The past decade has seen a real proliferation in scholarly interest in the history of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the agency of the developing world during the Cold War era, with some social scientists even reappraising the benefits of geo-political non-alignment in the twenty-first century (Ngaire Woods, ‘In Defence of Non-alignment,’ University of Oxford blog post, October 26, 2022). Non-Aligned Movement Summits: A History is a valuable contribution to the field, offering a richly researched account of the aspirations, inner tensions, and achievements of the NAM, drawing upon multiple archives and previously unpublished material. In addition to the first chapter, which scrutinizes the ‘Historical meaning of non-alignment,’ the other six chapters are each dedicated to one of the official gatherings of the Movement between 1961 and 1979. Although the chapter titles give the impression that they would focus on the particular summits, the majority of the text is actually engaging with the international context surrounding the summits and the run up to them. The ‘Epilogue’ reflects on the 1980s and provides a brief overview of the three summits before the end of the Cold War era.
The detailed study of the inner dynamics of the Movement, its contributions to the debates on equitable development, as well as that of the attitudes and actions of the US, USSR, and China, demonstrate that the Movement cannot be reduced to “performing solidarity,” or that Yugoslavia “consistently failed to appreciate the racism of the international society” (Jelena Subotic & Srdjan Vucetic, “Performing Solidarity: Whiteness and Status-seeking in the Non-aligned World,” Journal of International Relations and Development 22, no. 3, (2019). Čavoški details Yugoslavia's pro-active and conciliatory approach, the delicate balancing acts its engaged diplomats and the challenges of mediating between the more radical members of the Movement (not least Cuba as the main promoter of the “natural allies” thesis) and the moderate group that tried to keep the focus of the Movement on disarmament, economic development, and an equidistance from both Blocs. In that sense the book is invaluable in providing a close analysis of the rift that emerged at the same time as the Movement was becoming more institutionalized in the 1970s and gaining prominence in the UN system as a collective front in the North-South dialogue. However, the author's interpretation of the Cuban-Yugoslav conflict over Cuba's proximity to the Soviet bloc as a weakness that would further fragments the Movement could be equally seen as proof of the NAM maturing, becoming resilient and more democratic in its ability to reach compromise, respecting the views of the majority of member states as it managed to overcome the tensions that especially plagued the 1979 Havana summit (221). External challenges and actions by the great powers and China are appear throughout the book and shed light on the fact that the NAM was seen as a threat or a potential partner at different points throughout the Cold War. China led the way to promote a “second Bandung” and undermine a more universalist non-aligned framework in-the-making, discussed at length in the third chapter, “‘Afro-Asianism’ vs. Non-Alignment: the 1964 Cairo Conference.”
The Epilogue ambitiously covers the whole decade of the 1980s, revealing how “even the Reagan administration was not observing the NAM as a lost cause or an implacable foe any longer” (241), with the Movement having shifted its focus on economic and disarmament issues. The last Cold War summit in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) in 1989 gets less than a page, although the author underlines the “revolutionary” (249) character of the Yugoslav draft of the final document “by firmly linking economic and environmental dimensions” (249). It is therefore regrettable that this crucial decade and the state of the Movement in the 1980s is only addressed in a cursory way and the book aligns in the Epilogue with the standard teleological narrative of decline and “failure” (244). It is not clear which initiatives it refers to, but the statement that “none of the funds or centres established during the 1970s ever moved beyond the planning stage, thus marking another obvious failure of the NAM” (244) is inaccurate. There were several initiatives, such as the 1988 “Global System of Trade Preferences among Developing Countries” and the 1989 “Common Fund for Commodities” still in existence. Despite several significant omissions such as the Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool / the “New World Information and Communication Order” and a more in-depth analysis of the NAM's engagement with the Palestinian Question and Anti-Apartheid, Non-Aligned Summits remains an important contribution that adds nuance and complexity to our understanding of Cold War non-alignment.
