But Chávez represents something new in postwar history. Chávez seeks to divide the world into two camps, two poles in opposition: north v. south, colored v. white, collectivist v. democratic, “humanist” v. “capitalist imperialist.” Turning the United Nations into its power center, the Non-Aligned Movement, rising as a new hostile superpower in a new cold war, will find itself increasingly drawn to the intoxicating poison of violent Muslim extremism. And the United Nations is now its home base. ~Mario Loyola

Chavez is, of course, a blowhard and a despot.  He is also a democratically elected blowhard and despot, which makes him a curious leader for the world’s anti-democratic forces.  Collectivism and democracy are typically not opposed to one another, but the former often follows from the latter and takes its destructively populist logic from the democratic principles of equality and popular sovereignty. 

The United Nations is notoriously powerless, and is also still under the heel of the five permanent Council members.  Normally the main complain from the right these days is that the U.N. is useless and impotent, not that it is the launching pad for world domination.  To make this organisation into your power base is about as threatening to the real powers of the world as a boy’s tree fort is threatening to the military base down the street.  By all means, dismantle the U.N.–I would be among the first to cheer on hearing of its dissolution–but spare us the stories of the power-hungry (which Loyola keeps repeating again and again because, of course, our politicians never do anything for the sake of power) developing world intent on challenging us. 

For the NAM to be anything like a superpower, the constituent members of the NAM would have to be able to wield the kind of financial, military and political power of a superpower, and they simply haven’t got it.  Some of their members have some oil, I grant you, and they can make some mischief in that area, but otherwise they represent a potentially annoying but minimal challenge to America and Europe. 

Of all the chimerical enemies dreamed up by the threatmongers, the terror that is the Non-Aligned Movement is as insubstantial as it gets.