bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Energy, Petrocurrency, and the World Future
Authors: Swann Robert
Published: March 2013

The author argues that since most OPEC members have an abundant and continuous supply of solar energy, the primary source for producing hydrogen which can be stored and transported (given the full development of the requisite technology with the help of oil-produced funds), they can not only continue to maintain their lead position as a producer of energy after oil supplies are depleted, but also initiate an ecologically sound technology for producing the kind of energy which, unlike oil, will not be depleted and will, in addition, eliminate the dangers of nuclear power. He also thinks that the OPEC could, in cooperation with Third World countries, initiate a new world bank utilizing commodities produced in the Third World as the reserve currency to replace US dollars or other currencies such as the SDR. Such a bank (with a currency that would not devalue, would become a ‘currency of preference’ for international trade, and would enable the enormous expansion of credit for agricultural production without inflationary effects) could be sponsored by the UN. There are, however, certain difficulties, partly technical such as the problem of storage, and partly political such as the reaction of the industrialized world. But these difficulties are not insuperable.
World Welfare Measurement as Social Action
Authors: Boulding Elise
Published: March 2013

The author sees the measurement of world welfare as social action because in the course of measurement our ideas of the world change, leading, hopefully, to the initiation of changes in the world itself. She is therefore interested in evolving indicators not for system states but for system processes, of which four form the core: participation (in the process of shaping the conditions of life), production (of food, goods, energy, information, and services), distribution (of all that is produced and the manner in which it is shared by the various sectors of society), and ‘nurturance’ (empathic, altruistic, caring responses that enhance human growth). There is a fifth Process, equally important (because it acts as a multiplier to other processes) but difficult to measure: the process of ‘joying’, which imports the dimension of expansiveness to all human acts.
Third World and World Order
Authors: Ajami Fouad
Published: March 2013

The essay explores the potential contribution of Third World nations to a more equitable and just world. It asks a basic question: if such a world does not seem to emerge out of the designs of the rich and powerful, can it emerge out of the policies of the less-privileged members of the world system? Several world-order crises are identified as the yardstick with which we can judge the feasibility of a populist Third World platform that offers alternatives to the designs of the rich and the powerful. The conclusion the author draws is that populism is a useful and promising concept and strategy, but that it cannot be based on the designs and preferences of governmental units and entities.
Perspectives on World Order: A Review
Authors: Beres Louis René , Targ Harry R.
Published: March 2013

This essay seeks to clarify the boundaries and characterize the content of world-order studies with a view to bringing some much-needed conceptual, analytical, and historical clarity and order to the subject. The authors trace the evolution of all the three major perspectives on world order, lay bare the basic premises and summarize the main conclusions of each, and round off with a critique.
Dependent Development
Authors: Amin Galal A.
Published: March 2013

The paper is a critique of the development philosophy underlying the United Nations Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order. The author examines its postulates, including the proposed goal and the strategy, and comes to the conclusion, on general grounds as well as on the basis of experience, that ‘underdeveloped’ (or ‘developing’, to use the current euphemism) countries would be accepting them at the cost of their autonomy and the real welfare of their peoples; they would be deflected from pursuing goals which, even if modest in comparison, are both realizable and in their best interests. Developing countries, the author argues, would be ill-advised to be lured into a race with the West (in the name of ‘eliminating the gap’) which, even if worthwhile, they will inevitably lose. He advocates the strategy of self-reliance, and the concomitant temporary detachment from the international economic system, so that the developing countries may freely decide their destiny and work it out with their own efforts.
The Global Contract
Authors: Köhler Gernot
Published: March 2013

This essay on international economic order and foreign policy theory takes its departure from the observation that foreign policy theory and action are today confronted with a global economic problematique of revolutionary proportions, and therefore need to be re-examined. It finds that the classical concepts of sovereignty, national interest, and power, though still valid, are too narrowly defined by the Realist school to be of much use. It holds that the principle of politico-military ‘balance of power’ must be applied in conjunction with the principle of ‘optimal interdependence’. Using a cognitive map which identifies the principal actors and cleavages (global apartheid being judged to be the most dominant), and learning from socialist and capitalist theoreticians about possible solutions, it elaborates the meaning of ‘optimal interdependence’. It then presents an alternative theory of foreign policy and makes six strategic suggestions from that principle.
Civilization Project and Ecological Prudence
Authors: Sachs Ignacy
Published: March 2013

With the full development of Man as its central concern, this paper rejects both economism, which sees Nature as something to be appropriated without regard for its finiteness and fine balance, and ecologism, which treats the conservation of nature as an end in itself without regard for the well-being of the race. It steers clear of the false choice between economic growth and quality of life, and proposes, instead, a strategy of development that makes the maximum use of the flows of renewable resources but only a sparing use of Nature's capital stock, through the employment of prudent technological styles with the help of science and the devising of appropriate social organization at all levels. The strategy is relevant no less to the industrialized countries than to the countries of the Third World. The strategy calls for a ceiling on material consumption to ensure to everyone the satisfaction of basic human needs. It does not envisage a return to some past mythical golden age but takes the present situation as given, and then goes on to outline the steps by which a style of development can be attained that does not entail great social costs and that is consistent with enlarged social responsibility.
Racism and International Relations
Authors: Bandopadhyaya Jayant
Published: March 2013

The paper deals with racism based on colour as a factor in international relations. White racism has created a vertical schism in the international system as well as in several national subsystems. The revolt of the non-white peoples against white racism, both at the systemic and at the subsystemic level has led to a global race conflict which threatens to undermine the stability of the international system. Neither the ‘class theory’ nor the ‘caste theory’ explains the social stratification represented by contemporary colour racism; it must be regarded as an independent sociological category. One solution to the problem of global racism lies in a structural reorganization of the economic relations between the white and the non-white peoples, along with the promotion of global communication with effective feedback across the colour line. It is also necessary to substitute the new paradigm of world order for the old paradigm of national sovereignty.
Nuclear Policy and World Order: Why Denuclearization
Authors: Falk Richard
Published: March 2013

While taking note of the growing anxiety, particularly on the part of the superpowers, over the spread of nuclear technology and of the frantic campaign (most of all on the part of the USA), through a combination of pressures and blandishments, to halt proliferation, the paper does not see much chance of the campaign succeeding so long as as it remains suspect because, among other reasons, of its being spearheaded by a power which is itself the greatest proliferator and one, too, which has not only got an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons, but is constantly engaged in evolving ever more sophisticated (which means deadly) weapons. Nonproliferation, unless wedded to denuclearization, will continue to be viewed by non-nuclear states as unacceptably discriminatory and as a geopolitical confidence trick calculated to freeze the present hegemonistic global structure. Obviously, the first moves toward denuclearization have to be made by nuclear nations, but, above all, by the two superpowers. However, denuclearization will be illusory if a distinction is made between the military and the civilian uses of the atom. Denuclearization must, therefore, at some stage-now rather than later, when it might be too late-involve the total renunciation of nuclear power for whatever purpose and its substitution with other less centralized, less costly, and pollution-free sources of energy, such as sun, wind, water and biomass. In between, however, the ruling elites all the world over, but principally in its industrialized part, have to accept a concept of world order securely anchored to the values of peace, economic well-being of all, social and political justice, both within and between nations, and environmental quality. Recognising that such a world order cannot be erected at one go, the author suggests transition steps, none frighteningly radical in itself and each demonstrably feasible, although establishment circles, unable to move out of the narrow groove of conventional wisdom, may scoff at them as ‘romantic’ or ‘utopian’.
Human Rights and World Order Politics
Authors: Ajami Fouad
Published: March 2013

Human rights have lately become the focus of a global debate, but the concept raises profound ideological, cultural and normative issues that the current debate does not sufficiently address itself to. This paper brings to bear on the issues of human rights a world-order perspective that is sensitive, not only to the question of state power, but also to economic rights and social justice, as well as the problem of militarization. The paper argues against the tendancy to abstract the question of human rights in a manner that makes it irrelevant to the broader, world-order agenda. It is particularly concerned with the linkage between human rights, on the one hand, and basic economic needs, on the other.
Korea as a World Order Issue
Authors: Sakamoto Yoshikazu
Published: March 2013

The paper views the Korean problem, not-as is commonly done-as an aspect of the East-West conflict (although it is a product of that conflict), but as a world-order problem. It briefly traces Korea's history upto that fateful day in August 1945, when the USA and the Soviets, engaged in fierce manoeuvres to carve out and extend their respective spheres of domination, divided arbitrarily – and almost casually – a peace-loving nation into two countries which became hostile and even went to war. In the process, both the halves have been robbed of their autonomy and made into satellites of their respective center states, both have had their economies skewed, and both have become preys to repressive regimes. The paper then goes on to make constructive suggestions for reducing tension between the two to pave the way for an eventual solution that would be in the interest of, and acceptable to, the Korean people. Initiatives must emanate from the two center states, which are responsible for Korea's tragic plight, but some will have to be taken by the Korean people themselves.
UN Special Session on Disarmament: Opportunity for New Initiatives
Authors: Sharp Jane M.O.
Published: March 2013

This paper argues that the 1978 United Nations Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSOD) provides an ideal opportunity for governments to consider the feasibility of national initiatives in disarmament as distinct from relying primarily on negotiated agreements. Traditional arms control diplomacy, inadequate at best, may be completely misdirected. Instead of building confidence and reducing force levels, the bargaining process inherent in the pursuit of formal international treaties tends not only to exacerbate tensions but also to generate more armaments. Extra forces have been rationalized to support particular negotiating positions, and defense planners have been encouraged to assess military requirements in relative terms, as a function of worst-case estimates of the capabilities and intentions of potential adversaries, rather than in absolute terms, as a function of basic national security needs. An attempt is made here to establish criteria on which effective disarmament initiatives might be based and judged in the long term. While these criteria are intended to be generally applicable, the leadership for any new approach to the armaments problem will probably have to come from Washington; specific proposals thus focus on measures which appear feasible for the US in the near future, and which the Carter Administration could conceivably initiate at the UNSSOD.
The Barrel of the Gun and the Barrel of Oil in North-South Equation
Authors: Mazrui Ali A.
Published: March 2013

The paper discusses the role of the newly discovered petropower and of the striving for nuclear status in the Third World politics, both between the various countries that comprise it and between the Third World as a whole and the West. The first has to do with the competition for leverage and influence determined mainly by ideology, economics (which, in the last analysis, means technology), and military power. The second has to do with the striving for dignity and equity. This politics is vastly complicated by the industrialized and nuclearized Western powers' intervention in pursuit of the dual goal of pacifying one form of energy, nuclear, to perpetuate its dominance through the monopoly of the atom, and militarizing another form of energy, oil, to be able to get it cheap, if possible, and in abundance.
China and World Order
Authors: Kim Samuel S.
Published: March 2013

This paper makes a macro-inquiry into Chinese global politics by defining and elaborating the Chinese image and strategy of world order within a normative framework. Empirical data and behavioral referents in the paper are largely drawn from Chinese multilateral diplomacy in the global community during the first half-decade (1971–1976) of Chinese participation in UN. Such a normative-globalist paradigm has a heuristic value in interpreting more broadly China's global policy and its impact on the evolving process of creating a more just and humane world order. The paper argues that the interactions between China and the world organization have, on the whole, been positive and that the relationship between the two has been one of mutual adjustment and mutual legitimization, with the resulting enhancement of each other's symbolic capability. By way of conclusion, the paper draws, in a tentative and speculative manner, some broad policy implications of the post-Mao leadership.
Disarmament, Development and a Just World Order
Authors: Kothari Rajni
Published: March 2013

The paper sees the arms race (set in motion and fuelled by the industrialized countries, whether of the West or the East) and the struggle for a just world order (waged principally by the developing countries) as two sides of the same fundamental question: Will the transformation, now unquestionably under way, lead to a world run through global corporate economic management and a framework of political governance operated from global and subsidiary power centres supported by military might? Or will it lead to a world characterized by political national independence, economic self-reliance, respect for diversity in both technology and culture, and end of exploitation? The first, merely a perpetuation of the dominance-dependency structure of the imperialist days, will provide neither justice nor security; and the second will ensure both equity and peace, for a structure of inequity and exploitation is the primary source of conflict and violence. That is why the paper discusses the question of disarmament in the wider context of development such that it provides human beings everywhere with basic necessities of life, which can be made possible only in a just world order.
Arms Race in Outer Space
Authors: Jasani Bhupendra
Published: March 2013

Since the year 1957, when the space age was heralded with the launching of the first Earth satellite, space technology has made a fantastic progress. This technology has doubtless extended the frontiers of knowledge and enabled Man to augment his control over certain forces of nature. The potential of the peaceful uses of satellites in fields such as communications, meteorology, cartography, navigation is of enormous value. But, since the dividing line between civilian and military technology has vanished, Man can use the same means for enriching life on Earth as for destroying all life. This paper details the types of satellites that have so far been launched, that are in an experimental stage and that are on the drawing board, and the uses to which they are being put and can be put. The total picture that emerges is frightening in the extreme. Arms race has now invaded the outer space. While some industrialized countries (and China among those that are not) take some minor part in the space programme, the race is essentially between the two superpowers. The race is fuelled by hegemonistic ambition and is inextricibly intertwined with the prevailing world order. While a transformation in the world order may take a long time coming, world public opinion must exert itself to bring about a ban on frankly military satellites and to bring satellites used for peaceful purposes under international control.
International Power Structure and the New International Economic Order
Authors: Wariavwalla Bharat
Published: March 2013

The military power in the present international structure is largely concentrated in the advanced industrial First World and the Soviet Union, while the economic power, though a little more diffused after the energy crisis, is still with the First World. The stability of this system rests largely on actual or implied threat of the use of force by those who possess the nuclear and conventional weapons. Thus the NPT, far from being a vehicle for disarmament, legitimizes both the nuclear weapons and the inegalitarian order that rests on it. The emerging new pattern of East-West rivalry is considerably heightened in the setting of the growing North-South tension, as shown in Zaire recently. Obviously, the renunciation of nuclear weapon by its present possessors will be the first step towards creating a new order made explicit in the NIEO declaration.
Oppression and Human Liberation: Towards a Third World Utopia
Authors: Nandy Ashish
Published: March 2013

The Third World being bound together by the experience of oppression rather than by common cultural traditions, its utopia must recognize oppression - and liberation from oppression in its widest sense - as the central problem in envisioning an alternative human future. Such a vision must recognize the continuity between the oppressed and the oppressor and see the institutional and psychological liberation from outer oppression as a matter of self-realization. At one time, such a perspective smacked of defeatist, life-denying spiritualism, but the present civilizational predicament of the West has concretized the Marxist, Freudian and the Gandhian visions that oppression and freedom from oppression are indivisible. The criteria by which the Third World cultures were once judged deficient - e.g. the absence of a commitment to the ideas of productivity and work; a ‘non-masculine orientation to nature and society; an unwillingness to see the winners and losers in a power game as discontinuous entities; and a historicity - are exactly the criteria by which by Western civilization today is being found decadent. Dominance is never cost-free; victory is rarely safe for the victors. And the defences and techniques of survival the subjugated cultures of the world have developed in response to their shared experience of oppression are exactly the ones which must be explored as possible paths of liberation, not only for the oppressed, but also for those caught in the hinges of the traditional concepts of success, privilege and progress.
The Right to Food: How to Guarantee
Authors: Christensen Cheryl
Published: March 2013

The article accepts the idea of a right to food as a socially basic right - everyone's minimum reasonable claims on the rest of humanity. It then tries to determine whether, and how, a global right to food might become a reality for the present generation of hungry people. Physical constraints to increased agricultural production, while important, are not insurmountable barriers to achieving a right to food. More fundamental are choices about the shape of development programs within countries - and their immediate beneficiaries - and the way in which international transactions distribute the costs, risks, and burdens of guaranteeing a sustainable right to food. The author argues that international changes should be made to minimize the current tendency for the greatest burdens and costs of securing a right to food to fall on individuals and collectivities with the fewest resources for changing the existing political and economic structures.
Role of People in the Future Global Order
Authors: Alger Chadwick F.
Published: March 2013

Proposals for change in the present international order, particularly in the context of the increasing desire for self-reliance and fulfillment of needs in Third World communities, require creative thought about the role of people in the future global order. Perception of the world as a system of nation-states and traditional nonparticipation of the public in foreign-policy making by national governments inhibits the creation of a future in which people can fulfill their needs in self-reliant communities. Evidence suggests that lack of confidence in their national governments is inhibiting people in industrialized countries from responding to the needs of Third World people. At the same time, it is doubtful that Third World governments can satisfy the needs of people without wider participation of the people in governmental foreign-policy making. The future needs of people in both Third World and industrialized communities will only be served by the creation of symmetrical and responsive relationships between local communities in all parts of the world.
Towards an Endogenous Scientific and Technological Development for the Third World
Authors: Sagasti Francisco R.
Published: March 2013

Starting from certain premises on the role of science and technology in development, this essay examines five components of a strategy for endogenous scientific and technological (S&T) development, suggesting concerete measures and possible lines of action. The last section offers some remarks on the way these measures, and the principles behind them, may be examined and dealt with in the context of the 1979 United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTD) and other subsequent international meetings on similar or related issues.
Science and Technology for a New Social Order
Authors: Rahman A.
Published: March 2013

The paper points out some of the existing limitations of science, in terms of its isolation, highly specialized nature of knowledge and its language, its present linkages and their consequences. It points out the nature of technology, particularly with regard to control of resources and generation and preservation of inequalities, in addition to inefficient machines and systems and pollution problems. It also points out the unequal relationship between the developing and advanced countries and the political, economic and technological pressures exerted on the former by the latter to play a satellitic role. The paper suggests that major transformations could be effected when scientific and technological developments could be linked to a movement of social change. It goes on to suggest concrete steps which could be taken to effect that.
The Traditions of Technology
Authors: Nandy Ashis
Published: March 2013

Modern technology is a particular form of traditional technology with about 300 years of history behind it. It has become the dominant tradition by marginalizing the other traditions of technology in the West and in the rest of the world. In this marginalization, important roles have been played by the ideology of Englightenment, by the Industrial Revolution, and nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism. They have blurred the difference between science and technology, underwritten the mechanomorphic world-image and promoted the concept of a value-free, ethically unrestrained technology seeking omnipotence and omniscience on behalf of man. However, the present crises of technological consciousness has brought to the fore alternative traditions of technology, not as ethnotechnologies from which a universal, secular, modern technology can draw lessons, but as competing philosophies of universality which can provide correctives to the alienating, exploitative, and dehumanizing role of modern science and technology. For this, an alternative ideology of science as well as a new legitimacy for the traditional technosystems and their cultural environments is necessary. Such a legitimacy will have to be based on a different set of values relating to the man-nature and man-man relationships and a deeper understanding of the politics of technology in its cross-national and cross-cultural contexts.
Science, Technology, Autonomy, and Dependence: A Framework for International Debate
Authors: Morehouse Ward
Published: March 2013

In the past 30 years, the role of science and technology in the international system has changed markedly. Science and technology have emerged as primary instruments of power and social control, with the major industrialized countries, especially the superpowers, relying more and more on science and technology as a means of maintaining their dominance in that system. Notwithstanding beachheads of technological competence and scientific excellence in the Third World, the technological gap between the North and the South has widened during this period because of the near-monopoly that a few industrialized countries have acquired on the generation and productive use of new technology based on modern science. Development strategies, relying on importation of capital-intensive, socially inappropriate, environmentally destructive Western technologies, cannot but lead to a massive global equity crisis in the 1980s. These technologies have been at the heart of the accelerating de-industrialization of the Third World by the First and Second Worlds on a scale far beyond what occurred in historical colonialism. The critical need is to focus the debate, at the forthcoming world conferences dealing with science, technology and development, on these underlying issues, leading to the formulation of concrete action proposals at the national and international levels which will effectively promote the technological autonomy of the Third World. While we cannot be certain that greater autonomy will lead to greater equity, few Southern countries can go very far in meeting the minimum material needs of most, not to speak all, of their people without a greatly strengthened autonomous capacity for creating, acquiring, adapting and using technology to solve their own urgent economic and social problems.
The Foreign Arms Sales Policy of the Carter Administration
Authors: Ball Nicole , Leitenberg Milton
Published: March 2013

This paper makes the point that the Carter Administration is continuing the US policy of spreading militarization round the world, particularly in the Third World. During the Nixon and Ford Administrations, arms sales and transfers came to be used routinely as the quid pro quo in diplomacy. As a Presidential candidate, Carter pledged to reduce US involvement in the conventional arms trade. Nonetheless, within a year of his enunciating his ‘arms sales restraint’ policy in May 1977, the Administration proposed an end to the arms ban on Turkey, approved the sale of AWACs to Iran and 200 warplanes to the Mid-East, as well as a myriad of less controversial weapons deals. The dollar ceiling on arms sales, has been frequently circumvented. Despite the legislation requiring the cessation of military sales, loans and grants to countries in which there is a ‘consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights’, the Carter Administration continues to supply arms to many of the worst human rights offenders. And despite the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the Administration has failed to act. It is extremely unlikely that any significant change will occur in the world arms trade despite President Carter's pronouncements against the ‘spiralling arms traffic’.
Dependence to (Inter) Dependence: Review of Debate on the (New) International Economic Order
Authors: Shaw Timothy M.
Published: March 2013

The Bretton Woods compact that regulated the post-World War II world economic system till 1973 is dead, while a new one to take its place is yet to take shape. The controversy sparked off by the Third World demand for a new international economic order (NIEO) may be seen as a debate on what should replace Bretton Woods. This essay attempts to disentangle the assumptions, questions, and expectations pertaining to NIEO, especially in relation to the subject of dependence and interdependence. It analyses the affiliations and ideologies, concerns and interests of the advocates of both and evaluates the present stage of NIEO debate. In the end it examines the possibility of a North-South convergence around the nexus of self-reliance (mainly on the part of the South) and self-restraint (mainly on the part of the North) in a sustained effort to prepare for a planned transition, away from Bretton Woods and towards a more equitable and integrated system.
Towards a Just World
Authors: Kothari Rajni
Published: March 2013

If about 200 years ago history took a new turn (leading to the global domination - political, economic, cultural and ideological - of the West), it is now again ripe for a new turn (as the result of its unfolding). But the turn cannot be taken without human intervention any more than it was taken 200 years ago. Indeed, intervention is being actively made through various strategems by the beneficiaries, and therefore guardians, of the status quo. To counter this, the paper proposes the kind of intervention that will demolish the existing structures of in-built violence, inequity, domination and insensate exploitation both of vast sections of humanity and of nature, and pave the way for the emergence of a world that is humane and just, peaceful and secure, and one that ensures to all human entities no less than to individuals a livable life of dignity and freedom. A strategy for such intervention must needs be based on a correct understanding of the dialectic of the historical process to avoid the pitfall of utopian model-building, identify the forces wanting or needing and working for change, fuse them into a strong global coalition, and identify the points where interventions can be successfully made to bring about the desired change.
Contending with a Planet in Peril: An Optimal Educational Response
Authors: Weston Burns H.
Published: March 2013

The paper surveys the global scene and finds it in deep turmoil and heading toward what may eventually be disaster. It analyzes the causes of this and comes to the conclusion that the challenge is one of changing course by making profound transformations at every level and in all spheres to work toward the preferred world of the future that is anchored to the values of autonomy and dignity of the individual and of peoples, equality and justice as principles of social organization, participation in decision-making structures and in the productive process, elimination of oppression and coercion both between and within nations, and harmony between humans, society, nature and technology. One of the indispensable instruments in this process is education that makes an appropriate and adequate response to the present challenge instead of, as at present, preparing for yesterday's reality. Such an education has to be global and holistic in perspective, structural in analysis, informed by humanistic values, oriented to the future and committed to fundamental change. The paper gives a tentative framework for syllabi to this end.
Europe in the Global Strategic Game
Authors: Brucan Silviu
Published: March 2013

As part of a study of the anatomy of militarization, this paper examines the role that Europe has played, and continues to play, in the ongoing strategic game. The globalization of the war system in the nuclear era (but with the nuclear monopoly in the hands of the US and the Soviet Union) has enabled the two superpowers to reserve exclusively to themselves the power to decide the question of war and peace. The war system fuels the insensate arms race regardless of the demands of ideological rivalry or security requirements. Since the arms policies of the superpowers cannot be understood in exclusively military terms, the paper analyzes the dynamics of the arms race in the broader context of the pressure of technology and interdependence, power politics, self-assertion of nations, and social change, of which technology-interdependence pressure and the thrust for social change are likely to play a more decisive role in the coming decades. It is in this context that the paper projects the scenario of the future. If the scenario fails to materialize, the result will be nuclear escalation to the point of no return.
Emerging Life-Style Movements: Alternative to Overdevelopment?
Authors: van Steenbergen Bart , Feller Gordon
Published: March 2013

This essay looks at the actual and potential role of emerging alternative life-style movements in dealing with the crisis of overdevelopment in the advanced industrialized nations. It examines the problems posed by overdevelopment and shows how two alternative life-style movements - the North American Movement for Voluntary Simplicity and the New Life-style Movement in the Netherlands - represent positive responses to them. Their values, objectives, as well as their potential impact upon their societies are analysed and critically examined. In this critique, the authors consider the conditions under which alternative life-styles might be more widely adopted in First World societies in general.
The Dialectic of National Autonomy and Global Participation: Alternatives to Conventional Strategies of Development—Mozambique Experience
Authors: Mittelman James H.
Published: March 2013

The promise and limitations of the much discussed development strategy of self-reliance are exemplified in Mozambique, whose program for initiating a transition to socialism centers on creating new party and state organs, hastening rural transformation, promoting heavy industry, and restructuring links with the international economy. The major obstacles include an acute shortage of technical cadres, uncertain range of political debate on key matters to rectify mistakes, a labyrinthine bureaucracy, and potential or actual coercion. The economy, deformed by colonialism, can take major strides toward overcoming the anarchy of the global marketplace and the spasms of capitalist accumulation by regionalizing national production and enlarging national markets. Yet, expanding the size of the market may heighten the tension between increasingly internationalized production and private appropriation by a few. The central lesson is the continual need to meld theory and practice in a creative and original manner appropriate to local conditions.
Strategic Dependence and Oil in Mexican-American Relations
Authors: Saxe-Fernandez John
Published: March 2013

The concept of ‘strategic dependence’ is proposed here as vital for analysis, description and, to some extent, explanation of Mexican-American relations, between the years 1979 and 2000. The main thesis of the paper is that we are not facing an energy crisis, but rather a crisis of the entire post-war order, based on the dynamics of what contemporary social science has called monopoly capitalism. Thus, within this crisis, the obvious dependence of the United States in relation to raw materials, and specifically Third World oil, serves as a catalytic agent in the restructuring of the global economic and diplo-military alliance system.
The Cultural Model of Development: Alternative to Faustian Technology
Authors: Skolimowski Henryk
Published: March 2013

The paper identifies two types of science, the Promethean and the Faustian, each inspired by a particular myth and sustained by a particular eschatology, which determine both the concept of development and the choice of technology for achieving it. Both Prometheus of the Greek myth (who stole fire from heaven at the cost of terrible personal suffering) and Faust of the mediaeval German legend (who sold his soul to the devil) were in quest of knowledge, but because of their differing views of man's nature and life's goal, for entirely different purposes. To Prometheus knowledge was an instrument of liberation and self-perfection leading to the divine. To Faust knowledge was an instrument of power, untrammelled and absolute, over everyone and everything leading to (as the legend itself has it) self-destruction and eternal perdition. Thanks to a quirk of history (or the unfolding of the inexorable process of history, if you please), the Promethean eschatology lost out to the Faustian eschatology, first in the West and later all over the world. Overwhelming local cultures and traditions, it universalized the Western concept of development and Western technology. The dire cumulative consequence of this process is all too evident – not least in the Western society itself; even the fear of total destruction is no longer too fanciful. The paper therefore pleads for a different concept and different models of development suited to particular cultures.
World Demilitarized: A Basic Human Need
Authors: Sakamoto Yoshikazu , Falk Richard A.
Published: March 2013

The issue of armament and disarmament is essentially a political problem. Armament dynamics today are depicted in five levels: (1) Military-industrial complexes, (2) Superpowers' arms race, (3) Armament transfer to less-developed countries, (4) Arms races within the Third World, (5) Arms as a means of internal repression in the Third World. Disarmament of this structure of world-wide domination requires that a self-limitation of state sovereignty, to be exercised eventually by all nations, be initiated by the advanced military powers in the form of significant degrees of unilateral disarmament.
The Pit and the Pendulum: Domestic Politics of United States Military Policy
Authors: Sweet William
Published: March 2013

This essay provides a political analysis of the historical and geographical factors causing the pendulum-like swings of US military policies between an “expensive” posture involving intense weapons development and procurement and a “cheap” posture characterized by dependence on regional allies, covert operations, and greater reliance on threats. These shifts are not adequately explained by balance of power politics, by the concept of military-industrial complex or Neo-Marxist theory, and therefore must also be explained in terms of US domestic pressures arising from specific political and geographical constituencies favoring increased military spending. In looking at the fundamental changes necessary for the US to move toward a sustained effort at detente and disarmament, the author calls for the creation of a socialist party based on a labor farm coalition, which would be able to offer prosperity without dependence on defense procurement or world domination.
An African Perspective on US/USSR/China Arms Policies
Authors: Ekpebu Lawrence Baraebibai
Published: March 2013

The desire of the nations of Africa to achieve security through the military dynamic - derived partially from the fact that situations created by the developed North increase Africa's military requirements and partially from a desire to acquire prestige as defined by the superpowers in terms of military strength - counter-productively threatens national and human security on that continent in that it drains her of the resources needed to fight her real enemies: hunger, disease, illiteracy, and lack of freedom.
Armaments Dynamics: An Issue in Development Strategies
Authors: Lock Peter
Published: March 2013

This article addresses the problem of military dominance in the Third World from the perspective of historical and structural linkages with the West. The author argues that military trends can be traced to the Cold War period when the U.S. poured military aid into newly emergent states willing to join the anti-communist campaign. This stimulated the development of large and sophisticated militaries within otherwise underdeveloped states, severely burdening local economies. As internal conditions worsened, hard-pressed Third World states employed the philosophy of total war built into Cold War diplomacy to shift their image of “the enemy” from external actors exclusively, to domestic social groups, using the military to maintain social control.

Today, “security and development” is a prominent Third World slogan but it is a goal frustrated by three interrelated factors: globalization of the East/West conflict which is epitomized by interventions and regional arms races; reduction in foreign military aid; and consequent subordination of development needs to the demands of military preparedness. Rather than experiencing development, Third World states face chronic balance of payments problems and unemployment, largely because they are sectorally linked with the world market in a spiral of military-related economic relationships.

Attempts to counter this trend must take into account the complex dynamic of the new international military order by planning for alternative security arrangements as well as alternative economic policies. To this end, the author suggests that a system of taxation of arms or military spending would be useful; it would provide incentives to convert arms industries into more socially productive enterprises without forcing the Third World to abandon all arms purchases.
Armaments, Underdevelopment and Demilitarisation in Africa
Authors: Luckham Robin
Published: March 2013

The process of militarization in Africa includes not only the actual acquisition of weapons, but also the extension of military values into political and social structures. This has contributed to an expansion in the size and power of the military establishment, to a reliance on repression by authoritarian regimes, to the continuance of internal and external war, and to an ideology that equates national sovereignty with military power. The background of this militarization lies in the domination of Africa by Western imperial interests. As such, Western proposals for disarmament generate suspicion; they are viewed as simply one more means to keep Africa subordinate. The continued militarization of the continent, however, can only help sustain this dependence and deepen the contradictions in African societies.
The War System and the New International Economic Order: Directions for Disarmament
Authors: Cole Sam
Published: March 2013

The production of arms is systemically based in the dynamic of international economic growth. Major arms exporters, primarily northern industrial states, are locked into a structure that retards economic development worldwide. Unable to remedy internal structural difficulties, these nations export, through arms trade, inequality and injustice to Third World nations. This arms trade, in turn, serves to preserve the political and economic predominance the northern industrial states now enjoy in the global hierarchy. In analyzing the potential for a New International Economic Order, greater emphasis should be placed on the role played by the war system-including arms trade-in inhibiting the realization of the NIEO's stated goals. To this end the complex interplay between the war system and the political economies of those states most actively engaged in arms trade is examined. Finally, alternative futures are explored, based on an emerging multipolar world, and which entail a substantial reduction in the level of global armaments.
The Role of Enforcement of Law in the Establishment of a New International Order: A Proposal for a Transnational Police Force
Authors: Johansen Robert C. , Mendlovitz Saul H.
Published: March 2013

This essay examines the need to supplement national self-help in enforcing desirable global norms, explains the potential contributions of a transnational enforcement agency to the creation of a more just and peaceful world polity, describes how such an agency might function, and explores steps for establishing such an agency.

The proposed transnational enforcement agency is discussed within the context of a comprehensive process of change that aims to domesticate international politics and transnationalize national politics. By gradually reinforcing preferred norms through more effective monitoring and enforcement of them, it is possible to increase the governability of and to humanize world society, as well as to increase the governing ability of political institutions at all levels.

The authors examine the problem of unequal enforcement and emphasize that the proposed transnational agency, even imperfectly functioning, holds more promise for helping to establish justice and keep the peace than do present diplomatic and military practices. The agency's long-range utility for transforming the international system is no less important than its short-term potential for alleviating structural and direct violence.
Normative Initiatives and Demilitarization: A Third System Approach
Authors: Falk Richard A.
Published: March 2013

This paper explores and identifies “creative space” in the struggle against militarization. Taking into account the political structures and restraints of different polities, the author examines normative initiatives that challenge the root assumptions of militarization and that can be linked to actual social forces working for principled demilitarization. The author points to the primacy of the Third System in this effort. He argues that, at the present time, the First System (the state system and its support infrastructure) is supportive of the underlying logic of militarization, that the Second System (the UN and regional international institutes) being a dependency of the First System is unable to implement demilitarization initiatives, and that only the Third System (represented by people acting individually and collectively through voluntary institutions) is able to sustain normative initiatives of consequence to demilitarization. Normative initiatives relevant to demilitarization undertaken in the Third System can aid in mobilizing effective opposition to militarization in all three systems by altering the normative climate, thereby producing new “creative space” for political innovation. Finally, the author provides examples of the most promising Third System normative initiatives at the global, regional; sovereign state and individual levels.