Cold war era - CHALLENGE TO BIPOLARITY
CHALLENGE TO BIPOLARITY We have already seen how the Cold War tended to divide the world into two rival alliances. It was in this context that nonalignment offered the newly decolonized countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America a third option-not to join either alliance. The roots of NAM went back to the friendship between three leaders - Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito. India's Jawaharlal Nehru, and Egypt's leader Gamal Abdel Nasser - who held a meeting in 1956. Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported them. These five leaders came to be known as the five founders of NAM. The first non-aligned summit was held in Belgrade in 1961. This was the culmination of at least three factors: (1) cooperation among these five countries. (2) growing Cold War tensions and its widening arenas, and (3) the dramatic entry of many newly decolonized African countries into the inter- national arena. By 1960, there were 16 new African members in the UN . The firs...