The NAM states and NAM itself did not have the means to join the Vietnam War. NAM could not send its armies to Hanoi, even as the Second NAM Conference in Cairo (1964) had stated that wars of national liberation are defensible, that they are the principal means to fulfill the "natural aspirations" of people being colonized by powers that were loath to transfer sovereignty, and that " the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible." NAM had supported the Algerian struggle in 1961 , and it welcomed the victory of the Algerians in 1962. It also supported the main liberation movements in Portuguese Africa (Mozambique, Angola, and Cabo Verde). It was enough to support wars of national liberation when these were far away and much harder to take a principled position on the armed overthrow of a recognized government. Many of the NAM states had already begun to experience armed struggle within. The dominant classes of these states held the reins of state power, and wielded it against their internal critics. It was far easier to bemoan U.S. interventions and the ailing Portuguese colonies than to validate the tactic of armed struggle, especially if such struggles had broken out within an NAM state.
one main thread running through this book is the delicate nature of the Third World coalition ... held together by opposition to the superpowers, but that's not always enough to really bind them together. sometimes there are opposing interests along other lines.