Anthony L. Hall is a descendant of the Turks & Caicos Islands, international lawyer and political consultant - headquartered in Washington DC - who publishes his own Internet Weblog at www.theipinionsjournal.com offering commentaries on current events from a Caribbean perspective

Therefore, given this unassailable political caveat, I’m sure reasonable minds would like know why so many heads of state (especially from our region) are wasting time and money hanging out at the week-long NAM Summit now underway in Cuba?

But first, here’s a little background: The NAM was founded in 1955 by (mostly Third-World) leaders that were wary of betting their national fate on whether the United States or the Soviet Union would eventually triumph in the Cold War, which was, then, getting very hot indeed.  And although Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is considered its founding father, the NAM was not formalized until President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia hosted Nehru and others, including Sukarno of Indonesia, Nasser of Egypt and Nkrumah of Ghana, at the first NAM Summit in Belgrade in September 1961.

Now, consider this:  From the outset, the NAM’s founding principles (a.k.a. five pillars or restraints) were not worth the paper they were written on. And no members made a mockery of them more than nations on the continent of Africa, which comprise the vast majority of the NAM’s members.  Because nothing has characterized life in post-colonial Africa quite like African dictators systematically violating the principles which called for mutual respect for territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression and mutual benefit and equality.

Moreover, the NAM principle which called for mutual non-interference in domestic affairs seems to have operated as a de facto cover for members to mutually ignore the most egregious abuses of human rights, government graft and even the ravages of civil war taking place in member states.

Indeed, recall Rwandan President Paul Kigame’s lament about the failure of NAM countries (now totaling 118) to even try to prevent the massacre of almost 1 million Africans during the (Hutus v. Tutsis) tribal warfare that engulfed his country just over 12 years ago.  And, try to appreciate the implications of his pyrrhic praise of U.S. President Bill Clinton for being the only world leader who visited Rwanda in the aftermath of that massacre to offer his apology for America’s failure to act. Then, one is compelled to wonder what NAM leaders were thinking during this notorious Rwandan genocide, and when, if ever, they plan to offer similar apologies….

But never mind Rwanda, it remains to be seen if the agenda for this summit will be so obsessively focused on blowing rhetorical flatulence at the U.S. that there will be no place for a meaningful condemnation of the Sudan for lording over the genocide now raging in Darfur, where 450,000 Africans have already been massacred and another 2 million displaced. Of course, verbal condemnation is all we can hope for since the NAM’s founding principles ostensibly forbid its members from interfering in the domestic affairs of member states to stop this genocide….

Meanwhile, it is not surprising that the NAM is holding this very high-profile summit in Cuba - the only remaining communist dictatorship in the Americas. After all, it was at its Havana summit in 1979 that Jamaican President Michael Manley articulated the only discernible, though now thoroughly discredited, reason for the NAM’s existence:

"All anti-imperialists know that the balance of forces in the world shifted irrevocably in 1917 when there was a movement and a man in the October Revolution, and Lenin was the man!”

(Incidentally, I appreciate that it might be analogous to the infamous question - “Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” But apart from this historic political misjudgment, I think Manley was one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century!   But I digress...)

Nor, therefore, is it surprising that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are competing for NAM-Summit king.  After all, no two world leaders have parroted Manley’s historically flawed rhetoric more than these two.  And, it is consistent with their patent lack of political judgment that they are trying, unabashedly, to induce NAM members to align themselves with a league of anti-imperialist, anti-American nations in a new (bipolar) Cold War with the U.S. (...Alas, they are condemned to repeat history.)

Nonetheless, just as NAM leaders sold out their non-aligned status for financial or military aid from the U.S. and/or Soviet Union during Cold War I, they will undoubtedly do the same during this brewing Cold War II - by aligning themselves, for the right price, with either the Ahmadinejad-Chavez anti-imperialists or the putative Bush imperialist camp.

NOTE:  It remains to be seen if America’s perceived weakness juxtaposed to Iran and Venezuela’s perceived strength (buoyed by their oil wealth) will embolden or induce NAM member states - accustomed to taking furtive bribes in exchange for their allegiance - to declare publicly, as President Bush dared them to do, whether they are for Ahmadinejad and Chavez or against them….

ENDNOTE:  Most astute observers appreciate that this NAM Summit is little more than a dress rehearsal for the political speeches members intend to deliver at next week’s annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York.  Yet the wheeling and dealing in Cuba is worth observing to see how many votes Chavez manages to buy to ensure that Venezuela, not U.S.-backed Guatemala, will be elected to sit on the influential UN Security Council; And more important, to see how much political and moral support Ahmadinejad manages to buy to support Iran’s looming confrontation with the U.S. over his country’s nuclear weapons program.