Abstract
Years ago, an African reminded fellow diplomats of the practical limitations of the UN in dealing with conflicts which the contestants do not wish to resolve: ‘When there is a dispute between small countries,’ he said, ‘the dispute in question disappears. When there is a dispute between a large country and a small country, the small country disappears. When there is a dispute between two large countries, the United Nations disappears.’
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Notes and References
The quip by an African diplomat is drawn from ‘Invasion Debate: U.N. Weakness Displayed’, New York Times, 5 March 1979.
Commentary on the UN by various US delegates can be found in John E. Stoessinger, The Might of Nations: World Politics in Our Time (New York: Random House, 1975) p. 301;
William F. Buckley, Jr, United Nations Journal: A Delegate’s Odyssey (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1977) p. 237; and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1978) p. 188.
In criticizing these views, we are summarizing arguments that have been made elsewhere: James H. Mittelman, ‘American Double Standards on African Issues at the UN’, New York Times, 22 January 1977.
The relationship between international organization and capital accumulation is explored by Robert W Cox, ‘Production and Hegemony: Toward a Political Economy of World Order’, in Harold K. Jacobson and Dusan Sidjanski (eds), The Emerging International Economic Order: Dynamic Processes, Constraints and Opportunities (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982) pp. 37–58.
The passage from the Independent Commission on International Development issues (also known as the Brandt Commission) appears in North-South: A Program for Survival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980) p. 264.
A sequel to this report is the Brandt Commission, Common Crisis, North-South: Cooperation for World Recovery (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983).
For recent data on Tanzania, see George Thomas Kurian, The New Book of World Rankings, 3rd edn (New York: Facts on File, 1991).
On the pitfalls of foreign aid, see Yashpal Tandon (ed.), Technical Assistance Administration in East Africa (Stockholm: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 1973).
Apart from the information drawn from personal experience, the sources on Tanzania are ‘Third World Saga: Tanzania’s Case Shows the Pluses and the Many Minuses of Big Foreign-Aid Programs’, Wall Street Journal, 27 August 1982, and
Andrew Coulson, ‘The Automated Bread Factory’, in Coulson (ed.), African Socialism in Practice: The Tanzanian Experience (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1979) pp. 179–83.
The conventional view on the role of modern technology in a developing economy is exemplified by W W Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960) pp. 4; 32–3.
The need to understand the context for technology transfer is stressed by Harvard professors Robert H. Hayes and Modesto A. Maidique, ‘The Technology Gap’, New York Times, 2 June 1981.
Two historical treatises explore this theme in depth: Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London: New Left Books, 1974), especially pp. 203–4, and
Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1963) pp. 22–3.
On expenditures on research and development, see UNESCO, Statistical Yearbook (Paris: UNESCO, 1994).
Excellent studies of technology and the changing international division of labour are Folker Fröbel, Jurgen Heinrichs and Otto Kreye, ‘The New International Division of Labour’, Social Science Information, 17, 1 (1978), pp. 123–42;
Charles Bergquist (ed.), Labor in the Capitalist World Economy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984); and
Joseph Grunwald and Kenneth Flamm, The Global Factory: Foreign Assembly in International Trade (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1985).
Transnational-driven research and development efforts in the Third World and India’s technology policy are discussed by Helge Hveem, ‘Selective Dissociation in the Technology Sector’, especially pp. 280, 298–303, in John Gerard Ruggie (ed.), The Antinomies of Interdependence: National Welfare and the International Division of Labor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
The argument that technology transfer is leakage from TNCs is advanced by Charles-Albert Michalet, ‘From Unequal Industrial Development to Unequal Scientific and Technological Development: Toward the New International Economic Order?’ (paper presented to the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, St Louis, 1977).
On why TNCs forestall the emergence of centres of innovation and technology in the Third World, see Stephen Hymer, ‘The Multinational Corporation and the Law of Uneven Development’, in Jagdish N. Bhagwati (ed.), Economics and World Order: From the 1970s to the 1990s (New York: Macmillan, 1972).
Some of the data cited here on TNCs is derived from John Cavanagh and Frederick F. Clairmonte, ‘From Corporation to Conglomerates: A Review of Multinationals over the Last Twenty Years’, Multinational Monitor, January 1983, pp. 16–19 and
‘Fortune’s Global 500: The World’s Largest Corporations’, Fortune, 7 August 1994, pp. F1-F4.
The quotation by Kissinger appears in Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit, 1983) p. 265.
Dr Yudkin’s report is summarized in ‘Western Drugs and Third World Markets’, The Guardian (London), 21 August 1977.
On Balasubramaniam’s statement and the example of Pakistan, see ‘Health Policy for the Third World,’ Multinational Monitor, December 1992, pp. 25–9.
On the example of pesticide use, see ‘U.S. Pesticide Kills Foreign Fruit Pickers’ Hopes,’ New York Times, 6 December 1995.
The lessons of the Bhopal tragedy are discussed in ‘Disaster in India Sharpens Debate on Doing Business in Third World’, New York Times, 16 December 1984.
The figures on the ratio of loans to unpaid debt were compiled by Mark Hulbert, ‘Will the US Bail Out the Bankers?’, The Nation, 235, 12 (16 October 1982), p. 365.
Dimensions of the debt crisis are examined in Lester B. Thurow, ‘America’s Banks in Crisis’, New York Times Magazine, 23 September 1984;
‘Records Show Citicorp Acted to Skirt Foreign Bank Rules’, New York Times, 13 September 1982;
Anthony Sampson, The Money Lenders (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981) and
Citicorp Worldwide (New York: Citicorp, 1989).
The emergence of a secondary market which trades international loans at discount is reported in ‘The Market for Latin Debt’, New York Times, 17 July 1985, and
Richard S.Weinert, ‘Swapping Third World Debt’, Foreign Policy, 65, Winter 1986–7, pp. 85–97.
On debt figures, see World Debt Tables 1991–1992 Volume 1 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1991), p. 23.
Discussion of Mexico’s bail-out is based on ‘NAFTA Disaster: The Fall of the Peso and the Mexican “Miracle”’, Multinational Monitor, April 1995, pp. 8–15.
Information on the Brady Plan comes from The Economist, especially the issue of 5 January 1991.
An appraisal of the IMF’s record is provided by John Loxley, The IMF and the Poorest Countries: The Performance of the Least Developed Countries under IMF Stand-by Arrangements (Ottawa: North-South Institute, 1984).
The increasing frequency of debt rescheduling is documented by the Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, ‘Foreign Indebtedness to US Government’ (October 1983), n.p.
The debt rescheduling figures for 1990–1994 are drawn from Jonathon E. Sanford, ‘Issue Paper: Debt Relief for African Countries’ (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 1995).
Analysis of the effects of adjustment in Ecuador is based on World Development Report 1990 (Washington, DC: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 104.
The quotation by the former Brazilian president appears in Jeff Freiden, ‘On Borrowed Time’, North American Congress on Latin America, or NACLA, Report on the Americas 19, 2 (March–April 1985), p. 2.
The political economy of debt is the subject of a special issue of International Organization, 39, 3 Summer 1985.
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© 1997 James H. Mittelman and Mustapha Kamal Pasha
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Mittelman, J.H., Pasha, M.K. (1997). Received Ideas and International Institutions. In: Out from Underdevelopment Revisited. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25183-4_3
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