801 



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political action, and secondarily, the economic terms on which resources are 

 made available to industrialized societies. 7 



A major political phenomenon of recent years is the assertion of the right 

 of absolute sovereignty over natural resources. It is a natural concomitant 

 of a nation/state system, but has not previously been sanctified as explicitly 

 as today. The growing dependence of industrialized societies on resources 

 under the control of others, and particularly under the control of developing . 

 countries, creates major dependency relations, many fraught with great 

 uncertainty and danger for international stability. 



The dangers come not only from the threat of disruption of supplies, or of 

 sharp and sudden changes in the economic terms upon which resources become 

 available, but also from the second-order strains created among industrial 

 countries whose disparate dependence on resources from abroad may lead to 

 major and disruptive foreign policy differences. The much greater dependence 

 of Japan and Continental Europe than the U.S. on mid-East oil, or the 

 differential dependence on South African resources could lead to serious 

 conflicts of interest over Middle East, or African, or Soviet policy. 



Though the world is painfully conscious of the potential of oil -rich 

 developing countries to put political restrictions on resources, it is not 

 only developing countries that act in that way. Canada and Australia have 

 both restricted export of uranium ore on non-proliferation grounds, and the 

 U.S. severely restricts export of enriched uranium on the basis of specific 



^A companion paper in this series (Vogeiy) deals with resource 

 issues in detail . 



