8 - The third world and international society

Summary

The idea of the third world has always been a chimera. The term was originally coined by western journalists and academic writers who needed a graphic image to reintroduce a degree of order into the post-imperial world. They also sought to encapsulate an essential problem of post-colonial territories in relation to the western and communist powers. This problem was their subordination within an international hierarchy increasingly measured in terms of wealth as well as of military power. The term never lacked detractors, but it was nonetheless generally accepted by Asian, African, Caribbean and later Latin American leaders. Shiva Naipaul unwittingly revealed why.

It is a flabby western concept lacking the flesh and blood of the actual … a third world does not exist as such … it has no collective and consistent identity except in the newspapers and amid the pomp and splendour of international conferences.

Precisely so! Its utility in the political vocabulary of anti-colonial nationalism is largely explained by the access to the western media which membership of the third world gives, and the revisionist alliance which it conjures up for purposes of multilateral diplomacy.

A REVISIONIST ALLIANCE

The loose grouping of mostly new, Afro-Asian states originated with the summit held in Bandung in 1955. Although many different interests and objectives were involved, its underlying collective purpose was to restructure international society. Independence was the essence of the nationalist position, so not surprisingly there was no talk at Bandung of either integration or supranational authority.