The Third World and U.S. Foreign Policy

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.