By the time of the First World War itself, there were elements of a ‘universal’ international society, but this was not consolidated and quickened until the Second World War. A real revolution was occurring in world affairs, as non-Christian states were admitted to the international ‘community’ for the first time in several centuries as a result of the revolt against the West. As is well known, during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, these new states took charge of the UN and its specialized agencies due to their numerical superiority, and attempted to transform international law through the use of UNGA resolutions, the establishment of new international institutions and the introduction of new elements into the doctrinal corpus of international law such as the doctrine of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources (PSNR). This was done under the umbrella of the NIEO, which broadly called for structural changes in the world economy that the new nations desired, in the interests of justice, world peace, and development.

This chapter provides an analysis of the important moments that characterized this Third World engagement with (what was still then) a European international law. My analysis differs, however, from the traditional historiographies of the NIEO, which treat NIEO as a failure and attribute that failure to its radicalism and lack of realism. Instead, the NIEO constituted a moment of radical challenge to international law that resulted in transforming and expanding the reach of international law, but it was also inherently limited in the extent of its radicalism.