1842 



a donation of billions of dollars without recompense. The developing 

 nations now propose that their exports be paid for more generously 

 and that they be given broader access to needed technology. Such 

 proposals allege economic justice in the name of interdependence, 

 feut the arrangement would be a blatant form of nationalism, wanting 

 in equity and not long lasting. Interdependence needs to be based on 

 fair dealing and improved opportunity for all. 



A Concluding Remark 



In the foregoing discussion the fact of interdependence is seen as 

 generally accepted by informed persons in the United States, however 

 inadequately its impUcations may be imderstood. And since Ameri- 

 cans are a "can do" people, acceptance of the fact tends to carry 

 the suggestion that appropriate steps are being taken, or will be 

 taken, to cope with it. 



But is this the case? What is the present reality? There is a possible 

 view wliich has not yet been fairly dealt with; it is sunmiarized in a 

 recent New ForZrer article :^" 



. . . when one turns one's attention away for a moment from one's hopes 

 of what interdependence may become in the future and examines what it is here 

 and now, interdependence begins to look like the source of nothing but trouble. 

 In fact, a large number of the crises of the last few years could be described as 

 crises of interdependence. The oil crisis, which launched the idea on its spectacular 

 career, is the prototype. . . . It is often debated whether the causes of the oil 

 crisis are fundamentally political or fundamentally a matter of dwindhng re- 

 sources. They are, at bottom, neither. The crisis is what happens when many 

 nations come to rely on the natural resources of a few nations for their economic 

 survival. It is a crisis of interdependence. What can be said of oil can also be said 

 of food. ... 



Unions in many countries . . . have discovered on the national level what 

 the OPEC nations have discovered on the international level: that modern econ- 

 omies are fatally vulnerable and are an excellent target for blackmail. An alto- 

 gether different sort of actor on the poUtical scene — the terrorist — has learned to 

 make use of the pressure points of modern society in another way ... 



What may be most dangerous of all is that interdependence makes every crisis 

 in every part of the world the business of everybody. . . . when every small 

 crisis ^n the world — so many of which seem to be entirely impervious to solution — 

 becomes the business of everybody, then each small group that has a role to play 

 in the functioning of the whole can hold the whole for ransom. One day, a planned 

 interdependence may develop that wiU resolve these difficulties. For the moment, 

 the unplanned interdependence that is actually with us seems only to multiply 

 the dangers the world faces. 



It would be easy, perhaps, to brush aside this counsel of near despair 

 as the reflection of some weary and skeptical writer's overlong exposure 

 to the troubles of New York City — the product of a unique situation. 

 (But how unique, indeed, is that situation — or how symptomatic?) 

 How much overdrawn, after all, is this sardonic view of interdepend- 

 ence? The troubles of Beirut, Belfast, Lisbon, and Buenos Aires 

 cause repercussions around the world, and there is the danger (amount- 

 ing in the minds of many observers to a certainty) that by defaulting 

 New York City would wreak havoc on many banks in the United 

 States and Europe. 



It is hard to gainsay the phrase, "the unplanned interdependence 

 that is actually with us." Where is the pohcy planning, fortified by 



M« "Interdependence: On the Road to Moral Perfection?"— reprinted in The Inter Dependent, vol. 2, no. 8, 

 October 1975, p. 2. Another possible view is expressed by Gregory Schmld In the Winter 1975-76 issue of 

 Foreign Policy, in an article entitled "Interdependence Has Its Limits." Schmld poses the question of whether 

 the world may not have reached the end of a 30-year period of growing economic interdependence, and may 

 be entering "an era of new mercantilism." 



