By Ramindu Perera
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the 1955 historic Afro-Asian Conference convened in the city of Bandung, Indonesia. The conference brought together delegates from 29 countries representing Asia and Africa. Most of them were newly independent states, having recently emerged from colonial rule.
During the conference, delegates deliberated on the need for broader unity among nations that have been enslaved under the yoke of colonialism. The origins of the idea of South-South cooperation indicating that countries sharing a common history of colonial subjugation should collaborate to advance shared interests can be traced back to the historic Bandung Conference.
Sri Lanka was a participant at the Bandung Conference. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that was formed in 1961, further advanced the idea of third world solidarity emerging from Bandung. In the 1960-1970s which often considered the golden era of the NAM, Sri Lanka took an active role in the movement and hosted the fifth summit of the NAM in 1976.
However, in the 1980s, the third world project inspired by the ideals of Bandung faced a historic setback with the rise of global neoliberalism. The fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, which had been a NAM ally, further consolidated the hegemony of global neo liberalism, compelling the Global South to submit to the dominance of the hegemonic bloc led by the United States.
The Bandung era
Despite the changes in the international environment, there seems to be continued interest in the historical legacy of the Bandung Conference. The Bandung Conference was held at a time when the composition of the international community was substantially changing due to the decolonization process that started with the end of the Second World War.
Reflecting this shift, the number of United Nations member states grew from 35 to 127 between 1946 and 1970, as many Asian and African countries gained independence from European empires.
Although decolonization made former colonized nations members of the international community with sovereign equality, it soon became apparent that the states were equal only in the formal sense. Former colonial masters — now realigned as a distinct bloc under the leadership of the United States — continued to exert influence over the newly independent smaller nations. In most cases, when political leaders of these nations preferred to follow a more independent line, Western orchestrated military coups or direct invasions took place toppling the independent minded leaders.
The main focus of the Bandung Conference was reiterating the principle of political self-determination. The 10-point Bandung Declaration adopted at the conference largely emphasized norms such as sovereign equality, non-intervention, refraining from the use of force, and peaceful cooperation.
The idea was that third world nations should act in a spirit of solidarity to defend their hard-won independence from intervention by powerful states. (Ironically, Indonesian President Sukarno who convened the Bandung Conference fell victim to a Western-backed coup d’état in 1965, replaced by the military dictatorship of General Suharto.)
From politics to economics
The Non-Aligned Movement formed in 1961 was built on the premise laid down by the Bandung Conference. The first Non-Aligned conference held at Belgrade established a distinct bloc separated from the West and the Eastern bloc led by the Soviet Union. The new platform included some Latin American nations as well, paving the way for an alliance of the broader third world.
For most independent-minded third-world leaders in the NAM, it became apparent that formal political independence does not ensure real or substantive independence. Though formally independent, new nations found themselves highly dependent on their former colonial masters in terms of economic relations.
The world economy reflected pervasive divisions entrenched during centuries of colonial exploitation. Third world countries remained as underdeveloped economies, reduced to the status of exporters of primary products and raw material to Western industrial economies. As the Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his seminal work “Neo-Colonialism is the Last Stage of Imperialism”:
“[…] The young countries are still the providers of raw materials, the old of manufactured goods. The change in the economic relationship between the new sovereign states and the erstwhile masters is only one of form. Colonialism has achieved a new guise. It has become neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism.”
NAM pioneered the demand for fundamental change in the international economic structure. The UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) (1974) and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (1974) highlighted how the international economic architecture is twisted in favor of the former colonial nations.
Through the demand for a new international economic order, decolonized nations emphasized the need for fundamental reforms in the international economic system. Reforming the international monetary system in a way that aligns with developmental needs of third world nations, financial and technology transfers to assist industrialization in underdeveloped countries and regulation of activities of transnational corporations were among those demands.
These ideas reflected a sense of resistance on the part of former colonized nations. Certain NAM leaders questioned fundamental norms that were entrenched in the neo-colonial international order. For example, proposing to conceptualize the idea of foreign investment in a radically different light, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stated:
“[…] A new approach to foreign investments is indicated, in which investments abroad are regarded more as a service to the recipient community than as an enterprise where profits and their repatriation must be secured at all cost.”
Since the NIEO project problematized the Western dominated international system, it invoked hostility on the part of leaders of the Western bloc. For instance, Daniel P. Moynihan, who served as an advisor to the US President Richard Nixon, warned about a new order emerging “dominated arithmetically by the countries of the Third World.”
At the 1981 North-South summit convened in Cancun, Mexico, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher — the newly elected conservative leaders of the United States and Britain — decisively spoke against a broader global redistributionist project and stressed liberalizing international trade as the only way for the development of the third world.
Bandung today
The desire for substantive independence that goes beyond formal independence and solidarity among Global South countries constitute the essence of the historic legacy of the Bandung Conference and the NAM movement that followed. As mentioned earlier, geopolitical realities have significantly changed since the days of Bandung and the decline of the NIEO project led by the NAM. National populist movements of prominent NAM countries seem to have lost their former influence and become subservient to the hegemony of the Western bloc.
For instance, Egypt was converted into a Western ally after the demise of Abdul Gamal Nasser. India — once demonstrated a strong anti-imperialist conviction — toned down and went on sharing the QUAD platform with the United States. On the other hand, the sense of unity among Global South countries that defined the Bandung moment seems to have deteriorated.
But the question that made Bandung a necessity — the unequal power relationship between the Global North and the South and the repercussions of this inequality remain a pressing issue. Unequal trade and investment arrangements that favor Global North countries, the control of the global finance system by the West, and the control the Western bloc exerts on international financial institutions facilitate enormous wealth transfers from the Global South to Global North.
For instance, according to a recent OXFAM report, the richest one percent in Global North countries extracted 30 million USD an hour from the Global South through the financial system in 2023. Global North countries control 69 percent of global wealth.
The Global North continues to enrich itself at the expense of the Global South owing to the phenomenon of “unequal exchange” which occurs due to price inequalities in the global economy. The prices of wages and other supplies in the Global South are suppressed, so Global North corporations can obtain cheaper inputs and products. Thus, Global South countries are compelled to export more to buy any given level of imports.
This process that amounts to exploitation impoverishes Global South nations, forcing them to rely more on foreign debt. For example, as OXFAM reports, low- and middle-income countries spend on average nearly half of their national budgets on debt repayments, mostly to private creditors in the West. This entangles Global South states in a vicious cycle of underdevelopment because high debt service obligations curtail the productive capacity of developing countries.
Geopolitical shifts
Deep reforms in the international political economy are required to address these inequalities. Solidarity among Global South countries is a necessary precondition for building a platform to push for such reforms. Therefore, the renewal of the Bandung spirit — enhancing South-South solidarity — remains highly relevant in present times despite all the changes that have occurred since the Bandung Conference.
Although most national leaders in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War seemed to have submitted to the global neoliberal consensus, in recent times there have been developments that indicate a possibility for change. Most importantly, the rise of China and the deepening rivalry between China and the Western bloc has compelled China to turn towards the Global South for a political alliance.
Furthermore, after its decisive break with the Western bloc in the aftermath of the Ukraine war, Russia has been quite explicit in forging an alliance with the “global majority.” The term global majority used by the Russian administration to denote the Global South, carries more political weight, indicating that developing countries constitute most of the world population and therefore share a common interest against the dominance by a world “minority.”
The formation of BRICS that has brought emerging economies in the Global South together is an important milestone in moving beyond the hegemony of the Western bloc. The BRICS platform comprising both China and Russia has already begun talks on further de-dollarization, to seek alternatives to the control the United States exerts over the global financial system.
These emerging dynamics, indicating a shift away from the domination of the Western bloc, seem to have created new opportunities for Global South countries to reduce dependency on the Western bloc, and to envision a more independent path of development.
Ramindu Perera is an academic attached to the Department of Legal Studies, the Open University of Sri Lanka. He can be reached at ramindu@ezln@gmail.com.
Factum is an Asia-Pacific-focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.
