1.
INTRODUCTION
In colonial Africa, wildlife, when threatened by excessive
hunting, could be protected by drawing a line on a map and defending
the reserved area against poachers. The animals, safe from human
predation, could thrive as before, migrating with the rains, their
numbers fluctuating in natural cycles with the abundance or
stringencies of the habitat. But today spreading human settlements
have pressed the larger animals into habitats so limited that they do
not permit the evolved rhythms of decline and renewal to maintain
natural communities. Protection, though still possible, now demands
more complex procedures and the attention of range management
specialists, ecologists, and ethologists-—scientists of all kinds
who can contribute the detailed knowledge of plant and animal behavior
needed for the design of protective strategies.
Science has replaced lore as the underpinning for the
technologies and management policies necessary for wildlife
protection.
Something similar is happening to the human habitat under
pressure of numbers and production. We seem to be depleting our soils;
consuming our forests; filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide,
sulfuric acid, and noxious fumes; polluting and overfishing the
oceans; draining the pools of oil and natural gas; and mining the
earth’s minerals at a terrifying rate. The Panglossian view of
relentless progress which would allow each of us to commute, Buck
Rogers style, with individual rockets strapped to our backs and to
tend machines which do all the work has been replaced by a cloud of
gloom. Many persons believe that even if we avoid a nuclear
catastrophe, the world will be less livable in the year 2000 than it
is today.
Within our national boundaries the picture seems less grim.
Fertility is near the replacement rate; 3 percent of our population
can produce enough food for ourselves and our animals and still export
more than any other country; our air is cleaner than it was, and we
know its purity is a function of how much we are willing to pay for
it; we replant the trees we harvest; and, if necessary, we could again
become self—sufficient in energy. We have brought our intellectual
resources in science and technology to the task of conserving and
enlarging our resource base. While there is no cause for complacency
in our achievements to date and while we still consume at a rate that
clearly cannot be sustained forever, we do have command of the
technical capacity in public and private institutions to promote both
increased production and improved conservation.
Beyond our shores, however, the trends of population growth,
food production, energy supplies and forest resources appear more
threatening. There human fertility undermines traditional life-styles
and forces painful changes in established patterns of food
cultivation, construction, energy use, and social organization. In
short, the developing countries need scientific knowledge and
technological innovations to deal with the worsening conditions of our
global habitat. But those countries are least equipped to deal with
these problems; only about 3 percent of the world’s scientific
research is conducted there, where 75 percent of the people live.
The research and the technology developed for our own use have
generally been available for export, and in fact large—scale
transfers have taken place. But only about 1 percent of the research
in industrialized countries, such as the United States, is undertaken
with the needs and applications of developing countries uppermost in
mind, and technology shaped to the needs of one society can seldom be
transferred to another without undesirable social and economic
dislocations. Typically our production methods are
capital—intensive, our agricultural and medical techniques suit the
markets as well as the climates found in the temperate zone, and our
strategies are founded on the efficiencies of a mass production
economy. Our institutions are orchestrated to respond to and serve the
needs of their domestic clientele.
A mismatch now exists between our institutional research and
development arrangements and our national interests. The policies and
organizations we have employed successfully to deal with our own
scientific and technological problems are now inadequate for our
purposes. Our interest in fertility, food production, disease, and
energy creation has broadened beyond our borders, but we still manage
our publicly-financed research and development as though we were a
self—contained island. By widening the focus of our scientific and
technological endeavors, not only can we contribute to the
preservation of the quality of the earth’s environment, but we also
can serve our national economic, security, and political interests.
We live in a world already overpopulated in some places, where
people are threatened by food shortages, energy scarcities,
environmental deterioration and poor health. It is a world we can’t
escape or wall out; we know we are part of a global economy and live
in a global environment. As a nation, we enjoy recognized world
leadership in science, technology, management and the analytical
skills of the social sciences. These assets give us the power, the
opportunity, and, I believe, the responsibility to attack problems
that threaten the quality of the lives of our own children and
grandchildren, as well as the inheritors of the Third World.
The argument presented here is based on national interest, not
on humanitarian or religious principles, although those would
reinforce the point. National interest means different things to
different people, however, depending upon one’s view of the world
and the dangers that lurk abroad. To many, the dangers are primarily
human beings who are guided by a hostile, godless ideology, to which
the only convincing response is increasing our military might and
arming our friends abroad.
A different view is taken here. Our national well-being is
threatened as much by global population, poverty, environment and
resource problems as by the Soviets, and by dealing effectively with
those problems we will at the same time lessen the lingering
attractions of the Soviet system to other nations. It is, of course,
no novel notion that the best antidote to communism is economic
advancement. Similar thoughts motivated the Marshall Plan, that
historically significant foreign policy innovation which won with
capital what we would probably have lost had we depended upon mere
muscle.
But the Third World differs from Europe, and capital alone is
not enough to ensure economic gain. Despite truly impressive advances
in Asia and Latin America, we have wearied of the problems of the poor
and now devote less of each dollar to foreign assistance than any
other major industrial state, apart from the Soviet Union. Development
problems are complex, and much of the aid we send abroad often has
disappointing and unintended results. We tend to regard aid as
charity, and seek to reduce its levels to the minimal acceptable in
the society of nations. It is mainly due to pressures from European
states that aid levels are not lower than they are at present.
This book, however, is not primarily about foreign aid and
development. Those terms are inadequate to describe the nature of
relationships to the Third World or the breadth of our objectives. The
term foreign aid is unpopular in the United States and abroad; it
connotes a one-way flow of benefits and implies an unwelcome
dependency relationship. As used by our government, foreign aid covers
financial and material transfers for many purposes, including payments
for military cooperation and for political agreements such as the Camp
David accords. Development assistance is a fraction of the funds
labeled foreign aid. In Fiscal Year 1980, for example, U.S. economic
assistance totaled $7.6 billion. Of that amount, bilateral development
assistance accounted for only $1.9 billion.
The term development acceptably describes the process through
which societies learn to increase their productive capacities and
raise their living standards. U.S. bilateral development assistance,
administered by AID, contributes effectively to the process in the
poor countries eligible for it. AID generally succeeds in using its
limited development assistance funds to alleviate the worst aspects of
poverty.
The problem is that our interests in the Third World transcend
the poverty issue, and the resources we could bring to bear in support
of these interests are not always best deployed through AID. We are
interested in the efficient utilization of the earth’s natural
resources, in the quality of the global environment, in the adequacy
of the earth’s food supply, in the rate of global population
increase, in the price and supply of energy resources, and in the
control of infectious diseases, as well as in the alleviation of
poverty. Our greatest contributions to the resolution of these
problems will come from the effective use of our scientific,
technological, analytical and managerial capacities. These resources
may not be best mobilized by an agency dedicated to combating poverty.
In any case, the resources devoted to these problems, which are our
problems as well as theirs, should not be called foreign aid.
I believe we must come to the realization that our
participation in the worldwide efforts to combat global problems is as
much in our interest as in the countries hardest hit by these
problems. We should stop thinking about cooperation with the Third
World as simple charity, and begin thinking about the ways in which
our national strengths can contribute best to problem resolution.
I come to the view that we are underutilizing our scientific
and technological assets with a perspective born of field experience.
After a close association with Africa and the Middle East for twenty
years, most of them in the Ford Foundation, I found myself this past
four years engaged with our own government. In 1977, I participated in
a study of foreign aid at the Brookings Institution, after which I
spent two years planning the creation of an Institute for Scientific
and Technological Cooperation (ISTC), as recommended in the Brookings
study. Then, when Congress shelved the ISTC, I worked for a year as
consultant on North/South issues to the President’s science advisor.
Congress erred, in my opinion, in aborting the ISTC, but the
error is understandable. The circumstances are discussed in Chapter
III, but, simply put, Congress got the idea that the proposed ISTC was
to be another foreign aid agency and decided that it was not a
propitious time for adding yet another bureaucracy to an already
overextended government. Rather like the broccoli taster who said,
“I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it,” Congress found
ISTC easy to discard once it could be categorized as foreign aid.
We need to get beyond the point of thinking of the Third World
as spinach. We need to recapture the sense of the post—war era that
American power could be used to make the world a better place for all
to live. We can, if we will, again offer leadership in global
problem-solving through the power of our scientific and technical
resources.
This book attempts to make the case for the application of more
U.S. efforts to global problems in collaboration with developing
countries. Chapter II examines some of the reasons why developing
countries are of growing importance to the United States; Chapter III
looks at some global problems where greater U.S. efforts could make a
difference; Chapter IV discusses some of the institutional constraints
on government action; and Chapter V contains conclusions and
recommendations.
I am grateful to the Kettering Foundation for affording me the
time for research. The views expressed are, of course, my own, but I
hope they will become widely shared.
2. INTERDEPENDENCE
In
1960, a senior official of the Kennedy administration toured several
countries in Africa, ending his trip in Addis Ababa. There he was
asked by a young Foreign Service wife which of the countries he had
visited was most important. He responded with a candor reserved for
the lighter moments of his schedule, “Honey, none of them is
important.”
The answer, one hopes, would be different today. Africa, Asia,
and Latin America are more prominent in our thoughts now than they
were twenty years ago, and will be still more so twenty years from
now. Why? In a word, interdependence.
We live in a world economy; our own well—being and standard
of living depends upon access to natural resources abroad, to markets
and investment opportunities in developing countries. We live in a
world polity; our security is affected by invasions of sovereignty
anywhere in the world, from Afghanistan to Cambodia, from Angola to
Lebanon. We have an interest in preventing the spread of Soviet
influence, and in gaining sympathetic consideration by other countries
of our views on economic, environmental, and international political
issues. We live in a global environment. The destruction of forests
and the pollution of the air and water of any major region of the
earth affects the quality of our existence.
Economic interdependence is not new. No country was immune from
the global depression of the 1930s, nor can any escape the impact of
the rising energy costs of the 1970s. Access to natural resources, to
markets and manufacturers, and to investment opportunities abroad are
of particular importance to the United States today.
Despite the attention commanded by successive oil crises, we
are even more dependent on some vital minerals found only abroad.
Alexander Haig, when president of United Technologies, told the House
Subcommittee on Mines and Mining that if Africa’s mineral-rich
countries ever allied themselves with the Soviet Union, the Soviets
would control 90 percent of the world’s key minerals. The following
chart indicates the degree to which we import a number of important
industrial minerals.
The African continent, especially the Republic of South Africa,
is the most important source of many of these materials. Zaire
produces over 40 percent of the world’s cobalt, which is needed for
turbine engines in aircraft, and has well over a third of the known
reserves. South Africa produces 35 percent of the world’s chromium,
an important ingredient in stainless steel and jet engines, and has
two—thirds of the reserves.
Similarly, South Africa produces half the world’s platinum
and holds three—quarters of its reserves. Manganese needed in
steel-making is plentiful in the Soviet Union, but in the free world
South Africa produces 40 percent and has three—fourths of the
reserves.
MINERAL
U.S. IMPORTS*
MAJOR SOURCES
Columbium
100 percent Brazil
Strontium 100
Mexico
Industrial
Diamonds 100
Ireland, South Africa
Manganese
98
South Africa, France, Japan
Tantalum
96
Thailand, Canada, Malaysia
Bauxite
93
Jamaica, Guinea, Surinam
Cobalt
90
Zaire, Belgium, Zambia
Chromium
90
South Africa, Philippines, Soviet Union
Platinum
Group
89
South Africa, Soviet Union
Asbestos
85
Canada
Tin
81
Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia
Nickel
77
Canada
Cadmium
66
Canada, Australia, Mexico
Zinc
62
Canada
Mercury
62
Algeria, Spain, Italy
Tungsten
59
Canada, Bolivia, South Korea
Selenium
40
Canada, Japan, Yugoslavia
*1980
estimation
Sources:
U.S. Bureau of Mines, Sinclair Group Cos.
Reprinted
by permission of Newsweek in World Development Letter, November 26,
1980, Agency for International Development
We may develop strategies to lessen dependence on imports, or
guard against politically motivated interruptions in supply.
Stockpiling is a useful device for ameliorating temporary shortages,
and the Reagan administration has authorized the expenditure of $100
million for fifteen materials to expand the national defense
stockpile. A growing “synterials” industry seeks to ease strategic
materials shortages by creating substitutes or developing processes
that do not require the scarce resource. The metals industry remains
skeptical, however, about the economic viability of synterials for
other than militarily strategic purposes, due to the amount of energy
required to create these materials. Any strategy for lessening
dependence on imported supplies of scarce materials will, of course,
bear a price. Economic independence is not impossible, it is simply
very expensive and to be avoided if possible.
In international trade, we seem to hear more about the
penetration of our markets by consumer goods manufactured in
low—wage economies abroad than about the market the developing
countries provide for U.S. exports. In fact, the industrial market
economies had a surplus of $34.5 billion in manufactures trade with
developing countries in 1978.
Developing countries purchased 36 percent of our exported goods
in 1980 (1), and in the decade of the 1970s, exports to them rose at an
annual rate of 18 percent, compared with 15 percent to the
industrialized countries. Developing country markets also have new
importance to other industrial nations. Western Europe sent 38 percent
of its manufactured exports to developing countries, twice as much as it
sold to North America and Japan combined; and Japan sold 46 percent of
its manufactured exports there, a figure which many in Detroit may find
hard to believe.(2)
The developing-country market for American goods and services is
important and growing; the World Bank estimates that this market will
account for nearly 30 percent of the increase in world trade in this
decade. The goods we import from developing nations also benefit our
economy and, being cheaper, help to combat inflation.
International trade benefits both countries, but not every
citizen of each. Expanded imports from industrializing countries do put
pressures on some of our industries and create serious problems for
workers who may be forced out of the only line of work they know. We
need better mechanisms to ease the transition of labor and capital from
redundant industries into more productive fields. This problem is
thoughtfully addressed by Peter Drucker and Lester Thurow, among others,
and it is a poser. But protectionism can only lead to stagnation and
more unemployment. On balance, trade with developing countries creates
many more jobs than it eliminates. The Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that if developing
countries outside OPEC had cut their imports of manufactured goods to
meet the increased oil prices of 1973—74, there would have been three
million more unemployed in OECD countries, which of course includes the
United States. Instead, by maintaining their trade with the newly
industrializing countries alone, the OECD countries have gained an
average 900,000 jobs in each of the years 1973—77. (3) In effect,
their continued importing prevented the recession in the developed world
from becoming even worse than it was (WDR,
1981, p. 112).
Another economic stake the industrialized countries have in the
oil-importing Third World countries, and a growing one, is capital.
Private direct investment has remained fairly steady at the $4 to $5
billion level (1978 dollars) over the past decade, but commercial
lending skyrocketed from under $10 billion in 1970 to nearly $30 billion
in 1980 (1978 dollars), nearly all the increase going to middle—income
countries (ibid., p. 49). These net capital flows represent a
direct interest on the part of investors and the private banking system
in the economic viability of developing countries.
In the future, developing countries are likely to offer greater
growth potential than the industrial countries because of such factors
as relatively low capital-to-labor ratios, the abundance and relatively
low cost of labor, the potential for increasing the education and skills
of the labor force, opportunities for applying existing technologies
profitably, and under—exploited natural resources. The World Bank and
the Overseas Development Council see the developing countries
increasingly acting as an “engine of growth” for the rest of the
world.(4) Current estimates are that an extra percentage point in the
growth rate of developing countries would raise the growth of industrial
countries by about 0.1 to 0.2 percent.
Peter F. Drucker goes beyond most observers in forecasting the
degree of economic interdependence to be expected in the future. He
finds demographic factors critical in shaping the pattern of future
economic cooperation. The coming of age of the last of the postwar
“baby—boom” generation in the West signals the approach of a labor
shortage in the developed countries. Unskilled young recruits for
manufacturing jobs will become scarce in the future, a demographic trend
compounded by rising levels of education. The quality of our
manufacturing labor force is also likely to decline as the recruitment
pool narrows to the group unable to continue in school. At the same
time, the continuing population explosion in most developing countries,
resulting from the radical drop in infant mortality after the war, makes
the creation of employment the top political and economic priority for
those countries. And the quality of their labor force is rising with the
spread of primary and secondary education. The happy outcome of this
situation which Drucker foresees is the growth of production-sharing in
which the capital, the technology, and the managerial talents of the
developed countries are combined with the labor and natural resources of
the developing world to produce rising abundance for both.
Economic interdependence is thus not only widespread and
increasing, it is to be welcomed. International economic cooperation is
not a “zero sum” game; in it there can be gains for all.
Economic interdependence does, however, have political
implications which some may find uncomfortable. Our need for access to
foreign oil and natural resources puts a premium on maintaining cordial
relationships with states that may oppose us on other grounds. The uses
of our power internationally are constrained by economic considerations.
These constraints are not entirely bad. Although we tend to think
of ourselves as being uniquely benevolent in the uses of power, it is
not surprising that all do not share that view. Our support and
protection of internationally unpopular regimes is frequently resented
in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, and in time we are
likely to find such support increasingly costly. This trend may be
deplored or welcomed by segments of our population, but it is a
concomitant part of increasing economic interdependence. Our stake in
maintaining good relations with Third World countries is going up.
In terms of our worldwide competition with the Soviet Union, we
are somewhat at a disadvantage by growing interdependence. The Soviets
are much more self—sufficient in energy and natural resources than are
we. This is perhaps their only advantage.
It is worth noting that there is no longer a serious ideological
communist threat. In the 1930s, and again in the l950s and part of the
1960s, Europe and the United States felt threatened by the allure of
Marxist principles combined with Leninist tactics for gaining and
holding power. In the last decade it has become evident that communism
holds no strong appeal. The failure of the communist system to satisfy
the economic aspirations of the Soviet people, the insecurity of a
regime that cannot tolerate free expression of opinions even at home,
the evident unrest of the subjugated states of eastern Europe, and the
splitting away of the Chinese from the Bloc, all make evident to the
peoples of developing countries no less than to ourselves that communism
is desirable neither as an ideology nor as a way of life. All it has
succeeded in doing effectively is to use its authoritarian control to
divert a greater share of the efforts of its peoples to armaments than
can states with democratic systems.
The security challenge to the United States and its allies is
from Soviet Russia, the last of the nineteenth century empires. The
spread of Soviet influence through force of arms is a real and growing
threat to states bordering on the empire, such as Afghanistan. But
elsewhere in the Third World, the Soviet Union has few close allies, and
they often represent a failure of the United States and its allies in
foreign policy. Soviet support is to be desired only out of desperation.
It is, therefore, surprising that American relationships with
developing countries are generally poor, as evidenced by the frequency
with which we find ourselves on the minority side in United Nations
votes and by the image of the United States in the Third World press.
There are often sound reasons for the United States to be in the
minority on particular issues, but the general pattern of our
interaction with Third World countries seems unnecessarily negative. We
have not found common ground for dealing with the serious economic,
social, and environmental challenges that confront humanity. We find
ourselves too often obstructing or delaying on international
negotiations, unwilling to accept the “demands” of the Third World,
and unable, apparently, to devise alternative solutions.
What are the issues?
Mabub ul Haq, director of policy planning at the World Bank, put
forward the following list of essential areas on which the global
community should, in his view, take action:
“...An internationally accepted floor below absolute poverty
all over the globe and a concrete framework through which this objective
can be reached over the next two decades.
“...An agreed system of international food security, based on
additional investment for less developed countries’ national
production, adequate food reserves, and emergency assistance in times of
crisis.
“...A global responsibility for putting in place a new
international energy security system, including global understanding on
energy conservation, vastly increased investment resources for energy
development, and mechanisms for more predictable increases in real
prices.
“...Acceptance of the principle of greater automaticity in
mobilization of resources to be channeled through international
institutions under genuine international control.
“...Acceptance of the principle that any international reserve
currency should be created only under international jurisdiction and for
the benefit of all nations.
“....Acceptance
of the global responsibility for creating adequate recycling mechanisms,
particularly to ensure that adjustment in the next few years is not at
the cost of either economic growth or social programs, or political
survival of developing countries.
“...Clear recognition of the contradictions between present
levels of armaments spending, global population increase, and global
environment deterioration for the evolution of a new order.” (6)
For six years or more, the developing countries, acting in
consort through the Group of 77 (now numbering over 100) have maintained
that the existing international economic order is not working well for
anyone and is functioning particularly to the disadvantage of the poor
countries. This is not the place to argue the merits of the various
proposals they have put forward, many of which would no longer be
defended even by the group: few among the group of 77 expected that they
would be accepted as presented. All felt, however, that they had a right
to some kind of response and alternatives to discuss. They have had
none.
American reluctance to enter into arrangements which might lead
to the automatic transfer of U.S. resources to other countries or to a
lessened U.S. voice in vital international institutions may be
understandable. However, one approach to many of the problems on the
Third World agenda that would be consistent with US principles, and
would utilize our main talents, is the application of science and
technology to development problems and the strengthening of the
competence of institutions in developing countries to understand and
deal with their own problems.
This approach would not respond to all of the issues raised by ul
Haq, but most of those issues will require new knowledge and new or
adapted technologies for their resolution. Food and energy scarcity,
population growth, and environmental deterioration are not problems that
will yield to resource transfers alone. Nor can a lasting floor be
constructed below absolute poverty without the discovery of better means
to increase the productivity of the poor. Greater technical cooperation
in dealing with these serious problems would offer a constructive
alternative to massive resource transfers or the possible politicization
of international economic institutions.
Third World leaders are now displaying heightened interest in
developing their own scientific and technological capacities. They
realize that dependence on foreign sources of technology diminishes the
freedom and autonomy they sought in the independence movement. Self—
reliance has become one of the most potent policy motivations in
development.
Imported technology is expensive and often is very
capital—intensive for areas awash in surplus labor. For some purposes
there may be no viable alternative to top—of—the-line technology,
but developing countries need the capacity to analyze and choose among
existing technologies or to devise others for their purposes.
International attention to scientific and technological issues
reached a high point at the UN Conference on Science and Technology for
Development (UNCSTD) held in Vienna in 1979.
The General Assembly of the United Nations approved the convening
of UNCSTD in 1975; there followed some of the most elaborate
preparations made for any conference since San Francisco. Five
preparatory committee sessions were held, themselves conferences of
notable size, to plan the agenda and draft a world plan of action for
consideration at the main event. Each of the five regional economic
commissions held two or more meetings to help prepare their member
states for UNCSTD. A host of conferences and seminars were convened by
various nongovernmental agencies, with full reports and recommendations
forwarded to UNCSTD. Each country, sometimes with UN assistance,
prepared a country paper analyzing the role of science and technology in
its nation and proposing action.
The United States, although not enthusiastic about another world
conference, took pains with its own preparations. An office headed by
Ambassador Jean Wilkowski marshaled data from all federal agencies on
their international scientific activities and commissioned a series of
studies from the National Academy of Sciences, the Foundation for
Multinational Management Education, the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and a number of individual experts. A U.S.
Country Paper was prepared, the centerpiece of which was the imminent
launching of the Institute for Scientific and Technological Cooperation
(ISTC), which would facilitate the access of developing countries to
U.S. scientific resources and would help those countries strengthen
their own science and technology capacities.
At the conference, three main issues were addressed: the transfer
of technology, the institutional mechanisms for UN action in the field,
and funding for multilateral cooperation. Predictably, the committee
dealing with the first became bogged down over the question of
proprietary ownership of technology, but the other two issues held
promise for constructive action. The Group of 77 wanted the creation of
a special UN fund for developing scientific technological capacities;
the sum of $2 billion over twenty years was proposed. The U.S.
delegation engineered an alternative solution, that an interim fund be
created experimentally for two years, with agreement on a larger fund
held in abeyance until the success of the idea could be tested. The
delegation stated that the U.S. was prepared to carry its fair and
proportionate share of the financing of the interim fund, or $50 million
of the total $200 million, if Congress concurred. Most delegates left
Vienna tired after
an all-night final session, but pleased with their accomplishments.
Next, the Carter administration reduced the commitment in its
request to Congress from $50 million to $25 million, then to $10
million. Finally the Reagan administration advised the fledgling interim
fund at its United Nations Development Program headquarters that it
could expect no contribution at all from the United States over the two
years.
Having
abandoned multilateral assistance, the United States proceeded to renege
also on bilateral action. The ISTC was not funded, and the
administration agreed to a “compromise” under which a section of AID
would administer funds earmarked for science and technology. As an
official of the UN Interim Fund said to me, it would not be easy to
convince the representatives of many developing countries that they had
not been duped by a double-talking U.S. delegation at Vienna. That was
not quite the case. Although Ambassador Wilkowski did begin her report
on the conference to a group of American businessmen with proud
assurances that “we gave nothing away,” that statement referred only
to the issue of proprietary technology. On the interim fund, the
delegation acted in good faith but was undercut by those powerful
foreign policy strategists in the Office of Management and Budget after
they returned to Washington.
This decision aroused no furor in the ranks of either the
Democratic or Republican party, nor was it even mentioned in the press.
UNCSTD itself, although followed avidly by leaders of the Third World,
was scarcely mentioned in the American press at the time it occurred. It
was not an event at which the Soviet Union and the United States were
eyeball to eyeball. Nobody blinked because our eyes were already closed.
This chapter contains a few key points, none of which is very
surprising:
·
Relations
with developing countries are of increasing importance to the United
States: they are the source of vital minerals, a growing market,
producers of low—cost goods for our consumers, and potentially a
driving force for global economic growth. Strategically, most major
power conflicts now occur somewhere in the Third World. Politically, the
cooperation of the Third World is essential for the orderly working of
international institutions, those of the United Nations and others.
·
Despite
its growing importance, American foreign policy vis—a—vis developing
countries is extraordinarily inept and unimaginative. We tend to view
them in East-West terms, the intensity of our gaze proportional to their
susceptibility to Soviet influence. We avoid discussion of the global
economic issues that most affect the lives of their citizens.
·
Our
national strength in science and technology is used little in
confronting the problems of developing countries, either in helping them
to strengthen their own capacities or in researching problems of
greatest concern to them.
Before
discussing why this is so and what might be done about it, we need
briefly to review a range of problems of mutual concern in which science
and technology can play decisive roles.
3. THE
PROBLEMS
Aurelio
Peccei and the Club of Rome did us all a great favor in the early 1970s
by sponsoring and publishing Limits
to Growth. This best-selling account of the crises that await human
civilization if present fertility, resource use, and environmental
pollution trends are prolonged changed the way in which we view the
world.
The book was based on the systems dynamics method of computer
simulation developed by Professor Jay Forrester of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. The model, World 3, has been widely tested and
found to be deeply flawed. It aggregates data on a world basis, unable
to differentiate by region or nation; it is based on a series of
controversial assumptions; it understates the potential for human
adaptation and change; and it allows too little scope for technology to
alleviate resource limitations. (1) Yet it profoundly achieved its
purpose, which was to “start a world—wide debate as soon as
possible” on the human predicament.(2)
A number of other world models have been constructed in the nine
years since Limits to Growth
was published: the Mesarovic-Pestel World Model, MOIRA (Model of
International Relations in Agriculture), the Latin American World Model,
the UN World Model, and the Global 2000 U.S. Government Model. The
methodological strengths and weaknesses of each are instructively
discussed in the technical report of the Global
2000 Report. They differ somewhat in their outcomes, but all
indicate that we are heading for more trouble than we already have.
Volume 1 of the Global 2000 Report sums up the predicament as follows:
“If
present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more
polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption
than the world we live in now. Serious stresses involving population,
resources, and environment are clearly visible ahead. Despite greater
material output, the world’s people will be poorer in many ways than
they are today.” (p. 1)
These studies are not without their critics, not only on
methodological detail but on their overall implications. Herman Kahn, a
prominent futurologist himself, calls the Global 2000 Report disgraceful and reprehensible, but he challenges
not so much the data as the tone. He cites impressive gains in food
production in the past few years in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India as
an indication that the outlook is much more hopeful than implied in the
several global projections. Kahn’s main objection to the tone of the
reports seems to be that they undermine confidence in our socioeconomic
system and attract young people to the Sierra Club and Nader’s Raiders
rather than to Exxon and General Motors.(3)
It is fair enough for Mr. Kahn and others to stress positive
factors affecting long—term trends in population growth, food
production, energy, and the environment, and to extol the role of the
market in solving major problems. But in the case of food production in
South Asia, Exxon and General Motors had little to do with recent
improvements. Those governments, aided by technical assistance, have
built their agricultural research capacity to solve farmers’ problems.
Market incentives are vital to production increases but so are
scientific and technological advances, emerging from international
cooperation financed from both public and private sources.
It is an insufficient response to the message of the Global
2000 Report to observe its possible exaggerations, just as it is no
answer to the energy crisis to point to the current unforeseen and
obviously temporary glut of oil. Predictions of catastrophe are often
overstated, as professional optimists tirelessly remind us. (See, for
example, Julian L. Simon’s “Resources, Population, Environment: An
Oversupply of False Bad News” in Science,
27 June 1980.)
But overstatement is part of the message. These reports are
intended less as predictions than as warnings, and less as warnings of a
precisely calculated future than of trends that, if continued, lead to
increasing difficulties and pain. The objective is to reveal a direction
with urgency enough to arouse people to corrective action. The burden on
the opposition is therefore to demonstrate that no corrective action is
needed. In the face of current manifest problems, such an argument is
hard, indeed, impossible to sustain. The authors of The
Global 2000 Report present problems in order to spur the search for
solutions. The morale factor that concerns Kahn should not worry us
unless we conclude there are no solutions or no real problems, as he
would perhaps have us believe.
Mr. Kahn’s choice of South Asian gains in food production as an
example on the positive side also happens to be an example of the kind
of corrective action for which we are arguing in this paper. It
illustrates the role of science and technology in alleviating at least
one global problem in one part of the world, and, as later examination
will show, it illustrates the value of international cooperation in
achieving commonly held objectives.
Our emphasis on science and technology must, however, be
explained. Anyone familiar with the development process is rightly
skeptical of the technological fix. There are so many other dimensions
of any serious problem: attitudes, distribution networks, markets,
traditions, power structures, and the simple lack of funds.
Science and technology offer attractive avenues for more
effective American action in world affairs because our recognized
strengths in this area are relatively underutilized in dealing with
global problems. We have a large untapped potential for improving
relationships with developing countries by taking actions that are in
our long—term interests as well as theirs.
When a society seeks to deal with a problem, the principal
tools it employs are policy, organization, and technology.
Internationally, our strong suit is technology. Policies are considered
by all nations to be their own business. Organization is a function of
social and cultural factors, which in developing countries we know
little about. Technology can seldom be transferred directly; it needs to
be adapted to the circumstances of its use. But innovation and
adaptation are among our best qualities, and these skills can be
employed internationally without treading unduly on sensitive political
and cultural issues.
|
