Berger, Mark. "After the Third World? History, destiny and the fate of Third Worldism". Third World Quarterly, Vol.25, No.1 (2004): 9-39.

Berger, Mark. "After the Third World? History, destiny and the fate of Third Worldism". Third World Quarterly, Vol.25, No.1 (2004): 9-39.

• Third Worldist governments, which sought to overcome the East-West dichotomy of the Cold War with a progressive struggle in the context of a North-South divide (10), can be divided into two generations: first-generation regimes of the 1950s and second-generation regimes of the 1960s, the later of which were more socialist in nature (11).
• The Third World movement grew out of the political situation surrounding the interplay of colonialism, anti-colonial nationalism, and the Cold War following 1945. This often played out in the UN, whose political gridlock since 1950 was the immediate issue at hand in the organization of the 1955 Bandung Conference (11-12). 
• At the Bandung Conference, the parties declared their opposition to colonialism, singling out French colonialism in North Africa as particularly objectionable. They also criticized the 'neo-Colonialism' of the United States, the colonial regimes of South Africa and Israel, and the colonial nature of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe (12).
• The Bandung Conference did not lead to any actual initiatives and a subsequent conference in Algiers in 1965 was cancelled due to the Sino-Soviet Split, but the meeting inspired a number of other Third Worldist organizations, such as the African–Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organisation (12).
• In September 1961, Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia, hosted the first meeting of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, attended by 25 heads of state and 19 different national liberation organizations. The roster in Belgrade was much more exclusive than the Bandung Conference, excluding states with strong ties to the West or USSR, including former colonies such as American ally Pakistan or French client Mali (12-13).
• The 1961 Belgrade Conference was followed by a 1964 meeting in Cairo, a 1970 meeting in Lusaka, and a 1973 meeting in Algiers (13).
• Despite its goals, by 1964 almost all of the members of the Non-Aligned Movement had some level of economic and political connection with either the West of the Soviet Union (13).
• Immediately after winning the Chinese Civil War, the Communist government of China pursued a policy of Soviet-directed development by pursuing, "economic policies that included co-operating with or allowing the continued commercial activities of those members of the bourgeoisie who had not worked with the Japanese. At the same time in rural areas they focused on land redistribution, the execution and purging of landlords and the consolidation of the power of the Communist Party. In 1954 the Chinese leadership set up a state planning apparatus and began nationalizing industry and commerce, while in 1955 they moved to collective agriculture along Soviet lines" (13).
• By the 1950s, however, Chinese leadership became increasingly critical of the low levels of agricultural growth and excessive centralization of the Soviet system and launched the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Tensions continued to increase between the two countries as Chairman Mao criticized Soviet policy towards the West leading to the Sino-Soviet Split in 1960, during which time China began to take a leading role in the Third World movement (13-14).
• Chinese attempts to control the Third World movement were never entirely successful, as the government's relationships with many prominent states were poisoned by its hostility with the US and USSR. Additionally, Chinese aggression in the Sino-Indian War cost them an ally in South Asia (14).
• In the 1950s India under the Nehru administration was prepared to take a leading role in the Third World movement under the principles of planned economics, democracy, and socialism, but by Prime Minister Nehru's death in 1964 Indian leadership was in crisis and incapable of true global leadership (14-15).
• Indonesian leader Sukarno was another star in the early Third World movement, attempting to blend nationalism, Islam, and Marxism within a syncretic ideology, until his overthrow by General Suharto in 1965. Under the Sukarno administration, the government nationalized Netherlandish property and key industries or giving them to military officers, using the new revenue into public works and social spending (15-16).
• By the early 1960s, a decline in global commodity prices combined with stagnation in state-controlled sugar and rubber plantations put Indonesia's economy on the brink of collapse. At the same time, the complex divide-and-rule system created by General Sukarno fell apart over border issues with Malaysia (16).
• Following General Suharto's coup in 1965 Indonesia experienced a massive shift in political and international policy. The old party system was broken up with the eradication of the Communist Party, and Indonesia was brought into the American-led alliance structure in East Asia. Economic policy, however, remained largely state-controlled (16).
• Following the Second World War, Egypt emerged as a center of Pan-arabism and the Third World movement, a position cemented after the Free Officer's Coup in 1952. Under the leadership of President Nasser, Egypt pursued policies of state-led industrialization and radical nationalism (16-17).
• The primary vehicle for advancing Gamal Nasser's influence in the Middle East was the Arab League, a decentralized association of Arab states led from Cairo. Under Egyptian leadership, the League primarily fought for Palestine and against French influence in the Arab world. After President Nasser's death in 1970, the League came to be dominated by non-Egyptian factions like the PLO (17).
• The African figure in the early Third World movement was Kwame Nkrumah, first Prime Minister of Ghana in 1957 and key ideology of pan-Africanism. He led Ghana as the forefront of a socialist pan-Africanism, emphasizing regional cooperation, and state-led economic growth. Regional integration projects failed, however, as more nations became independent (18).
• For short periods of time, Ghana had been united with Guinea, Mali, and Senegal. All of these projects failed, with regional integration terminating with Mr. Nkrumah's overthrow in a 1966 military coup (18).
• Despite the economic and political failures of the Nkrumah administration, the ideology of pan-Africanism still exists in a partial form today through the Organization of African Unity, now replaced by the African Union (18).
• The Second-generation Third Worldist regimes were much more unambiguously socialist, including the Qaddafi regime in Libya, the Castro administration in Cuba, the Derg government of Ethiopia, and many others (19).
• Although the ideological distinction between first and second generation Third Worldist regimes is unclear and blurred, generally second-generation regimes are more radical, and more explicitly anti-Western (20).
• The victory of the FLN in the Algerian War marked the beginning of the second-generation of Third World regimes, as the next sequence of major revolutionary leaders and governments were explicitly socialist (21).
• The installation of a Communist government in Cuba, close to America and in a country long allied with the West, had important consequences for both Communist and Third Worldist intellectuals. Specifically, the lack of support from Premier Brezhnev for the Castro administration encouraged many Latin American Communists to break with the USSR and adopt a more radical and revolutionary approach (21-22).
• This radicalism in guerrilla insurgency was spearheaded by Che Guevara, but following his idiotic death in 1967 following capture by Bolivian forces, Cuba returned to Soviet influence by the 1970s (22).
• Radical revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa continued to be inspired by the original Cuban experience, with many new Communist states in Nicaragua and Angola supporting the Third World movement (22).
• Although almost all Third World regimes came to power promising to modernize deeply conservative and rural populations through land reform and state-led industrialization based on import-substitution, the high tax burden of the expanding state and widespread corruption led to the moral bankruptcy of most regimes as colonial-era disputes reasserted themselves (23).
• The economic crisis of most of the Third World by the mid-1970s spurred the passage of the 1974 UN Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order [NIEO], which called for the restructuring of the world economy in favor of the unindustrialized Third World (23).
• The movement behind NIEO was championed by President Boumedienne of Algeria, President Andres of Venezuela, President Echeverria of Mexico, and Shah Mohammed Reza. It was never implemented in any form, as it would required expanded powers for the UN not supported by either the USA, USSR, or the Gulf States (24).
• By the 1980s it was clear that the Third World movement was in decline, with the anti-Soviet alliance between Cambodia, Vietnam, China, and Laos dissolving into war in the late 1970s. More broadly, conflict between North and South was undermined by Western initiatives to support neoliberalism as an alternative to failed state-led development (24-25).
• Under the Clinton administration, American foreign policy has focused much more on foreign development and sustainable economic growth under the aegis of USAID. However, the major of aid continued to be sent to strategic allies, with a third of total funds in 1994 going to Israel and Egypt, both countries receiving over triple the amount for sub-Saharan Africa (26).
• Both President George H. Bush and President Clinton saw the expansion of market democracy through development projects and aid as critical to preserving peace and security. However, the focus clearly remained on solidifying American gains in former Communist states, with the Third World left as a secondary priority (26-27).
• Remaining support for the Third Worldist movement was been further eroded with the immense economic success of East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, whose success under neoliberal regimes has eroded the legitimacy of socialist ideas of development contained in Third Worldism (27).
• The market reforms undertaken in China and Vietnam in the late 1980s and 1990s marked the effective end of the Third World movement in East Asia, as these governments, which had previously championed state-led economic development, entered the global capitalist order (27).
• As demonstrated by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's endorsement of an explicit racial conception of Third Worldism, the concept continues to have geopolitical and conceptual significance. Many have argued that, especially in an Asian context, contemporary Third Worldism is deeply conservative and anti-Western without socialist leanings (28).
• Studies of South African politics after the collapse of the Apartheid regime have shown interesting contradictions between the continued use of the Third World identity and attempts by governing powers to attract investment from Western countries (28-29).
• The author provides a source mine of articles and texts explored different modern uses of the Third World from page 28 to page 30, with some authors also from page 31 to page 33.
• The author claims that the failure of Third World movement was largely driven by the failure of state-driven economic development in non-aligned parts of the world, which had previously been the centrally touted element of Third World development strategy (31).
• Essentially because Third Worldism was tied to promises of economic prosperity and national progress, the widespread failure of these regimes to produce political life substantially different than the colonial system led to delegitimization of the Third World movement as a political force (31).
• The author further asserts that most of the conceptual backing of the Third World has been dominated by the US following the end of the Cold War, as the term becomes associated with development rather than independence (31).