The political thinkers and leaders of third-worldism argued that the north–south divisions and conflicts were of primary political importance compared to the
East-
West opposition of the Cold War period. In the
three-world model, the countries of the
First World were the ones allied with the
United States. The
Second World designation referred to the former
industrial socialist states under the influence of the
Soviet Union. The
Third World, hence, consisted of the countries that remained non-aligned with either
NATO or the Communist Bloc. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with
colonial pasts in
Africa,
Latin America,
Oceania and
Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the
Non-Aligned Movement, connected to the world economic division as
"periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the
"core" countries. Third-worldism was connected to new political movements following the
decolonization and new forms of regionalism that emerged in the erstwhile colonies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East as well as in the older established states of Latin America, including
pan-Arabism,
pan-Africanism,
pan-Americanism and
pan-Asianism. The first period of the Third Worldist movement, that of the "first
Bandung Era", was led by the Egyptian, Indonesian and Indian heads of state such as
Nasser,
Sukarno and
Nehru. They were followed in the 1960s and 1970s by a second generation of third-worldist governments that emphasized a more radical and
revolutionary socialist vision, personified by
Che Guevara. At the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, Third Worldism entered a period of decline. == Third World Solidarity ==