The Third World And U.s. Foreign Policy

Cooperation And Conflict In The 1980s

Robert L. Rothstein

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367296575
• eBook ISBN: 9781000306330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The quest for a viable policy toward the Third World will be a dominant theme in U.S. foreign policy throughout this decade. But before any judgments can be made about the range of choices for U.S. policymakers, it is necessary to understand the pressures that are likely to confront developing nations during the 1980s as well as the efforts of these nations as a group to extract greater resources and attention from the international system. This book considers policy responses that have been and are likely to be implemented by developing nations as they face increasing pressures in the areas of food, energy, trade, and debt – the main areas of interaction within the international system. The author also presents an analysis of how the North-South Dialogue functions and why it has produced so few genuine settlements, providing an additional perspective on whether the pressures on the developing countries might be diminished by successful global negotiations. The conclusions reached by examining policy responses and the Dialogue itself provide the basis for a number of specific policy prescriptions. They also help to establish a framework within which U.S. policy initiatives toward the Third World must be formed. The two concluding chapters discuss these policy choices in detail, carefully analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of persisting in present policies, attempting a genuine global restructuring, choosing to concentrate attention on a few "new influentials" in the Third World, and trying to construct a new approach out of selected elements of the other policy approaches.

1
The North-South Arena: Background and Context

A Statement of Intent

Tension and conflict between North and South in the decades ahead are inescapable. In the worst of circumstances, a massive crisis is far from improbable; even in the best of circumstances, persistent but smaller crises-in part caused by efforts to avoid the larger crises —seem increasingly probable. These are judgments that can and should be challenged, for if they are accurate (or, more properly stated, if they are sufficiendy credible to induce new patterns of response), they have severe implications for the policies of the United States, and indeed for the policies of both North and South.

There are so many factors affecting the relationship between North and South and so many uncertainties about how or whether these factors will come into play, that any effort to forecast emerging trends and patterns is likely to seem futile or at least foolhardy. The difficulties involve more than the familiar imperfections of forecasts not based on grounded theories, which must employ data of doubtful validity, and which rest on models that necessarily oversimplify the universe of concern. Additional problems are created by the need to rely on precedents, analogies, or extrapolations from the past, all of which implicitly presume strong elements of continuity, when in fact the systemic framework itself is at issue and new goals seem increasingly imperative. Problems are especially severe in the North-South context because it is very difficult for weak and poor states, exposed to rising internal and external pressures, to respond quickly and consistently to signals for change and because a break in continuity is the primary goal of some important actors in the system.¹

Forecasting under these circumstances obviously cannot guarantee very precise or very reliable roadmaps of the future. Still, the exercise of forecasting is not without its uses, provided the limitations are kept well in mind. At the very least, we should be able to improve over "muddling through" or ad hoc improvisation, in that all concerned —including analysts and policymakers —may be alerted to the long-run implications of present actions or to the likely development of problems that might be averted or diminished by early responses. Above all, I should like to strongly emphasize that forecasting is not or should not be an academic exercise: The point of attempting to look ahead, particularly when the results are bound to be imperfect and in some cases invalidated by our own actions, is to help us order our current priorities and choose our policies more wisely now.²

Forecasts may have implications for policy merely by raising the threshold of concern about the likely outcomes of present actions or by early warning of new problems. But they will have a significant effect on policy only if they go beyond this. They must also refer to a time-period that seems relevant to the policymaker (which clearly may vary for different and differently placed policymakers), and they must suggest responses that fall within the means at the policymaker's disposal. Forecasts about the distant future may be important and interesting, but their validity is too uncertain and their connection to present patterns of concern too obscure or complex to elicit much interest from the policymaking community.³ Conversely, some immediate forecasts may seem very relevant, but they are hardly likely to induce much response if the means of influence are not in the policymaker's hands. Consequently, in the analyses that follow I have concentrated on the next decade or even on the next five years, and I have attempted throughout to emphasize policy actions that are both practical and feasible. And where I have suggested more long-range actions, I have attempted to indicate the connection between such actions and more immediate patterns of concern.

The broad question that will concern us throughout this study is, What should the policy of the United States be toward the developing countries in the 1980s? But how to answer or even how to provide material that is useful in formulating an answer to such a general question is far from self-evident. In the abstract, with the ground shifting so rapidly that neither past experience nor present "theories" (premises, axioms, aphorisms, dogmas, etc.) seem capable of providing reliable guidance, it might seem sensible to begin by positing the goals that the United States intends to seek. Unfortunately, this is less helpful than it might appear, not only because it seeks so many goals, some of which may be in conflict —rapid growth, the direct reduction of poverty, increased equity, respect for human rights, stability, political and strategic support—but also because priorities among the goals cannot be reasonably posited without prior judgments about the nature of the international system within which they must be sought. Even the rough "rules of thumb" that are occasionally offered as guidance for the practitioner (for example, in a period of vulnerability one should concentrate on avoiding dangers or diminishing risks) may be virtually meaningless, if not actively misleading, when applied to specific cases.

The difficulties of discussing U.S. policy toward a very large group of very different countries during a very unsettled period cannot be eliminated, but they can be diminished by concentrating on certain structural factors in the North-South relationship that are likely to persist and by emphasizing a number of trends that will affect (if differentially) the ability of all the developing countries to cope with their problems. I should emphasize that external factors —structures, trends, patterns, prevailing ideas —tend to exert an exceptional degree of influence or pressure on poor countries that are heavily dependent not only on trade and aid but also on the climate of the international system. This is not to argue, of course, that external factors are entirely determinative — they clearly are not—oc that they cannot be resisted, parried, or diminished, but rather that such factors are very powerful, that the means available to deal with them are limited, and that there is no easy and cost-free strategy of turning inward. Concentration on such external factors has costs of its own, as it cannot by its nature provide reliable forecasts of individual decisions. Nevertheless, an analysis of the structure of the North-South Dialogue and of the external trends that are likely to influence the choices of the countries within the Dialogue has virtues of its own: It provides the framework and setting for particular decisions, it may suggest the connections and the means by which long-term goals can be linked to short-term actions, and it should at least demonstrate why certain factors need to be taken into account in choosing policies.

I shall begin in the next chapter with an analysis of how the North-South Dialogue—by which I mean the North-South bargaining relationship within most of the major international institutions —operates and why its results have been so unsatisfactory. The latter issue requires some understanding of the bargaining process itself as well as some sense of how the Dialogue is perceived by developing-country governments "at home," that is, by ministers and officials in the capital, as distinct from representatives in Geneva and New York. Because the Dialogue will surely persist and remain an important part of the North-South relationship, this analysis should provide evidence and insight about one crucial component of the framework of decision. Finally, as I am primarily concerned with U.S. policy, I shall conclude this chapter with a brief discussion of whether and why the state of the Dialogue is a matter of concern to the United States and the other developed countries.

If Chapter 2 is designed to indicate how North and South manage their relationship, Chapters 3, 4, and 5 will attempt to indicate how trends in food, energy, and trade (and, very briefly, debt) may come to affect the choices that the developing countries, individually and jointly, have in the 1980s and the strategies that they may adopt in the Dialogue. The relationship between the material in Chapter 2 and the material in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 could be stated in another fashion: Chapter 2 concentrates on the efforts of the developing countries to establish and maintain a unified international bargaining strategy; the ensuing chapters consider some of the crucial issues that will be included in that strategy, but perhaps more critically the initial impact of trends in food, energy, and trade will fall directly on the governments themselves. Whether a solution to these pressures is sought through unilateral action (for example, special arrangements with a developed country), through unified group pressure, or through some mix of the two (as seems most likely) may determine the substance and significance of the Dialogue in the 1980s and after. At any rate, I shall examine in each chapter what the experts foresee and what they prescribe, but I shall be most concerned with two separate, but connected, policy questions. The first is whether the developing countries are implementing agreed policies and what might be done in the short run to increase the chances that they will do so. The second question, broader in intent, asks what the implications would be for U.S. policy toward the Third World if a significant number of developing countries fail to implement successful policies in food, energy, and trade and become areas of great potential instability. I shall thus move in each chapter from an analysis of the specifics of each issue to an analysis of how the issue might intersect with the more general concerns of foreign policy and international politics.

Taken by themselves, the studies of food, energy, and trade may generate a number of useful, if narrow, policy insights. Taken together, however, they are potentially even more useful for providing a more general perspective on the relationship between the developing countries and the international environment in the 1980s. Common patterns and common deficiencies that cross all of the issues and that are frequently obscured by concentration on a single issue thus help to establish the wider context within which policy choices must be made. These commonalities will be discussed in a number of places, but especially at the end of Chapter 5. As a result, what should emerge from Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 is some sense of the structural and intellectual dynamics of the existing Dialogue, some judgments about the stresses and strains that are likely to affect the operation of the North-South system in the 1980s, and some speculations about how effectively the South is likely to respond to these developments. These analyses will provide the essential background for the discussion of the policy choices that confront the government of the United States.

Chapters 6 and 7 will move up one level of analysis. Rather than discussing policy options, in say, food and energy, I shall deal with the broader question of what policy stance the United States should or can adopt toward a very large group of extremely diverse countries in a very difficult environment of decision. Before discussing the range of policy alternatives, Chapter 6 will consider a number of other issues that might affect the process of choice (for example, the significance of declining U.S. power and of changing U.S. goals in the Third World) and it will analyze a few scenarios that suggest possible outcomes of prevailing trends. The material in this chapter consequently will provide further comment on the factors that will affect the setting within which the policy alternatives discussed in Chapter 7 must be assessed and chosen. The analysis of the policy alternatives themselves seems to lead to a particular choice, but it should be emphasized that the discussion of each policy attempts to be even-handed. I discuss advantages and disadvantages of each choice and make a special effort to indicate, within each choice, the policies most likely to keep open the possibility of movement toward a more stable (and thus more equitable) international order.

Implementation will be a concern throughout this study. I shall be interested in what should be done as well as in what is not being done. This is a crucial issue, for while there is wide agreement in some areas on what the developing countries should be doing, there is far less knowledge about what governments are actually doing, because of gaps in the collection of data, serious time lags before the data is available, or an unwillingness to permit the data to be released.⁴ The importance of these deficiencies is self-evident, for they have a significant effect on the amounts of resources needed to achieve desired ends, on judgments about the best political and economic strategies to assure effective implementation of policies and on the need to assess the implications for individual countries and the system as a whole of the failure to implement policies successfully.

In addition, there is a persistent tendency in the discussion of issues on the North-South agenda to ignore the problem of implementation. As successful implementation requires effective linkage between three separate and only partially overlapping political "games" (intragroup and intergroup bargaining and bargaining in the context of application), each with different actors, needs, and rules, explicit concern with the issue is imperative. Indeed, understanding why there is so little concern with implementation is illuminating in and of itself and is perhaps a necessary preface to establishing the means by which policies that are made within one political game will be implemented —will achieve their intended effects —in another. Unfortunately, although implementation will surely become an even more crucial issue in a period of slow growth and very scarce resources, I cannot discuss the issue in any detail here; it requires a study of its own. Still, I hope that the comments in Chapters 3 and 4 are at least suggestive. Moreover, it can be useful merely to emphasize how important and how neglected this issue is.

Two other issues require a brief comment in this chapter. The first concerns certain dominant perceptions of the prospects for the international system in this decade. The second concerns the different conceptual frameworks that operate in the North-South arena. Both issues are important, if elusive, because they help to determine the climate of debate—what gets taken for granted or what "stands to reason," even if it should not.

Prospects for the International System: The Implications of Pessimism

Growing interdependence within the world economy, as well as the increasing role of government in the determination of national economic welfare, has generated two widely shared analytic propositions: Nations can no longer choose policies in isolation from the choices made by other nations, and all crises must henceforth be systemic.⁵ These propositions seem clearly to imply the need for more central control or management of the international economy. As a result many studies propound the need for new or strengthened international institutions in trade, natural resources, monetary affairs, industrial development, food, energy, the weather, the oceans, and shipping.⁶ In the abstract, the case is strong, for economic interdependence might well increase in the future, and the existing institutional structure is weak, if not crumbling, and was designed for a different kind of international order. From the perspective of the practitioner, however, a different interpretation of needs and possibilities seems to prevail or at least seems more realistic.

There is a corollary to the theory of the "second-best" that may illuminate the practitioner's dilemma.⁷ The corollary states that when market imperfections exist, the elimination or reduction of only one or a few imperfections is not likely to improve welfare as long as the other imperfections or distortions persist; only the removal of all the imperfections guarantees the increased welfare promised by conventional trade theory. Removal of all the imperfections, however, may be too costly in time and resources, not least because the policymaker cannot control the actions of external policymakers. Choice of second-best policies, which may introduce new distortions to counter the old distortions, thus seems imperative. In this sense, the correct second-best response to interdependence is not necessarily to seek optimal solutions to the problems it engenders, which would imply some sacrifices of national control and increased efforts at multilateral cooperation, but rather to increase efforts to limit the effects and growth of interdependence and to increase national control over economic resources and activities.

I should emphasize that second-best policies are likely to seem (relatively) more attractive to powerful and large countries that control enough of their environment to insure continued —if lesser —prosperity. The implications are considerably different for poor and small countries, for whom cooperative solutions may be a sensible choice. Second-best choices by the rich may be disastrous for the poor, unless the poor have been prudent enough to develop some protection against adverse external developments. But it should be noted that the developing countries do not really desire first-best policies (which would imply an open economy in which they might not be able to compete effectively), but second-best policies deliberately biased to protect their interests.

The ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1. The North-South Arena: Background and Context
• 2. The North-South Dialogue
• 3. Food Policy, Foreign Policy, and the International Politics of Food
• 4. The Developing Countries and the Energy Crisis
• 5. The Developing Countries and the Trading System
• 6. The Search for a Policy Framework for the 1980s
• 7. The United States and the Third World in the 1980s: Policy and Choice
• Index