Word: ldcs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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These figures from the World Bank point up the desperate poverty in many of the 100 nations that are euphemistically classified as less developed countries (LDCs). People in the industrialized countries with pressing economic problems of their own might well say, "So what?" Poverty has long been a fact of life, and Americans especially feel that they have done more than their share in giving foreign aid since World War II. It is not, however, a question of altruism. The advanced countries have an urgent self-interest in improving a situation that in a few years may well overshadow...
...self-interest is partly political: poverty in the LDCs provides fertile soil for demagogues. So far this spring, there have been three political outbreaks: a Marxist coup in Afghanistan, bloody riots in Peru, a guerrilla invasion of Zaïre. Each has had special causes, but the potential will exist for many more such explosions until the 3 billion or so citizens of LDCs can see some prospect for improvement in their lives. A few years ago, a French author wrote a futuristic novel in which the world's hungry banded together in a kind of vengeful crusade...
...economic conditions of the Third World, of course, are not uniform. The OPEC nations have become world financial powers, and a handful of once depressed countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, are developing flourishing new industries. But the majority of LDCS have been knocked backward in the 1970s by a devastating one-two punch: oil price boosts that have raised the cost of running the most primitive factories and farm machines, and recession in the industrial world that has restricted markets for cotton, copper, cocoa, tin and other raw materials sold by less developed lands. In many countries...
These strains have bred North-South tensions that easily match in bitterness the East-West ideological clashes. At conference after conference, LDCs have demanded a "new international economic order" involving vaguely defined transfers of wealth from North to South. Sometimes these demands have focused on acceptance of cartels that would jack up the prices of raw materials, sometimes on insistence that rich countries give preferential tariff treatment to products from LDCs. Poor-country spokesmen have accused multinational companies of ripping off their resources and proclaimed a right to nationalize them, while contending that multinationals have some kind of obligation...
Northern statesmen, with much justice, have regarded this rhetoric as a kind of impractical Robin Hoodism. But with no discernible justice, the industrial countries have kept a tight lid on their assistance to LDCs. Japan spends only 0.21% of its burgeoning G.N.P. on foreign aid, vs. a U.N. target of 0.7% for industrial nations; the U.S. figure is 0.27%. True, the U.S. carries the heaviest defense burden in the non-Communist world. But Congress has foolishly sought to forbid aid to countries producing goods that compete or even might compete with American products...