1841 



for strengthening congressional capabilities, as well as those of the 

 executive branch, to meet the new requirements of interdependence. 

 These requirements are for improvements not only at the national 

 level but in the machinery of the United Nations. There is, moreover, 

 a reciprocal relationship between the international organization and 

 its national members with respect to both ends and means. To imple- 

 ment Secretary Kissinger's international development goals, his 

 Proposals for an International Industrialization Institute and an 

 ntemational Center for the Exchange of Technological Information, 

 and his suggestions as to a conference on science and technology for 

 development and other cooperative measures to achieve needed devel- 

 opment,"" would require corresponding structures and procedures at 

 national levels — especially in the governments of nations best able to 

 contribute leadership. It remains to be seen how many of these steps will 

 actually be taken. 



A measure which could dramatize the interdependent relationships 

 between individual nations and the United Nations, and of domestic 

 and international interests within individual nations, might be a 

 technology alert system for the rapid dissemination of universally 

 needed technical information. This system could interrelate with 

 existing services like the World Weather Watch and the health ad- 

 visories of the World Health Organization, but might also embrace 

 the entire range of technical and related social issues bearing on human 

 security and well-being. It could address, for example, such diverse 

 matters as detection of toxic agents in the atmosphere, prevention of 

 the international transmission by air of insect pests, treatment of 

 childhood diseases, the sharing of constructive experience in the social 

 assimilation of the mentally retarded, and many others. Another effect 

 of such a step would be to emphasize that much of what is implied by 

 interdependence today lies outside the zero-sum formula and even 

 outside the area of healthy competition; "^ the cost in money and effort 

 of sharing it universally would be slight in proportion to the universal 

 gain. Two questions remain to be asked, however: would the United 

 States (or some other nation) sponsor such a proposal? And, if so, 

 would it persist in providing the organizational support for success- 

 ful foUow-through and in stimulating other nations, and the United 

 Nations itself, to do Ukewise? 



Interdependence might also call for an awareness on the part of 

 developing countries whose chief exports are raw materials that 

 technology, no less than mines and railroads, costs money to develop. 

 The open-handed way in which the United States has dispensed tech- 

 nology since 1950 in the various foreign aid programs has constituted 



**• Kissinger, "Global Consensus and Economic Development," p. 7. 



"• Professor Robinson comments on this point: "As 1 see it, this is precisely why a fresh posture toward 

 the idea of 'the national interest,' in order to offset zero-sum expressions of nationalism, is essential. The 

 task of demonstrating the connection between 'the national interest' and the fashioning of a prudent, yet 

 encompassing, fabric of interdependence is, perhaps, the most vital one that pertains to the long-term success 

 of diplomacy and preclusion of nuclear war. In essence, I see no prospect that interdependence will be con- 

 sciously and aptly treated as a mandate of nature, as the twenty-first century nears, until the concept of the 

 national interest attains a revolutionary revision." There are, he adds, built-in psychological obstacles: 

 ". . . major powers deem their sentiments of Independence (read superiority) not hghtly to be encroached 

 upon. At the same time, less-puissant nations are disposed to parade their 'independence' as compensation 

 for feelings of inferiority and to view interdependence a» a norm as camouflage for the (subtly alluring) re- 

 affirmation and perpetuation of their weaker condition. Thus, it appears to be interdependence-as-reahty's 

 mlsfortime that no grander or lesser power at all has much incentive to own up to the extent to which its 

 destiny is tightly enlaced with that of other nations." Further: "Much of contemporary diplomacy appears 

 to have the object of manipulatirm interdependencies in a way that will favor the maximization of inde- 

 pendence. . . ." 



