Josip Broz Tito
Non-Alignment

Under Tito's leadership, Yugoslavia became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1961, Tito co-founded the movement with Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, India's Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia's Sukarno and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, in an action called The Initiative of Five (Tito, Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah), thus establishing strong ties with third world countries. This move did much to improve Yugoslavia's diplomatic position. Tito saw the Non-Aligned Movement as a way of presenting himself as a world leader of an important bloc of nations that would improve his bargaining power with both the eastern and western blocs. On 1 September 1961, Josip Broz Tito became the first Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Tito's foreign policy led to relationships with a variety of governments, such as exchanging visits (1954 and 1956) with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, where a street was named in his honour. In 1953, Tito visited Ethiopia, and in 1954, the Emperor visited Yugoslavia. Tito's motives in befriending Ethiopia were somewhat self-interested as he wanted to send recent graduates of Yugoslav universities (whose standards were not up to those of Western universities, thus making them unemployable in the West) to work in Ethiopia, which was one of the few countries that was willing to accept them. As Ethiopia did not have much of a health care system or a university system, Haile Selassie, from 1953 onward, encouraged the graduates of Yugoslav universities, especially with medical degrees, to come work in his empire. Reflecting his tendency to pursue closer ties with Third World nations, from 1950 onward, Tito permitted Mexican films to be shown in Yugoslavia, where they became very popular, especially the 1950 film Un día de vida, which become a huge hit when it premiered in Yugoslavia in 1952. The success of Mexican films led to the " Yu-Mex " craze of the 1950s–1960s as Mexican music became popular, and it was fashionable for many Yugoslav musicians to don sombreros and sing Mexican songs in Serbo-Croatian.

Tito was notable for pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality during the Cold War and for establishing close ties with developing countries. Tito's strong belief in self-determination caused the 1948 rift with Stalin and, consequently, the Eastern Bloc. His public speeches often reiterated that policy of neutrality and co-operation with all countries would be natural as long as these countries did not use their influence to pressure Yugoslavia to take sides. Relations with the United States and Western European nations were generally cordial.

In the early 1950s, Yugoslav-Hungarian relations were strained as Tito made little secret of his distaste for the Stalinist Mátyás Rákosi and his preference for the "national communist" Imre Nagy instead. Tito's decision to create a " Balkan Pact " by signing a treaty of alliance with NATO members Turkey and Greece in 1954 was regarded as tantamount to joining NATO in Soviet eyes, and his vague talk of a neutralist Communist federation of Eastern European states was seen as a major threat in Moscow. The Yugoslav embassy in Budapest was seen by the Soviets as a centre of subversion in Hungary as they accused Yugoslav diplomats and journalists, sometimes with justification, of supporting Nagy. However, when the revolt broke out in Hungary in October 1956, Tito accused Nagy of losing control of the situation, as he wanted a Communist Hungary independent of the Soviet Union, not the overthrow of Hungarian communism. On 31 October 1956, Tito ordered the Yugoslav media to stop praising Nagy and he quietly supported the Soviet intervention on 4 November to end the revolt in Hungary, as he believed that a Hungary ruled by anti-communists would pursue irredentist claims against Yugoslavia, as had just been the case during the interwar period. To escape from the Soviets, Nagy fled to the Yugoslav embassy, where Tito granted him asylum. On 5 November 1956, Soviet tanks shelled the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest, killing the Yugoslav cultural attache and several other diplomats. Tito's refusal to turn over Nagy, despite increasingly shrill Soviet demands that he do so, served his purposes well with relations with the Western states, as he was presented in the Western media as the "good communist" who stood up to Moscow by sheltering Nagy and the other Hungarian leaders. On 22 November, Nagy and his cabinet left the embassy on a bus that took them into exile in Yugoslavia after the new Hungarian leader, János Kádár had promised Tito in writing that they would not be harmed. Much to Tito's fury, when the bus left the Yugoslav embassy, it was promptly boarded by KGB agents who arrested the Hungarian leaders and roughly handled the Yugoslav diplomats who tried to protect them. Nagy's kidnapping, followed by his execution, almost led Yugoslavia to break off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and in 1957 Tito boycotted the ceremonials in Moscow for the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, the only communist leader who did not attend.

Yugoslavia had a liberal travel policy permitting foreigners to freely travel through the country and its citizens to travel worldwide, whereas it was limited by most Communist countries. A number of Yugoslav citizens worked throughout Western Europe. Tito met many world leaders during his rule, such as Soviet rulers Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev; Egypt 's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian politicians Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi; British Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher; U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter; other political leaders, dignitaries and heads of state that Tito met at least once in his lifetime included Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Yasser Arafat, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Georges Pompidou, Kwame Nkrumah, Queen Elizabeth II, Hua Guofeng, Kim Il Sung, Sukarno, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Suharto, Idi Amin, Emperor Haile Selassie I, Kenneth Kaunda, Gaddafi, Erich Honecker, Nicolae Ceaușescu, János Kádár, Saddam Hussein and Urho Kekkonen. He also met numerous celebrities.

Yugoslavia provided major assistance to anti-colonialist movements in the Third World. The Yugoslav delegation was the first to bring the demands of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) to the United Nations. In January 1958, the French Navy boarded the Slovenija cargo ship off Oran, whose holds were filled with weapons for the insurgents. Diplomat Danilo Milić explained that "Tito and the leading nucleus of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia really saw in the Third World's liberation struggles a replica of their own struggle against the fascist occupants. They vibrated to the rhythm of the advances or setbacks of the FLN or Viet Cong.

Thousands of Yugoslav military advisors travelled to Guinea after its decolonisation and as the French government tried to destabilise the country. Tito also covertly helped left-wing liberation movements to destabilise the Portuguese colonial empire. He saw the murder of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 as the "greatest crime in contemporary history". The country's military academies hosted left-wing activists from SWAPO (Namibia) and the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa) as part of Tito's efforts to undermine apartheid in South Africa. In 1980, the intelligence services of South Africa and Argentina plotted to return the 'favour' by covertly bringing 1,500 anti-urban communist guerrillas to Yugoslavia. The operation was aimed at overthrowing Tito and was planned during the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow so that the Soviets would be too busy to react. The operation was finally abandoned due to Tito's death.

In 1953, Tito travelled to Britain for a state visit and met with Winston Churchill. He also toured Cambridge and visited the University Library.

Tito visited India from 22 December 1954 to 8 January 1955. After his return, he removed many restrictions on Yugoslavia's churches and spiritual institutions.

Tito also developed warm relations with Burma under U Nu, travelling to the country in 1955 and again in 1959, though he did not receive the same treatment in 1959 from the new leader, Ne Win. Tito had an especially close friendship with Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, who preached an eccentric mixture of monarchism, Buddhism and socialism, and, like Tito, wanted his country to be neutral in the Cold War. Tito saw Sihanouk as something of a kindred soul who, like him, had to struggle to maintain his backward country's neutrality in the face of rival power blocs. By contrast, Tito strongly disliked President Idi Amin of Uganda, whom he saw as thuggish and possibly insane.

Because of its neutrality, Yugoslavia was often rare among Communist countries in having diplomatic relations with right-wing, anti-communist governments. For example, Yugoslavia was the only communist country that had diplomatic relations with Alfredo Stroessner 's Paraguay. Yugoslavia went on to sell arms to the staunchly anti-communist regime of Guatemala under Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García during the Guatemalan Civil War. Notable exceptions to Yugoslavia's neutral stance toward anti-communist countries include Spain under Franco, Greece under Greek junta, and Chile under Pinochet; Yugoslavia was one of many countries that severed diplomatic relations with Chile after Salvador Allende was overthrown.
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