Vijay Prashad

By the mid-1960s, NAM was challenged on its right and left flanks. From the right came NAM states that had formed close associations with imperialism, whether by joining the Manila or Baghdad ‘security’ pacts or by the formation in 1969 of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (led by Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Pakistan). These formations took a position against Third World-style socialism and communism. From the left
came the Tricontinental, a group established by Cuba of state and national liberation movements that believed in a fuller freedom – often to be attained by armed struggle. The Tricontinental would not only gather heads of states, but leaders of national liberation movements from Cape Verde to Vietnam. At the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba’s President Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, who had been present at the NAM’s founding in Belgrade, was crisp in his denunciation of the mood and strategy of conciliation to imperialism – ‘The problem of underdevelopment, even of independent nations, cannot be solved with palliatives, with institutions and technical instruments that emerge out of international conferences. The cause of underdevelopment is none other than the subsistence of imperialist domination, and thus it can be overcome only through a struggle against and by total victory against imperialism.’ These were strong words. By the 1970 NAM meeting in Zambia and the 1973 NAM meeting in Algiers, the ethos of the Tricontinental would be centre stage.

Treaty organizations were the mechanism for the creation of the spokes. The pioneer was the Organization of American States (OAS), set up in 1948 inside what the United States had long considered its ‘backyard’. The first meeting of the OAS was held in Bogotá (Colombia); it left no doubt as to who was in charge when its headquarters were established in Washington, DC, at the old Pan-American Union building. On 1 November 1947, a CIA memorandum worried about ‘Soviet objectives in Latin America’.

Treaty organizations were the mechanism for the creation of the spokes. The pioneer was the Organization of American States (OAS), set up in 1948 inside what the United States had long considered its ‘backyard’. The first meeting of the OAS was held in Bogotá (Colombia); it left no doubt as to who was in charge when its headquarters were established in Washington, DC, at the old Pan-American Union building. On 1 November 1947, a CIA memorandum worried about ‘Soviet objectives in Latin America’.

1.Lobby ‘public’ opinion