The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War

Delhi - Bandung - Belgrade

Natasa Miskovic, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Nada Boskovska, Natasa Miskovic, Harald Fischer-Tiné, Nada Boskovska

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317804536
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Historia
• Categoria: Historia del mundo

The idea of non-alignment and peaceful coexistence was not new when Yugoslavia hosted the Belgrade Summit of the Non-Aligned in September 1961. Freedom activists from the colonies in Asia, Africa, and South America had been discussing such issues for decades already, but this long-lasting context is usually forgotten in political and historical assessments of the Non-Aligned Movement.

This book puts the Non-Aligned Movement into its wider historical context and sheds light on the long-term connections and entanglements of the Afro-Asian world. It assembles scholars from differing fields of research, such as Asian Studies, Eastern European and Southeast European History, Cold War Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations. In doing so, this volume looks back to the ideological beginnings of the concept of peaceful coexistence at the time of the anticolonial movements, and at the multi-faceted challenges of foreign policy the former freedom fighters faced when they established their own decolonized states. It analyses the crucial role Yugoslav president Tito played in his determination to keep his country out of the blocs, and finally examines the main achievement of the Non-Aligned Movement: to give subordinate states of formerly subaltern peoples a voice in the international system.

An innovative look at the Non-Aligned Movement with a strong historical component, the book will be of great interest to academics working in the field of International Affairs, international history of the 20th century, the Cold War, Race Relations as well as scholars interested in Asian, African and Eastern European history.

Part I

Afro-Asian solidarity

1 International events, national policy

The 1930s in India as a formative period for non-alignment

Maria Framke

The conflicts and political crises emanating from Europe in the interwar period constituted focal points in Indian public opinion and significantly influenced debates on foreign policy, global alignments and, not least, Indian nationalism. In particular, the emergence of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany as influential global powers pursuing expansionist goals and the perceived weakness, or rather goodwill, of the Western powers in dealing with their aggressions caused uneasiness among Indian nationalists.

When looking into the literature on India’s foreign policy of the 1930s, one often detects a single name that is given the whole or at least major responsibility and credit for having shaped the standpoints of the Indian National Congress (INC). Jawaharlal Nehru is described as the leading voice in the INC; in comparison to most of his colleagues, he took a vital interest in global developments, and he became the advisor of the INC, even its leader, in dealing with international affairs.¹ Two reasons are usually given for the conjectured indifference of the other Congress politicians: first, their exclusive focus on the struggle for independence, and second, their lack of experience in foreign policy matters.² Although this chapter does not deny Nehru’s decisive role in shaping the INC’s foreign policy, it argues that international affairs, especially the policies of Fascist countries, were widely discussed during the 1930s not only within the Congress and the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), but also in the nationalist English press.³ Alongside Reuter’s messages, the nationalist newspapers and journals regularly, even daily, published reports, editorials, articles, and letters to editors on foreign policy, which were often contributed by Indian commentators who lived in Europe or had travelled there. Second, and even more importantly, by taking up the example of the Abyssinian war, this chapter will demonstrate that the discussion about international events created a consensus among the Indian nationalist public about the absolute necessity of formulating a distinct Indian foreign policy that already contained various elements of the post-independence policy of African-Asian solidarity and non-alignment.⁴ Furthermore, this chapter highlights that Indian debates analysing the policies of the Western powers and the League of Nations in this conflict led to the development of counter-drafts, which displayed different ideas of collective security.

Several authors have argued that the basis for certain elements of independent India’s foreign policy was already established in the interwar period, thereby underlining again Nehru’s decisive role in shaping it.⁵ Kris Manjapra, for instance, establishes a connection between the League against Imperialism and the Non-Aligned Movement. He stressed that the conference of the League in 1927 served as ‘an archetype for the Bandung Conference, convened three decades later in 1955’⁶ and that two of the participants, namely Nehru and Mohammad Hatta, not only attended the Bandung meeting but also were ‘major forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement’.⁷ Furthermore, T. A. Keenleyside has examined several aspects of Indian non-alignment that originated in the decades between World War I and World War II. According to him these elements are:

(1) alienation from the foreign policies of Western states in general; (2) an ambivalent attitude towards the main international actors, the United States and the Soviet Union; (3) opposition to all blocs and military alliances … and (4) a belief in the moral superiority of the Indian approach to international affairs.⁸

As our analysis of the Indian nationalist engagement with the Abyssinian war will show, the first and the third aspect in particular were addressed in public discussions on the subcontinent. While the continuities are rightly emphasized, these debates contained at times slight variations and different emphases from the later non-aligned foreign policy due to the particular circumstances of the period such as the existence of fascism in Europe and its aggressive expansionism.

At the outset, the chapter provides an overview of the Abyssinian war and traces early Indian reactions. Subsequently, it analyses Indian nationalist criticism of first British foreign policy and then the League of Nations’ measures in the conflict, and reveals how this critique helped to formulate new ideas about India’s foreign policy and collective security.

The outbreak of the Abyssinian war and perceptions of it in India: early notions of Afro-Asian solidarity

The idea of conquering Abyssinia as an Italian colony was by no means new. In 1896 Italy had tried to conquer the African state, but failed in the battle of Adua. This old, but never really abandoned, foreign policy goal came again to the fore after the Fascists took over power in Italy. However, any concrete measures were deferred by the Fascist government until Italy’s relations with Great Britain and France finally improved in 1934–1935. Both Western powers seemed now willing to concede to Italy’s imperialist demands.⁹ Exploiting a minor military incident on the Somali-Abyssinian border in December 1934, the Italian invasion of Abyssinia began on 3 October 1935. At this time, Abyssinia was one of last independent states of Africa. Since 1930, emperor Haile Selassie I had ruled the country as a feudal monarchy. After seven months of fierce fighting, the Fascist regime won the war by capturing Abyssinia’s capital Addis Ababa.¹⁰ Italian military operations aiming at a final ‘pacification’ of the African country, however, continued until Abyssinia’s liberation by the British army in 1941.¹¹

The Italian aggression towards Abyssinia not only caused a severe international crisis, but also challenged the League of Nations in an unprecedented manner.¹² As Italy and Abyssinia were both members states of the League and were both involved in the war, the League of Nations had to intervene according to its constitution.¹³ The Italian aggression broke a series of international treaties and at the same time disregarded the League’s statutes.¹⁴ As a member of the League, the Fascist country should normally have referred a dispute with another member state to arbitration (Article 13) or to examination by the council (Article 15). By ignoring these clauses, therefore, Mussolini’s regime had committed an act of war against all members of the League (Article 16).¹⁵ Against this background the Abyssinian emperor turned time and again to the League of Nations in the following months, albeit only with meagre success.¹⁶ Although the League of Nations declared Italy to be the aggressor, the assembled community of states did little to solve the conflict in a quick way and on behalf of Abyssinia. After the conquest of Addis Ababa, all member states of the League with the exception of the Soviet Union recognized the annexation of Abyssinia within the following two years.

The invasion in October 1935 had been preceded by months of threats and preparations on Italy’s part. This long prologue to what was to become for some scholars a ‘forgotten genocide’, for others the ‘first major war of a fascist power’,¹⁷ had already been observed and discussed in India. These early comments focused on the previous relations between the two countries as well as on the interaction and status of different religious groups and on the Indian population in Abyssinia.¹⁸ Furthermore, Indian authors discussed the Fascist regime’s motives for expansion and dwelt upon explicitly articulated as well as presumed reasons for an Italian attack on the African country, such as economic interests or revanchist claims for Adua.¹⁹ The most important topic of Indian debates before and during the war was, however, the question of Italy’s self-proclaimed civilizing mission in North Africa.²⁰ The debate included arguments dealing with racist notions of white peoples’ superiority as well as with the issue of slavery in Abyssinia.²¹ Despite the fact that slavery still existed in Abyssinia on a large scale, the country had been admitted to the League of Nations in 1923. In 1924, the Abyssinian government introduced new laws which officially abandoned slavery, but it survived illegally. The historian Richard Pankhurst has estimated that up to one-sixth of the Abyssinian population was still enslaved in the 1930s.

The issue of slavery was taken up by the Fascist government in Italy to prove the point that Abyssinia needed to be ‘civilized’.²² Although the Indian commentators did not approve of slavery, they agreed that this problem needed to be settled internally, by the Abyssinians themselves. Any intervention from the Italian side, according to the editor of the Bombay Chronicle,²³ would introduce a new kind of slavery in Abyssinia, i.e. the slavery of imperialism.²⁴

Against the background of their own experiences with the dubious ‘blessings’ of the British self-proclaimed civilizing mission, most Indian commentators rejected the Fascist claim of bringing civilization to Abyssinia, critically perceiving it as an excuse for an expansionist war.²⁵ Another editorial of the Bombay Chronicle in mid-August 1935, for example, repudiated Mussolini’s claim of ‘people of white nationalities being justified in attacking and destroying the national right and liberties of coloured and Oriental peoples’. It stated that the Fascist argumentation ‘[wa]s undoubtedly a challenge to the coloured peoples of the world and it [wa]s their duty at least to let him know that that challenge has not gone unnotic...