Word: brandts
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...full Brandt commission recommendations for the 1980s and '90s are a combination of the ambitious and realistic plus the romantic and unpractical. The report correctly points out that nations spend $450 billion a year on arms but only $20 billion annually on official development aid. But Brandt's suggested tax on the export of war materiel is likely to be as quickly forgotten as the 1928 Kellogg-Briand treaty outlawing all wars. The commission rightly points out the past weakness of United Nations organizations in dealing with North-South problems but then proposes a new U.N. agency that...
...Brandt commission hits several targets accurately. Its proposal for an organized dialogue between oil producers and oil consumers could be one small step for mankind. The run-up in petroleum prices has now got so out of control that it is harming both OPEC and the industrialized countries. Higher oil prices cause more global inflation, which in turn wipes out much of the real earnings from higher priced oil. The OPEC countries have interests beyond these self-defeating price rises, such as guaranteeing their investments in the West and speeding their own modernization. The goals of the oil producers...
...Brandt report wisely criticizes rich nations for erecting trade barriers against the developing world's new exports, such as shoes, TV sets and clothing. Most poor nations can escape from poverty only if they can find buyers for some of their manufactured products as well as their commodities. The report states bluntly: "A key problem, which has to be solved if long-term world growth is to reach and stay at higher levels, is that of access to Northern markets for the South's manufactures...
...most significant shortcoming in the Brandt commission treatment of North-South relations, however, is its limited attention paid to the role of the private sector. The report looks to government rather than to individual initiative to solve the problems of development. The study calls the establishment of "efficient planning" one of the most important tasks of poor countries and urges taxes on capital gains...
Unlike many studies of North-South problems, the report does not try to win support for Third World development on the basis of charity or the "white man's burden." The Brandt commission argues strict mutual interest. The economic travails of the past decade have shown the interdependence of nations. Stagnation in the developing world results in reduced imports of machinery and food from the industrialized countries. Slow growth in the North likewise can be devastating for economies in the South. Says the report: "The world economy is now functioning so badly that it damages both the immediate...