influence if it throw its weight around and in the right places. Avoiding the lunacy of Maoism would help, China could've skipped the OTL 1950s-1970s and become an earlier version of the industrialized economy it's been from the OTL 1980s onward.
 
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