Third-worldism

Overview

The political thinkers and leaders of third-worldism argued that the north–south divisions and conflicts were of primary political importance compared to the East-West opposition of the Cold War period. In the three-world model, the countries of the First World were the ones allied with the United States. The Second World designation referred to the former industrial socialist states under the influence of the Soviet Union. The Third World, hence, consisted of the countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, connected to the world economic division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core" countries.

Third-worldism was connected to new political movements following the decolonization and new forms of regionalism that emerged in the erstwhile colonies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as well as in the older established states of Latin America, including pan-Arabism, pan-Africanism, pan-Americanism and pan-Asianism.

The first period of the Third Worldist movement, that of the "first Bandung Era", was led by the Egyptian, Indonesian and Indian heads of state such as Nasser, Sukarno and Nehru. They were followed in the 1960s and 1970s by a second generation of third-worldist governments that emphasized a more radical and revolutionary socialist vision, personified by Che Guevara. At the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, Third Worldism entered a period of decline.