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THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR MORE: Third World Conflicts with the Rich Nations by Bernard D. Nossiter

THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR MORE: Third World Conflicts with the Rich Nations

By

Pub Date: March 31st, 1987
Publisher: Harper & Row

An examination of the struggle of the South (Third World nations) to obtain more of the world's wealth from the industrialized North. Nossiter traces the evolution of the South's major demands for foreign aid, trading advantages and private capital, and the North's responses, through the debate in the international institutions of UNCTAD, GATT, IMF and the World Bank. His conclusion is that the North-South debate is a dialogue of the deaf: the South mistakenly blames all its problems on its inferior position in the global economy: the North gives little, and the stings attached to its few concessions distort the South's development. While common sense and conventional viewpoints make this a useful reference work, they mar its analysis. Nossiter often dwells unimaginatively on familiar terrain, and inexplicably omits analysis of such central issues as the South's population explosion, the impact of the information technology revolution on raw materials and manufacturing, and the apparent de-linking of the commodities and capital-goods cycles. The book digresses too often from its stated theme to the author's interest in, for example, tangential environmental aspects of the Law of the Sea Treaty. The concluding chapter presents an arguably valid but superficial case for a US incomes policy. This, the author assures us, would have avoided the recession and debt crisis of the early 1980's, and remains the best prescription for the northern prosperity, which is ultimately the South's best hope for development.