Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement. Its capital, Belgrade, was the host of the First Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in early September 1961. The city also hosted the Ninth Summit in September 1989.

Non-alignment and active participation in the movement was the corner-stone of the Cold War foreign policy and ideology of the Yugoslav federation.^[1] As the only European socialist state beyond the Eastern Bloc, and a country economically linked to Western Europe, Yugoslavia championed balancing and cautious equidistance^[2] towards United States, Soviet Union and China, in which non-alignment was perceived as a collective guarantee of the country's political independence.^[3] In addition, non-alignment opened further maneuver space in status quo Cold War Europe compared to neutral countries whose foreign policy was often limited by great powers, most notably in the case of Finlandization.^[4]

The end of the Cold War and the subsequent breakup of Yugoslavia seemed to bring into question the very existence of the Movement, which was preserved only by the politically pragmatic chairmanship of Indonesia.^[5]