NAM: Authoritarian Amalgamation

The Cold War still evokes memories of two power blocs struggling to spread their ideology and influence under the shadow of nuclear Armageddon.
The United States-led western democracies used all their power to spread the frontiers of the free world. The Soviet Union, representing half a dozen communist satellites in Eastern Europe, was intent on vanquishing the forces of imperialism and expansionism.
The Third World, with its micro-nationalism, ethnic fissures and tribal fault-lines, provided the superpowers their battleground.
For an entire group of newly independent nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the pressures were too daunting. In some, Marxist governments emerged through violent revolutions aided and abetted by Moscow. In others, right-wing autocracies – mostly military regimes – seized power through active support from Washington.
Caught in the crossfire, some countries decided to form their own alliance: the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Leaders like Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser, India’s Jawahar Lal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito and Indonesia’s Sukarno, believed the Third World could assert its role through collective action. NAM went on to include over 100 members, representing 55 percent of the planet’s people. It is the largest international organization after the United Nations, containing nearly two-thirds of the U.N.’s membership.
Officially, NAM saw itself not formally aligned with or against either power bloc. Members focused on national struggles for independence, the eradication of poverty, economic development and opposing colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
NAM was intended to be as close an alliance as NATO or the Warsaw Pact. From the outset, it had little cohesion. Many of its members were aligned with one or another of the great powers. Cuba, allied with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, organized a summit in 1979. India, another Soviet ally, was an active NAM member. The large number of U.S.-backed military regimes that professed non-alignment was a source of amusement to the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, NAM cracked open right in the middle. Soviet client states fully supported the invasion, while others cried foul.
Nevertheless, NAM has had a great source of internal cohesion from its very inception: It contains the largest collection of the world's authoritarian governments.