Suchergebnisse

Using newly declassified documents from Serbian, British, Indian, Chinese, Myanmar, U.S., and Soviet archives, this book shows how the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) gradually evolved into the third force of Cold War politics, enveloping most of the post-colonial and non-bloc world. Jovan Cavoški follows the evolution of the NAM through its summits and other gatherings, during which major political decisions pertaining to the destiny of the Third World were made. These events were scrutinized by all major powers and had a corresponding effect on their policies. From the Belgrade Conference in 1961 until 1989, all major Third World and non-bloc nations met to demonstrate to the Eastern and Western Blocs that they were independent, active and respected participants in world affairs. Cavoški shows how these summits were also closely related to events occurring in the relationship between the two blocs, providing opportunities for non-bloc actors to influence the global balance of power. By moving the focus of 20th-century international history away from the bloc nations, and instead giving developing nations in Africa and Asia due attention, this book provides a fresh perspective on Cold War history and fills a significant gap in the literature. It is an important study for all students and scholars of the Cold War and international history.

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.

Based on newly declassified documents from former Yugoslav archives, this article reconstructs the process of material and political assistance that was rendered to the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) by Yugoslavia throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s until the time of Angola's independence and the beginning of the Angolan civil war in 1975. The archival evidence demonstrates that Yugoslavia's assistance to the MPLA guerrillas was one of the crucial factors that enabled the organization not only to survive the vicissitudes of international politics, but also to preserve and stabilize its strength for the final phase of the power struggle in Angola.

Attempts by Yugoslav leaders to redirect their country's foreign policy orientation and redefine their priorities came to the fore in 1954. Yugoslav officials explicitly affirmed a long-term foreign policy goal of strengthening and developing relations with Arab countries, India, and other Asian and African countries that had no ties to existing political blocs. The idea of creating a wide movement deprived of hierarchical relations and centers of decision-making was much more acceptable for the Third World. The movement promoted peace and stability, opposed tensions and conflicts, and sought mutual cooperation and development. All these efforts demanded putting together a much broader international coalition than in just Asia and Africa. This is how the Non-Aligned Movement arose and took a more definitive shape after the Cairo Conference in 1964 and the Lusaka Summit in 1970.

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Abbreviations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Socialist Yugoslavia: A Cold War Crossroads -- Soviet Perceptions and Evaluations of Yugoslav Domestic and Foreign Policy during the Years of the Soviet-Yugoslav Conflict -- A Cold War in the Neighbourhood: Yugoslav-Albanian Relations after World War II -- Coping with the Regional Cold War: The Yugoslav-Greek Connection, 1944–1980 -- Shaping Afro-Asia and Non-Alignment: The Sino-Yugoslav Struggle for Leadership in the Third World during the 1950s and 1960s -- In the Shadow of Transition: U.S.-Yugoslav Relations, 1966 to 1980 -- In the Aftermath of the Prague Spring: Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia 1969–1973 -- Austria and Yugoslavia in the Cold War, 1945–1991: From Postwar Cold War to Détente and Dissolution -- The Adriatic Section of the Iron Curtain: Italy, Yugoslavia, and the Question of Trieste during the Cold War -- The Path to Interregional Cooperation in Cold War Europe: The Alps-Adriatic Region -- In Search of Modus Vivendi: Yugoslavia and the Holy See 1963–1971 -- Cooperation despite Stark Scepticism: The European Economic Community and Socialist Yugoslavia in the 1970s -- A Failed Transition: Ante Marković, the European Commission, and the End of the Cold War (1989–1990) -- Yugoslavia in the Cold War: Afterword -- Notes on Contributors -- Name Index