DIPLOMACY : Adjusting to a Unipolar World : Developing countries are worried about a loss of leverage in international politics in the wake of America’s Gulf War victory.

The conspicuous rout of Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf War may have buoyed public feeling in the United States and other industrialized countries, but to some developing countries it has been another sign of the declining leverage of the Third World.

While President Bush hailed the allied victory as evidence of a return of U.S. leadership, some Third World countries--including governments that were unenthusiastic about what Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had done--viewed Baghdad’s defeat with deep ambivalence, even disappointment.

The U.S. victory, and Soviet acquiescence in Washington’s strategy, underscored the fact that the bipolar world is gone and America has emerged as the sole superpower.

By Third World reckoning, that has sharply reduced developing countries’ leverage in international affairs.

Before, Third World countries could play one superpower against the other to gain aid, arms, influence or support. But now, “there is no longer this balance of power,” says Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, India’s U.N. ambassador.

To be sure, some veteran Western diplomats do not share the chagrin over the reduction of the Third World’s leverage. Recalling some excesses, in which developing countries have reaped billions of dollars only to waste them, a U.S. official calls it “a good thing.”

But others say that because of Third World sensitivities, the allies--particularly the United States--now have an obligation to show developing countries that they care about more than merely defeating Iraq and will work to help poorer countries achieve their goals.

“There is a perception out there that Big Brother--the United States--leads the Security Council and that the United States is going to marginalize the Third World here,” says Yves Fortier, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations. “The United States is going to have a major, major role here in showing itself to be supportive of the United Nations in other areas and in showing itself not to be the Big Bully and the Odd Man Out on many issues.”

Disappointment isn’t the only reaction the war has sparked in Third World capitals. There also is a good deal of introspection, particularly among the 101 countries of the Nonaligned Movement, the Third World’s chief lobbying group at the United Nations.

Although the group sought, at least publicly, to distance itself from both superpowers during the Cold War, such detachment seems to have less significance now that the United States and the Soviet Union no longer are at loggerheads all the time.

“A lot of soul-searching is going on,” India’s Gharekhan says. “There are some governments that feel the Nonaligned Movement is not relevant. Others, like India, feel the movement should become more vigilant.”

Just where all this will lead is uncertain. Foreign ministers of the Nonaligned Movement are to meet in September in Accra, Ghana, but it is unclear what proposals will be on the table.

To some, the most likely course would be the transformation of the Nonaligned Movement into an organization of the undeveloped “South”--as the developing world is known--trying to protect itself from the industrialized “North.”

Although placing the struggle in North-South terms still troubles industrialized countries, many Third World peoples already see the Gulf War through such a prism.

“It’s a question of rich and poor,” says Brian Urquhart, a former U.N. undersecretary general who is now a Ford Foundation scholar. “A lot of poor people see Saddam Hussein as a Robin Hood.”

For some, Hussein, for all his bad points, is a Third World leader who had stood up to the United States.

Some also view the United States as a bully, whose aim is to put down Third World countries, much as the colonial powers of Europe did when they took over and colonized parts of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. As a result, many Third World countries worry that the emergence of the United States as the lone superpower will only heighten that perceived threat.

“The U.S. intervention might have lasted three months, but its evil effects will be felt for years to come,” Diario de Monterrey, an independent newspaper in northern Mexico, editorialized just after the U.S. victory.