International Relations after World War II. From bipolar to unipolar

The first goal of the Allies during World War II was to eliminate the fascist regimes whose expansionist policy had triggered World War II, while at the same time establishing new rules for world peace. After the war, it turned out that the common struggle against fascism concealed the fundamental contradiction between the Allies in terms of ideology and goals. This contradiction led to the division of the world after the war into two rival camps: the Eastern camp led by the Soviet Union and the Western camp led by the United States of America.

In the context of this new situation, international relations have been characterized by tension and détente, and by the efforts of a large number of newly independent States to stay away from the two camps and to work towards a new international balance.

Attempts to establish peace

The alliance established during the war between the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United States and Britain on the other was not so much a natural alliance, as it was a circumstantial alliance dictated by the necessity of fighting against a common enemy, Germany and its Axis allies. The allied parties had to hold a series of meetings in order to coordinate their war efforts for victory and to agree on the vision of the political map of the postwar world.

The Allies held several conferences to agree on the political map of the postwar world

In this context, the announcement of the Atlantic Pact signed between Roosevelt and Churchill on August 14, 1941 was a statement of American and British objectives of the war; the Charter affirmed that the two countries did not desire any territorial expansion and that their primary purpose was to undermine the Nazi regime. They pledged to recognize the right of peoples to choose the form of government they wished and affirmed their aspiration for peace that would ensure security and economic cooperation among States.

The content of the Charter was later approved by the Soviet Union. However, the charter did not address the issues that preoccupied the Soviet Union at the time, foremost of which were its military demands to open a second front to the Nazi forces in Western Europe, and its territorial claims in the Baltic States, Poland and Bessarabia. This necessitated a series of meetings, the most important of which are:

Tehran Conference

It was held in December 1963 after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, and was attended by the three heads of state, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. It resulted in a pledge by the United States and Britain to open a new front against the Germans in Western Europe in the fall of 1944. The agreement on the general lines of the fate of Central and Eastern Europe was also reached, so that the Soviet Union could achieve its territorial claims in the Baltic states, Romania and Poland, and Poland compensated by expanding its borders westward to the Oder and Nice rivers.

Yalta Conference

It took place in February 1945 when Germany's surrender became imminent. The agreement to divide Germany into four spheres of influence resulted in Britain and the United States urging France to make France a powerful and influential country. The question of the new international body that would replace the League of Nations was also raised, the distribution of its seats was agreed, and the Soviet Union committed itself to opening a military front to Japan eastward after Germany's surrender, provided that the territories lost in 1906, south of Sakhalin and the Corel Archipelago, were recovered and the railway lines were supervised in Manchuria. Poland signed an agreement on its new borders, but disagreement remained over its prospective government after it came under military control of the Soviet Union.

Potsdam Conference

It was held in July and August 1945 after the surrender of Germany, and was attended by Stalin,Truman andChurchill, who was replaced in the second part of the conference by his successor as Prime Minister of Britain, Clement Attlee. The fate of the areas that came under the influence of the Soviet Union was discussed, but views on the subject were different, with the Soviet Union refusing to participate in the participation of its allies in monitoring the elections to be held in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and the United States and Britain refusing to recognize the western borders of Poland.

Since then, the Allies began to widen, as they failed during the Paris Peace Conference in 1945 to reach a settlement of the German problem, and only agreed to conclude bilateral treaties with Italy, Hungary, Romania and Finland. The Soviet Union refused to sign with the United States, Britain and China's representative the peace treaty with Japan in 1951 on the grounds that it did not recognize one of the signatories, the Chinese National Government of Formosa (Taiwan). Thus, the post-war settlement remained a de facto settlement, in the sense that the new situations in Central Europe and Eastern Asia did not acquire legalization, but became essentially linked to the new power relations that emerged from the Second World War.

While during previous conferences the Allies had not reached an agreed solution to all problems in order to achieve peace once and for all, they had at least reached agreement on the need to resolve problems and disputes by peaceful means and to avoid destructive war, and had decided to establish an international organization for that purpose.

Establishment of the United Nations to maintain world peace and develop international cooperation

The Allies did not wait for the end of the war in order to determine the principles necessary to maintain peace. The Atlantic Charter stressed the need to respect the right of peoples to choose governments, the freedom of the sea, and to condemn the use of force to resolve international disputes. The idea of establishing the United Nations matured through a series of conferences, including the Washington Conference in 1942,the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in September 1944, and theYalta Conference. The international body was finally established during the San Francisco Conference, where the Charter of the United Nations was signed on June 26, 1945.

1. The Charter contains a preamble and 111 articles. Article I summarized the purposes of the United Nations as follows:
2. Maintenance of international peace and security To this end, the Commission shall take effective joint measures to prevent and eliminate threats to the peace, acts of aggression and other breaches of the peace, and shall use means in accordance with the principles of justice and international law to resolve or settle international disputes that may lead to a breach of the peace.
3. To develop friendly relations among nations on the basis of respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination among peoples, and to take appropriate measures to promote public peace.
4. To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character, and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all and encouraging absolute respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to sex, language or religion or distinction between men and women.

To make this body a reference for coordinating the actions of nations and directing them towards the common realization of these goals.

To achieve these objectives, the Authority has organized into a variety of diverse and integrated bodies, the most important of which are:

General Assembly

It is composed of delegates of all Member States and holds its ordinary meeting once a year. It is competent to discuss all issues within the competence of the United Nations, to make recommendations thereon after a two-thirds majority vote thereon, and to elect the non-permanent members of the Security Council, the members of the International Court of Justice and the Secretary-General of the Organization. However, its decision-making power is limited and is often subject to Security Council approval.

Security Council

It is the one that controls the real authority of the Organization under Article 12 of the Charter, and is composed of 11 members (currently 15) of five permanent members, namely the delegates of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and Nationalist China (later succeeded by the People's China), while the other six are elected for a two-year term by the General Assembly, taking into account geographical distribution.

The Security Council is charged with giving effect to the recommendations of the General Assembly. In this context, it facilitates the settlement of disputes between States by peaceful means such as negotiations, conciliation and arbitration. If peaceful roads fail, and when threats to world peace occur, they can establish direct preventive measures such as boycotts and sending international emergency forces to collision zones. However, the unanimity of the permanent members was necessary to implement the resolutions and recommendations of the General Assembly, since the use of one's veto or veto power was sufficient to paralyze the decisions of the Organization.

In view of the Council's heavy functions, its meetings are initially limited to twice a month and may meet in necessary cases.

General Secretariat

It includes a large number of staff in charge of managing the administrative and financial affairs of the Organization. They are headed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who is elected for a five-year term by the General Assembly and approved by the Security Council.

In addition, the organization has a number of bodies specialized in international assistance of an economic and social nature, as well as the Geneva-based International Labour Bureau and the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

It is clear from the organization of the United Nations that the implementation of resolutions that can be agreed upon by Member States is subject to their compatibility with the interests and desires of the five major veto powers. This is why some have called the organization "Directire or the Board of Directors of Major Powers."

It also follows from the conferences held by the Allies during and after the war that the differences of views and objectives between the Soviet Union on the one hand and the United States, Britain and France on the other, which left many problems without an agreed solution, and thus caused tension in relations between the two camps.

The world is divided into two blocs and tension returns

The division of the world is due to ideological discord that has generated political differences and economic rupture.

As soon as the Allied triumphed signs, empowered differences between the socialist Soviet Union and its liberal allies resurfaced. It centered on the demarcation of borders and the shape of systems of government in Europe, and thus on the distribution of spheres of influence between two opposing ideologies: socialism led by the Soviet Union and capitalism led by the United States.

Ideological disagreement

For the Soviet Union and the countries that adopted a "system of people's democracy" (whether by liberation by the Soviets, or by self-reliance, as in Yugoslavia and China), see their development moving from a system of popular democracy in which the class struggle continues under the leadership of the proletariat, to a "socialist phase" in which the class struggle disappears with the continued existence of classes. The development ends in a "communist system" characterized by the disappearance of classes and prosperity that allows the application of the principle of "each according to his needs".

But in the eyes of Marxism-Leninism, this development takes place in a hostile world, where the Eastern world is surrounded on all sides by capitalist countries in which the "bourgeoisie" dominates. Therefore, all means must be worked to help the Communist parties to take power so that the siege can be lifted. Hence the hostility of the socialist camp to the liberal Western camp is deep-rooted.

The liberal Western camp argues that the historical determinism intended by the Communists tramples one of humanity's key values: individual freedom. This is because the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is based on a single party, imposes its ideology, and controls the media while directing it to its advantage. Liberals, on the contrary, consider that freedom is sacred and must be constitutionally guaranteed through multi-party and the rule of general and secret elections and the establishment of public freedoms. Hence the main ideological rivalry between the Eastern and Western camps, to which political differences are due.

Political differences

There were many points of disagreement between the two camps regarding the problems left over from the war. Perhaps the most important of these points is Germany. After Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945, the Allies did not reach an agreement on its future, as it remained divided into four Soviet, American, British and French spheres of influence. The same goes for Berlin, which is in the Soviet sphere of influence.

Several conferences were held between the Big Four in Paris, London, New York and Moscow, which reflected the divergence of views between the Soviet Union, which rejects the economic unity of German regions as favoritism to Nazism, and the other three allies, who emphasize the need for German reunification and free elections to determine its future, and refuse to recognize the Oder-Nice line as a border between Poland and the Soviet-influenced German region.

Another contention was the assistance of the Communist Parties by the Soviet Union in the countries it swept in response to the Nazi attack on power, in Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Poland in 1944 and 1945, Hungary in 1947 and Czechoslovakia in 1948. This rapid communist tide has alarmed the Western camp, especially the United States.

The rift between the two camps thus originated in Europe, where the two giant powers are trying to exert influence at the expense of the other.

"I believe that American policy should help free peoples who refuse to succumb to armed minorities or external pressure... I believe that our support should be in particular the financial and economic assistance, which is needed to ensure economic and political stability. The seeds of totalitarianism are nourished by misery and poverty."

Translated from President Truman's speech to Congress on March 12, 1947

The American reaction to the "communist tide" in Europe and the world was the emergence of the "Truman Doctrine" or the so-called "policy of besieging communism". These include U.S. assistance to suppress the military movement of the Greece communists, and the massive financial assistance provided to Western Europe through the 1947 Marshall Plan. With the refusal of the Eastern Bloc countries to benefit from the Marshall Plan, the economic rupture between the two camps began, and was confirmed by the establishment of their own economic organizations.

Relations between the two camps witnessed a serious tension called the Cold War.

The Cold War period spans between 1947 and 1954. It is a period in which the differences between the two camps reached their peak, as their interests collided in several European and non-European regions in attempts to extend influence, and the two camps turned into blocs, each linked to a group of military alliances, and their race to arm under the pretext of achieving balance intensified.

The Soviet Union responded to the "Truman Doctrine" by establishing in September 1947 the Kominform, a information bureau of the Communist Parties whose role was to maintain the full solidarity of the national Communist Parties.

As far away as we move away from the end of war, the two main directions of international politics emerge more clearly. The political forces are divided into two camps: the anti-democratic imperialist and the anti-imperialist democratic camp. A special task is imperative for sister communist parties in France, Italy, England and other countries. It is imperative that they hold in their hands the flag of national defense and sovereignty of their countries.

Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov

The tension between the two camps manifested itself in several crises, including:

Berlin Blockade

After the four Allies failed to agree on German reunification, the foreign ministers of the United States, Britain, and France met in London and decided in June 1948 to establish the Federal Republic of Germany in the areas under their influence. The Soviet Union reacted by besieging West Berlin, which includes the spheres of influence of the three Western countries, as a manifestation of its opposition to the unification of West Germany and to force Westerners to leave Berlin. The siege lasted until May 12, 1949, when Westerners were forced to organize an air bridge to supply their areas of influence. This was followed by the establishment of the "German Democratic Republic" in the Soviet sector on September 10, 1949.

Greek crisis "civil war"

Greece experienced fierce resistance to Italian and German forces during the war, most famously led by the communist-leaning National Liberation Front (FLN). After the expulsion of the occupying powers, the country moved to British occupation in 1944, where the dispute between the loyalists of the former monarchy and the communists emerged. A referendum was held in March 1946 under the supervision of Britain, the United States and France without the Soviet Union, and ended in favor of the royalists. The country has since entered a civil war, in which Soviet-backed communists took control of half of Greek territory. But the American intervention in 1947 enabled the royalists to eliminate the communists in 1949.

Korean War

The Cold War reached its zenith during the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. After the evacuation of Japanese troops, the Korean Peninsula was divided into two parts, with 38° latitude separating them. The Soviet sphere of influence in the north became a "people's democracy," and the Americans in their southern sphere of influence established anti-communist rule.

On June 25, 1950, the North armies attacked South Korea, and the Security Council, in the absence of the Soviets, decided to send international troops, mostly Americans, to fight back. But U.S. forces crossing the 38° line provoked the intervention of 800,000 Chinese volunteer forces that forced U.S. forces to retreat beyond the dividing line. Chinese intervention raised the idea of nuclear bombing of China, but the Americans favored negotiations to resolve the problem. The negotiations ended with the signing of a ceasefire on July 27, 1953.

Military alliances

The Cold War resulted in a series of military alliances by both giants: in September 1951, the United States convened the ANZOS A.N.U.S with Australia and New Zealand, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (O.T.A.S.E.) in September 1954, with ANZOS members plus France, Britain and Pakistan, and the Baghdad Pact with Iraq and Turkey, then Iran, Pakistan and Britain in February 1955, which became the Central Alliance Organization (C.E.N.T. O) after the withdrawal of Iraq in 1959. This is in addition to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) concluded with ten European countries in April 1949, which was later joined by Greece and Turkey in 1952 and West Germany in 1955.

The Soviet Union, on the other hand, had bilateral alliances with all European people's democracies between 1947 and 1948. Following West Germany's accession to the Atlantic Alliance, the Warso Pact was founded in 1955 and included East Germany.

The cold war was accompanied by an unprecedented, renewed arms race, because technological development had enabled man to reach the possibility of mass destruction by means of nuclear bombs. After the United States was the only one to possess the nuclear bomb, the Soviet Union was able to detonate the first bomb in this area on August 29, 1949. New types of bombs have emerged, more powerful and destructive, such as the hydrogen bomb. Then the parties came up with the invention of intercontinental missiles carrying nuclear warheads.

Each of the two forces can destroy the other quickly and completely, but at the same time cannot avoid destroying the other. Thus, international relations have experienced a new phenomenon, namely that the armament motive of waging war has disappeared to be replaced by the impulse of balance. Military action can no longer support political action as it once did, because support automatically means mass suicide. This is called the "balance of terror" between the two giants.

Thus, the world is living the spectre of a third world war due to the severe tension in relations between the two blocs. Several other crises have occurred that almost triggered the war between the two giants, and were characterized by indirect confrontation between them in the framework of local wars in several regions of the globe. However, whenever the local war became dangerous to develop into a direct conflict between the two blocs, they intervened to stop it quickly, as happened during the tripartite aggression against Egypt in 1956 following its nationalization of the Suez Canal, and during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973.

As a result of these fears, international relations have evolved towards détente between the two blocs and towards the emancipation of the colonial countries that will intervene in international relations with the weight of their large number to defend world peace and work towards the equality of international political and economic relations.

The search for a new international equilibrium

After 1954, relations between the two blocs entered a phase of détente and peaceful coexistence. This development was brought about by the new circumstances that characterized the Soviet Union, the United States and the international community in general.

The rivalry of the two blocs has become within the framework of the principle of peaceful coexistence.

After Stalin's death on March 3, 1953, the Soviet Union experienced a new direction in its domestic and foreign policy. This trend resulted from the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, which defined the principles of peaceful coexistence with the Western bloc in the possibility of avoiding war, avoiding violent revolutions as a means of control of the proletariat over power and the triumph of socialism over capitalism, and provided for the diversity of means of socialist application. Based on these principles, the Soviet Union recognized West Germany in 1955, dissolved the Cominform in 1955, and developed relations with Yugoslavia. Khrushchev explained the Soviet concept of peaceful coexistence in a 1960 UN speech that it boiled down to a determination to peacefully resolve disputes while increasing ideological conflict.

The United States followed the same direction beginning under President Dwight Eisenhower from 1960 to 1952. He put down the violent campaign against communism led by Senator McCarthy and encouraged rapprochement with the Soviet Union when he received Khrushchev in 1959. This trend developed under President John Kennedy, who summarized the American concept of peaceful coexistence as follows:

"The biggest obstacle is our relationship with the Soviet Union and communist China. We should not be under the illusion that one of these powers has abandoned its ambition to dominate the world. It is our responsibility, on the contrary, to convince them that aggression and sabotage are not the beneficial means of achieving this goal. And that a frank and peaceful race for greatness, markets and scientific achievements, and even for the conquest of the human mind – is something else. If freedom and communism compete to ensure human loyalty in a peaceful framework, I will look to the future with great confidence."

Translator of the State of the Union Letter John F. Kennedy 1961

Another reason for the détente was the emergence of newly independent States that contributed to the spirit of peaceful coexistence. These colonial authoritarian states rejected subordination to the two blocs and invested their neutrality in easing tensions in international relations. It has expressed this position through its bilateral treaties as stated in the Panche-Shilla Agreement between India and China in April 1954, which affirmed the principles of mutual non-aggression, non-interference in the internal affairs of states and peaceful coexistence.

It has also used the platforms of international organizations affiliated with the United Nations to defend the principles of peace and cooperation and has made their positions and principles goals that have been rallied around within the framework of a new international group, the Non-Aligned Group, starting with the Bandung Conference in 1955.

Taken together, these circumstances have resulted in multiple meetings between the poles of the two blocs in order to solve problems through negotiation and avoid the risk of direct war between them. Thus, 1954 saw several conferences on the Indochina War, the end of the Korean War, and the reunification of Austria, which was divided into four spheres of influence such as Germany. The first Conference on Disarmament was held in Geneva in 1955. Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Geneva in 1961, followed by a cultural agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States in March 1966. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was signed in August 1967, followed by several disarmament conferences in Helsinki.

At the same time, however, the relations between the two blocs have been subjected to many crises that have shaken peaceful coexistence. Among them:

Second Berlin Crisis

It erupted between 1953 and 1961. It is one of the tails of the German problem, as the two blocs could not reach a solution to the problem of dividing it into four spheres of influence. The Soviet Union tried to impose legal recognition of the GDR while giving it Berlin, which is in the middle of its national territory, while the other parties rejected this solution. This tension was heightened by Khrushchev's trip to the United States in 1959, and then resurfaced with the construction of the Berlin Wall on the night of August 12-13, 1961.

The wall was a fait accompli. The crisis was particularly resolved when the Social Democrats took power in West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1969, when he adopted an Ostpolitik policy of non-aggression with the Soviet Union, then with Poland and recognized the Odernis.

The case of Cuba

Koba became socialist after the victory of Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959. It was the first country in Latin America to become the Eastern Bloc. The United States supported an attempt to overthrow the new government when it armed a group of Cuban refugees and transferred them to Cuba by landing them in the Bay of Pigs in October 1961, but the attempt failed.

The Cuban crisis erupted in 1962, when U.S. reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet missile launchers on the island, and the United States learned that other missiles were en route to Cuba by Soviet ships. The American reaction was swift, as it besieged Koba, and Kennedy warned the Soviets to launch all-out war against the Soviet Union. The crisis ended with the retreat of Soviet ships and the dismantling of missile bases in Cuba.

Vietnam War

After its liberation from French colonialism, Vietnam was divided into two opposing states separated by 17° parallel, with a socialist government settled in the north with Hanoi as its capital, and a right-wing government with Saigon as its capital in the south. Northerners supported the socialist ideological South Viet Cong movement, which waged a guerrilla war to seize power.

The United States assisted the Saigon government, and its forces intervened directly in the war beginning in 1965, using state-of-the-art weapons against North Vietnam and Viet Cong bunkers. The U.S. intervention ended with the signing of the 1973 Geneva Convention, making it easier for the northern government to unify Vietnam.

These and other crises show the extent to which the two giants are racing to extend influence. In addition, there are many other events that show their keenness not to compromise their spheres of influence, such as the intervention of Soviet forces to prevent attempts to deviate from their orbit in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, as well as the intervention of American forces for the same purpose in Saint-Domingue in 1964. Liberation movements in colonial countries took advantage of this competition to attract material and moral support for their demands for independence.

Non-Aligned Movement

Several peoples were liberated from colonialism and formed a movement working for the democracy of international relations.

The expansion of the liberation of colonies is one of the most important historical phenomena in international relations after World War II. In addition to the importance of the phenomenon itself, a new movement, the Non-Aligned Movement, has been born, rejecting bilateral international polarization and working for the balance of international relations.

National independence movements began in the 19th century, especially in Latin America. It expanded after the Second World War until it became a feature of international relations in this period.

This development is explained by the combination of several factors, foremost of which is the phenomenon of colonialism itself. It means that a people loses its sovereignty and subjugates itself to the will of a foreign state, with the attendant economic exploitation, social misery and marginalization of "the natives" in decision-making. This is why the inhabitants of the colonies rose up to fight colonialism and worked to gain independence by various military and political means. They benefited from post-war conditions.

On the one hand, the colonial powers emerged from the war broken and weakened, and the inhabitants of the colonies who participated in this war clung to the Allied principles of defending freedom and anti-domination, using them as an additional argument to support their claim to independence. On the other hand, these demands for independence were supported by the two giant powers for various reasons, as the Soviets supported these demands in line with their anti-imperialist policy, and the United States, in turn, was forced to support these demands in the context of its competition with the Soviet Union for influence in the world.

The newly independent States, such as India, Egypt and Yugoslavia, had also used the United Nations forums to trigger anti-colonial policy, and had adopted many resolutions in that area from the General Assembly and the Decolonization Committee. Thus, independence movements moved from isolated movements fought by each colony to a collective movement of solidarity and mutuality. Thus, it succeeded in achieving independence in successive batches, starting with the Middle East, then Southeast Asia starting in 1947, North Africa since 1956, and Black Africa after 1957.

One of the most important consequences of the rise of newly independent states is that they are working for independence from the two conflicting blocs in international politics. Since late 1954, Yugoslav President Marshal Tito has visited both India and Egypt, agreeing with their presidents, Jawaharlal Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser, to create "zones of peace" that are not aligned with either bloc. Contacts with other countries resulted in the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1965.

Most of the 29 countries attending the conference were linked to the Western camp in military alliances and through economic aid. Its decisions therefore did not contain an explicit reference to the policy of neutrality or non-alignment. However, the debate that prevailed in the conference on the concept of bias and bias makes it the nucleus of the non-aligned policy, after which efforts continued to strengthen this policy by Presidents Tito, Nehru and Abdel Nasser, and the first conference of the Non-Aligned Movement was held in Belgrade in 1981 and its conferences continued after that with the increase in the number of member States as follows:

Conferences of the Non-Aligned Movement

From the outset, it became clear that the international reality has become the difference and inequality between two worlds: a politically and militarily strong and economically advanced world represented by the Eastern and Western camps, and a weak and backward world represented by non-aligned countries. That is why the Non-Aligned Movement has been working for international balance from the perspective of economic parity, especially after the movement has expanded to the point of becoming synonymous with the Third World.

In view of the circumstances in which the movement's signs emerged, namely those of the cold war and the escalation of liberation movements, the Non-Aligned Movement has been preoccupied with opposing the policy of the international bloc and attempts at bilateral polarization, defending disarmament and decolonization issues and strengthening the role of the United Nations in the search for international peace.

While wealth and technology are grouped in a small number of countries for well-known historical reasons, including colonialism, imperialism and some later social systems, such a situation has become rejected in moral law and denounced by the international conscience.

These newly liberated countries are currently waging a fierce raid against underdevelopment, but whatever the enthusiasm of the struggle of these peoples, the results obtained so far are unfortunately small and discouraging.

The Council should study this situation, which will be one of the most serious causes of international tension in the future. This is because this unfortunate situation means two billion people who feel deprived of their vital right to earn their living.

The aid to these countries as we now envisage it is, as everyone knows, inadequate, whether provided bilaterally or by international organizations. Underdeveloped countries, because of their economic weakness, may become pliant puppets in the hands of the major Powers, each seeking political supporters, strategic bases, sources of raw materials, and markets for trade. These countries feel their strength and unity, and refuse to be instruments for purposes foreign to them."

From the text of the speech delivered by King Hassan II at the Conference of Non-Aligned States Belgrad on September 3, 1961

The gap between developed and underdeveloped countries has widened, as shown in the statistics of 1960 and 1970. Between these two years, the share of underdeveloped countries in global national product has declined, and the gap between the export prices of both developed and underdeveloped countries has increased. Therefore, there are many areas in which underdeveloped countries work for economic parity with developed countries.

In 1960, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.P.) was founded and initiated the nationalization of underdeveloped countries' national wealth and price revision. The Group of Seventy-Seven representing the Third World was established in 1964 at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (C.N.U.C.E.D. in Geneva). At this conference, the new group worked to develop a new international economic order that took into account the needs of the third world in its development effort.

It is also still trying to push the initiatives of some international economic and financial organizations in the same direction, such as the International Bank for Development and Reconstruction (B.I.R.D.) and the International Monetary Fund (F.M.I.). In order to consolidate these efforts, which are being made within the framework of conferences and economic organizations, the countries of the third world have decided to address the subject of the new international order in the political framework of the Non-Aligned Movement, which has increasing political weight within the framework of current international relations.

Non-Aligned Countries can become an important catalyst for the further expansion of economic cooperation among developing countries, including, in particular, industrial cooperation, joint consultations, better cooperation between financial institutions... I am convinced that, if united, developing countries can play a better role in world trade and monetary negotiations... Our Governments must consult on specific actions in this regard. Here it is necessary for us to make joint political decisions."

From President Tito's speech at the Non-Aligned Conference in Algiers in 1973

Thus, after the Second World War, international relations took shape through two main trends: on the one hand, there is the rivalry of the Eastern and Western blocs for influence in the world, a competition that passed from the stage of tension and the Cold War to the stage of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation. On the other hand, there are the efforts of non-aligned and representative States of the Third World, which seek to balance international relations politically and economically within the framework of the North-South dialogue.