Characters of similar ideological stripe

Posted on Tue, Sep. 12, 2006

NONALIGNED NATIONS
`Characters of similar ideological stripe'
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER
www.firmaspress.com

Throughout this week, nations grouped into a curious diplomatic entity
known as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) will be meeting in Havana. This
group consists of more than 100 Third-World states.

The movement was created in 1961, in the midst of the Cold War, by Tito,
Nasser and Nehru for the purpose of protecting its member nations from
the actions of Washington and Moscow, although in general they tilted
more in favor of the Soviet than the American interests.

After the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the Socialist bloc, an
occurrence that marked the end of the bipolar world that emerged after
World War II, it seemed the organization might be dissolved. But that
has not been the case. It lives on, fit as a fiddle, although today some
of its members are trying to use it for other purposes.

Among the many political leaders who have flocked to Havana is President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, an ultradangerous fanatic who is intent on
manufacturing atomic bombs and wiping Israel off the map; as well as
Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, maybe the Syrian Bashar al Assad and North
Korean Kim Jong-Il, or their personal representatives.

Add to the mix other characters of similar ideological stripe, spokesmen
for abominable satrapies who, morbidly intrigued by the Comandante's ill
health, will visit Fidel Castro and then try to redirect the NAM.

The intended new direction is already known: anti-American,
anti-Semitic, anti-Western and, naturally, anti-globalization. The
purpose that drives this retrograde-left group -- the enemy of progress,
of pluralism, tolerance and democracy -- is to transform the NAM into an
instrument of struggle to achieve the worldwide hegemony some call
``21st-century socialism.''

This the new disguise of an authoritarian and collectivist trend that
changes clothes with every generation, an enemy of freedom and
individual rights that has been engaged in an incessant struggle against
the ideas of the Enlightenment for the past three centuries.

While the intentions of this group are quite clear, there seems to be no
explanation for the presence in the NAM -- now and hereafter -- of
countries like Colombia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
Guatemala and Nicaragua, whose principal allies in all matters are the
United States, the European Union and Japan.

We also have to wonder about the participation, even as observers, of
countries like Mexico, El Salvador and Costa Rica, whose leaders in no
way share the world vision proposed by that backward and ignorant Left
that has caused so much harm to humanity, especially to the huge strata
of society it maintains in poverty and backwardness with the stupidities
it postulates and imposes when it assumes power.

In 1979, also in Cuba, then an obedient satellite of Moscow, Castro
presided over the NAM for the first time. In a speech that would go down
in history as the manual of the perfect lackey, Castro tried to place
the movement under the control of the Kremlin, arguing that it didn't
make sense for Third-World countries to place themselves in a spot
equidistant from the United States and the Soviet Union because Russia
was the natural ally of all poor countries.

Fortunately, the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, a nationalist
communist who co-founded the NAM and was a fearsome adversary of Soviet
imperialism, foiled Castro's maneuver, an act that sealed the total and
permanent enmity between the two dictators.

The problem is that at this new Cuban gathering there is no President
Tito willing to do battle to keep the NAM from becoming another Third
World forum at the service of idiocy, an enemy of freedom and
development. The Latin American governments that meet in Havana -- with
the exception of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, which have carefully
outlined their delirious objectives -- do not have a strategic vision of
the international conflicts. They haven't even defined which are the
national interests that must be defended.

That attitude potentially turns them into a passive crowd of extras who,
unwittingly, will end up dancing to the rhythm of an absolutely noxious
tune. It will be a new and sad version of the silence of the lambs.

©2006 Firmas Press

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