The countries allied with Washington became known as the First World, those which aligned with Moscow were described as the Second World. The Third World was anyone who stayed out.

The terms were coined in 1952 by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy. He was consciously alluding to the "Third Estate" of the French Revolution, which represented the ignored and exploited majority. So from the start it carried a sense of marginalisation and perhaps manipulated deprivation as well as non-alignment.

Some of those countries were not content with just sitting on the sidelines, and sought a way to ensure they could wield influence as players on the global stage. They went on to form the Non-Aligned Movement, an international organisation that was officially established in 1961 but whose future members had been coordinating with one another for years prior.

Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Sukarno of Indonesia and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana spearheaded the movement. The five developed the central philosophy that recently independent nations should be allowed to determine their own political leanings without having to take sides in the battle between the world’s two superpowers.

Most of the nations that joined NAM were from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. A majority had recently gained independence from European powers. India, Egypt, Indonesia, Ghana, Cuba and Yugoslavia were founding members and were influential in its early years.  Despite their differing political structures and international relationships, the countries had enough in common to make NAM a functional organisation.

Central to the movement was the principle of national independence and sovereignty. The group advocated for peace, taking a stand against colonialism and neocolonialism, and promoted economic and cultural cooperation between countries of the Global South . That helped member nations have a unified voice in international politics at a time when the US and USSR were making most of the decisions that affected them.

The Non-Aligned Movement is still around today.  Many countries want more independence when dealing with foreign policy and more opportunity to form alliances with nations other than their traditional partners. While the division of the world between US and USSR has long disappeared, NAM continues to allow member states to band together around common interests.

The map above captures the gravity of that confrontation: Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile bases in Cuba, U.S. naval and air “quarantine” (blockade) zones around the island and the looming threat circle stretching deep into the continental United States .

This wasn’t just another Cold War standoff. It was arguably the moment when nuclear war crept into real possibility, when world leaders and citizens alike recognised that missteps might have unleashed catastrophe.

The roots of the crisis lay in a series of strategic moves: the United States had placed medium-range nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy, threatening Soviet territory, while the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev responded by emplacing nuclear missiles in Cuba to counter U.S. dominance and protect the regime of Fidel Castro.

Kennedy’s October 22 speech declared that any nuclear attack launched from Cuba would be met with full retaliatory response. Through a naval “quarantine” announced publicly, the U.S. effectively blocked further Soviet shipments to the island.

Within two weeks, the tension subsided, but only after a secret agreement: the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. would privately agree to remove certain missiles from Turkey and Italy. The parties also established a direct communication link, the famed “hotline”, to avoid being so perilously close again.