Can NAM reclaim its voice in a fragmented world?

IN April 1955, amidst the backdrop of the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, statesmen from 29 Asian and African nations gathered to forge a bold third path.

Refusing to become passive pawns on the Cold War chessboard dividing Washington and Moscow, they sowed the seeds of what would become the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Formally established six years later in Belgrade in 1961, the movement was steered by legendary figures including Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

What made this coalition remarkable was that its architects were far from natural allies.

Deep ideological divides, intense geopolitical suspicions, and emerging border friction — most notably between India and China, or Yugoslavia's precarious stance against Soviet dominance — could easily have pulled them apart.

Yet, these leaders consciously transcended their antagonism, recognising that their differences were secondary to the existential threat of superpower subjugation and the shared imperative of Global South sovereignty.

A telling anecdote from that inaugural Belgrade Summit captures the fierce conviction of its founders.

When pressed by a skeptical foreign journalist on how small, developing nations could possibly withstand the threat of nuclear-armed superpowers, Tito leaned forward across the conference table with a quiet confidence.

He remarked that power was not measured in atomic warheads, but in solidarity, reminding the assembly that when the weak stand shoulder-to-shoulder, even the strong are forced to listen.

For decades, that solidarity delivered monumental victories, serving as the anti-colonial engine that accelerated national liberation across Africa and Asia, provided a unified diplomatic voice at the United Nations, championed global nuclear disarmament, and demanded a fairer global trading system.

Yet today, as the international order faces a profound structural crisis, NAM's collective voice has dwindled to a faint whisper.

The geopolitical landscape that birthed the movement has shifted beneath our feet.

Tito's Yugoslavia, once the non-aligned ideological bridge between East and West, was fractured by war in the 1990s and no longer exists.

China, once an observer sharing the developmental platform of Bandung, has transformed into a dominant global economic and military superpower.

Meanwhile, Europe grapples with long-term structural economic stagnation, and the traditional Western core struggles with internal political volatility.

At the same time, Asia has emerged as the vibrant engine of global economic growth, while Africa represents a massive demographic megatrend, holding both the world's youngest population and the critical raw materials vital for the green energy transition and digital economy.

Despite these seismic shifts, a predatory form of neo-imperialism is unmistakably re-asserting itself across the globe.

We see its stark manifestations in the harrowing crimes against humanity and destruction in Gaza, the relentless economic coercion and political destabilisation targeted at Latin American nations like Venezuela and Cuba, and the dangerous slide toward broader regional conflict in the Middle East involving Iran.

This brazen disregard for international law was underlined at high-level Western security forums, where figures like Marco Rubio made explicit the doctrine that international norms will remain secondary to bare-knuckled Western strategic dominance.

The rules-based order is being unravelled, replaced by a raw assertion of power where foreign interventionism and economic blockades are once again normalised.

Seven decades ago, in Bandung, President Sukarno presciently warned the assembly that independence was only the beginning of a longer struggle, noting:"

Colonialism is not dead... It has its modern dress, in the form of economic control, intellectual control, actual physical control by a small but alien community within a nation.

It is a skilful and determined enemy, and it appears in many guises."

Today, as those modern dresses of neo-imperialism reassert themselves in financial sanctions, legal double standards, and military posturing, Sukarno's words read less like history and more like an active indictment of our current world.

Faced with this aggressive resurgence of imperial overreach, the imperative for collective action by the Global South has never been more urgent.

Yet, the overall diplomatic response from developing nations has been agonisingly poor and fragmented.

NAM, representing 120 member nations and over 55 per cent of humanity, has offered little more than procedural inertia and muted expressions of concern.

Its institutional paralysis has left the Global South exposed, watching from the sidelines while decisions determining the fate of the international order are made in Western capitals.

To be sure, courageous exceptions have emerged to demonstrate what principled resistance looks like.

South Africa earned historic praise by taking the moral lead to bring charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice, utilising international legal frameworks to hold power accountable.

Similarly, Asean has consistently asserted its regional centrality, championing diplomatic dialogue and economic integration while resisting pressure to take sides in superpower rivalries.

These acts show that the spirit of resistance is alive, but isolated actions by individual nations or regional groupings are simply not enough to stem the tide of global instability.

What is desperately needed is a robust, coordinated counteracting force across the Global South, and the NAM remains the only global organisation with the scale to provide it.

However, NAM cannot fulfill this role by relying on outdated formulas or triennial summits that produce non-binding declarations.

It must inject fresh momentum into building concrete institutional strength.

This requires establishing a permanent rapid-response diplomatic secretariat, coordinating collective trade policies around critical minerals and energy assets, and standing united in defending the UN Charter against unilateral aggression.

The existential challenge for NAM today is stark and unforgiving.

Will it adapt to the realities of a multipolar, multi-crisis era and reclaim its historical role as the guardian of the Global South, or will it succumb to institutional apathy and fade into geopolitical extinction?

If NAM is to survive and remain relevant in the 21st century, it must rediscover the bold clarity voiced by Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah at the movement's dawn: "We face neither East nor West; we face forward."

If NAM can replace its long slumber with that same forward-looking courage, it will do more than escape extinction - it will finally give the Global South the unyielding, unified voice this turbulent world so desperately needs.

*The writer is chairman of Citizens International, a Civil Society Organisation based in Penang dedicated to internationalism, peaceful coexistence and global cooperation towards a better world for all (https://www.citizens-international.org/).

*The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times