U POTRAZI ZA NOVIM SMISLOM: JUGOSLAVIJA I KRIZA GLOBALNE NESVRSTANOSTI 1965–1970.

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the first crisis period in the history of global non-alignment, when in the latter half of the 1960s, a time when a number of leading non-aligned leaders had finally left the historical scene, mostly under the pressure of army coups or war defeats, there were no summits or other multilateral non-aligned meetings being held, with the first significant gatherings taking place only at the very end of this period, thus opening a historical stage marked by a paralysis of action on behalf of many countries adhering to this foreign policy course. These were also years when global non-alignment was facing a mounting challenge of becoming increasingly irrelevant in world affairs, since none of the great powers seriously took into consideration their opinion, while the number of crisis situations all around the non-aligned world had been steadily on the rise. This evident lack of capability of leading non-aligned countries to act in a coordinated and timely fashion proved to many worldwide observers that global non-alignment had finally reached its limit and could not be resuscitated again to exercise a proactive and dynamic role in international politics as had been the case in the early 1960s. Facing such a complex situation, often bordering on desperate, while being especially well aware that without this global non-aligned framework Yugoslavia was facing isolation and serious political constraints in Europe, Tito and other Yugoslav officials decided to undertake a number of diplomatic initiatives to re-galvanize the non-aligned group, tighten the ranks between some of the leading non-aligned countries, with the aim of reinventing the meaning and role of non-alignment in world politics, while setting up a more permanent mechanism for cooperation that could transform all non-bloc factors into a more relevant and widespread international movement ready to set off a constructive dialogue with the great powers over the major international issues of security and development. In spite of many ups and downs in these endeavors, as this article scrupulously analyzed them, eventually Yugoslavia did manage to reignite the spirit of cooperation and collective action among the various non-aligned countries, which finally led to the formal establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement at the Third Summit in Lusaka in September 1970.