The United Nations and its democratization became the proxi­mate goals of NAM, which had therefore abjured any attempt to over­throw, or even jujitsu, both superpowers.

As Nasser and Nehru prepared to leave Brijuni, they heard news that the U. S. government had decided to cut its $200 million pledge to finance Egypt's $ 1 .3 billion Aswan High Dam. The dam was crucial to Egyptian plans, as the Free Officers hoped that it would help the sluggish Egyptian agricultural sector, an area that needed immediate redress for the Repub­lic to retain the support of the fellahin, the peasantry. To gain investment funds, Nasser had tried to play the Atlantic powers against the Soviets.12 Apart from these productive projects, Nasser also played off the two major blocs over arms sales. The United States had a less attractive offer: among its stringent restrictions, the U.S . government offered only certain kinds of arms, wanted them accompanied by a U.S. military assistance mission, and required that the U.S . arms aid be used to buy high-priced U.S. hardware (an elegant way to subsidize the U.S. weapons companies) . All this being impossible for Egypt, Nasser bought weapons from Czechoslovakia. In addition, Nasser had refused to join the Baghdad Pact and pushed the English to remove their military base from Suez. Little wonder that Dulles despised the Nasserite regime.

[...] In early December 1 964, Che Guevara took this message to the floor of the UN General Assembly: "We should like to wake up this Assembly. Imperialism wants to convert this meeting into a useless oratorical tournament instead of solving the serious prob­lems of the world. We must prevent them from doing this . . . . As Marxists we maintain that peaceful co-existence does not include co-existence between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed. [...]

[...] The African, Asian, and Latin American states proffered draft resolutions to bring democracy to the United Nations in 1957, but it was not until 1959 and 1960 that the General Assembly heard debates on this theme. From Guinea to Pakistan, delegates reflected on the need for the United Nations to be awake to history, alter its structure as large numbers of new nations took their seats as sovereign powers, rethink its veto powers to the colonial and nuclear powers, and do so in the spirit of justice, not charity. [...]