The Western media invented a tripartite world based on military blocs, not production modes.

Evidence

Since the Western media were less interested in regional realities and saw those realities through the prism of Soviet-American contentions, it was particularly keen to pick up this singular aspect and conjured up a tripartite division of the world, with the ‘Third World’ being the world of military non-alignment. In this characterization, the American world was First not because capitalism was superior but because irs interlocking military alliances, from NATO to SEATO, were more powerful, with fully global reach; the USSR was Second because it had only the Warsaw Pact, with a comparatively very inferior technological base; the Third World was composed of those countries which were militarily nor aligned with either the United Stares or the USSR and could therefore be a force for peace. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1271

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the received meaning of ‘Third World’ central to postcolonial theory’s self-understanding — relevant to tracing how identity categories get strategically deployed vs. materially grounded.