49 



World Bank and the World Health Organization offer a glimmer of 

 hope but the intransigence evident in the General Assembly has found 

 its counterpart in UNESCO and ILO. By the mid-1970s, respect for the 

 United Nations in the United States had been seriously impaired and 

 the cost benefit of the association of nations was widely qtiestioned. 

 The very substantial contributions of the U.N. system were largely 

 unseen while its futilities were highly visible. Whether public opinion 

 would be content to tolerate this unsatisfactory state of affairs long 

 enough to evolve a more workable and useful U.N. structure remained 

 to be seen. 



Regionalism 



A basic building block available to U.S. diplomacy in the balancing 

 of cooperation and conflict is the circumstance that many contiguous 

 nations share common geographic and economic problems and oppor- 

 tunities. Many such multinational regions exist throughout the world 

 but their effect on the nations that share them varies widely. Some, like 

 the Scandinavian countries, have established cooperative relations; 

 others, like the nations of former French Indochina, have a long history 

 of strife; some, like the States of Central America, are groping toward 

 cooperation; and some, like the Middle East, are fiercely divided by 

 religion and ideology. The opportunity for economic and social benefits 

 to such regions is great but largely wasted; cooperative planning, 

 division of labor in the development and testing of useful technology, 

 shared infrastructures, and the recognition of commonality of prob- 

 lems, opportunities, goals, and approaches, are all available as elements 

 to reduce the economic significance of national boundaries. Reasons 

 for the neglect of this opportunity to strengthen international amity are 

 easy to find, but the want of effort to this end seems hard to justify. 



Shrinking World Community 



Instant global communications, verbal and visual, bring the whole 

 world into the living room. A terrorist attack in the Middle East or 

 Northern Ireland, an earthquake in Chile or Turkey, an election in 

 Australia or Portgual, is described or shown minutes later everywhere 

 else. The infinite variety of events inviting global attention over- 

 loads the receptors of the individual and the time or space of the 

 communicators. Censorship is inherent, not only for reasons of na- 

 tional policy or economic advantage but because limited capacity 

 compels selection according to some policy or principle. "Newsworthy" 

 events — like war or unrest in Morocco, Angola, Belize, Ethiopia, Por- 

 tugal, Cyprus, Lebanon, or elsewhere — are reported while crop statis- 

 tics, new schools, technological developments, and other constructive 

 events are ignored. Even so, the individual is told more than he can 

 assimilate. Excessive demands are placed on his enthusiasm and indig- 

 nation. In response, the individual tends to dismiss the information 

 flow as irrelevant to his own interests, and to rely on the "experts" 

 to deal with these hopelessly numerous and complex matters. Or else,- 

 in support of his own tradition or esthetic sense, the individual may 

 seize on some one conflict as his own, choosing a side for reasons of 

 moral predilection or ethnic, religious, or national origin. Even so, 

 the average American in 1977 is more aware of the world outside his 

 own country than ever before but perhaps more depressed by what 

 he perceives. 



