The United States actively participated in preparing this sustained assault on American institutions. The 1970 Report had been three years in the making, during which it made its way through layers of bureaucracies, all manner of meetings. Americans were always present, and Americans always approved. This was, after all, a Third World document; it was to be treated with tolerance and understanding.

"EATING LITTLE CHILDREN"

The blindness of American diplomacy to the process persists. Two large events occurred in 1971. China entered the United Nations, an event the Third World representatives saw as a decisive shift of power to their camp. Less noticed, but perhaps no less important, a distinctive radicalization began in world social policy.

This redicalization was first clearly evidenced at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held at Stockholm in 1972. The conference was in considerable measure an American initiative. The Brazilians suddenly stormed onto the scene to denounce the whole enterprise as a conspiracy of the haves to keep the have-nots down and out. The argument was that the rich had got rich by polluting their environments and now proposed to stay that way by preventing others from polluting theirs. Thus, the rich would continue their monopoly on the use of the raw materials of the poor.

While the Stockholm Conference was turbulent, the United Nations World Population Conference held in 1974 had an air of insurrection. It, too, was largely an American initiative. Yet a disaster overtook the American position. To begin with, we thought up the conference to deal with a problem we consider other countries to have; countries, that is, of the British revolution who are animated by the liveliest sense that their troubles originate in capitalist and imperialist systems. The conference met in Bucharest, capital of a communist country, and President Nicolae Ceausescu declared in his speech that "The division of the world into developed and underdeveloped countries is a result of historical evolution, and is a direct consequence of the imperialist, colonialist and neocolonialist policies of exploitation."

If this was to be expected, few could have anticipated the wild energy of the Chinese assault on the Western position. China, which has the strictest of all population-control programs, arrived to assail with unprecedented fury the very idea of population control as subversive of the future of the Third World. The future, the Chinese proclaimed, is infinitely bright. Only the imperialists and the hegemonists could spoil it, and population control was to be their wrecking device.

A theory of "consumerism" emerged: it was excessive consumption in the developed economies which was the true source of the problems of the underdeveloped nations and not the size of the latter's population. None dared oppose the thesis. The conference turned into another occasion for reminding the West of its alleged crimes and unresolved obligations.

This tone reached manic proportions in Population Tribune, an unofficial, privately financed conference. Ritual recantation became the order of the day. Prof. René Dumont of France-blaming the "Plunderers of the Third World" for world conditions-epitomized the argument in a statement "Population and Cannibals' which was subsequently given front-page coverage in Development Forum, an official, five-language U.N. publication:

Eating little children. I have already had the occasion to show that the rich white man with his overconsumption of meat and his lack of generosity toward poor populations, acts like a true cannibal. . . . Last year, in overconsuming meat which wasted the cereals which could have saved them, we ate the little children of the Sahel, of Ethiopia and of Bangladesh.

And the American delegation? The official view, flashed to diplomatic posts around the world, was uncomplicated: "ALL BASIC U.S. OBJECTIVES WERE ACHIEVED.... U.S. DELEGATION UNANIMOUSLY PLEASED WITH FINAL RESULT."

GOOD NEWS AND BAD

If the beginning of wisdom in dealing with the nations of the Third World is to recognize their essential ideological coherence, the next step is to recognize that there is every reason to welcome this ideology, and to welcome the coherence also. Because of the British revolution and its heritage, the prospect now is that the world will not go totalitarian. In the Christian sense, has there

been such political "good news" in our time? But there is bad news also. The great darkness could yet consume us. The potential for absorption of these states into the totalitarian camp is there.

The outcome will almost certainly turn on whether or not these nations succeed in establishing sufficiently productive economies. If they become permanently dependent on outside assistance, that assistance is likely more and more to come from the totalitarian nations, and with it the price of internal political influence from the totalitarian camp through the local pro-Moscow, or pro-Peking, communist party.

India is the best current example. Parliamentary democracy is vigorous enough there, but economic incompetence on its part and diplomatic blunders on ours have led to an increasing dependence on Soviet support, which has brought about an open electoral alliance between the Congress Party and the Moscow-oriented communists, an alliance we would have thought worth fighting a war to prevent two decades ago, but which we scarcely notice today.

This alliance would not have come about save for the failure of the Indian economy to prosper and the success of the argument that the cure for the damage done by leftist policies is even more leftist policies. And here is the rub of the bad news: for all the attractions of this variety of socialist politics, it has proved, in almost all its versions, almost the world over, to be a distinctly poor means of producing wealth.

ENORMOUS STAKES

India will serve as an example. In the year of its independence, 1947, it produced 1.2 million tons of steel and Japan only 900,000 tons. A quarter-century later, in 1972, India produced 6.8 million tons and Japan 106.8. These outcomes are the results of decisions made by the ruling party of each nation.

The break in Indian growth came precisely in 1962 when the United States, which had been about to finance its largest aid project ever, a steel complex at Bokharo in Eastern India, insisted that it be managed privately. India insisted on a public-sector plant-a plant that would do what the Prime Minister of India wanted done. In the manner of the Aswan Dam (and with as much political impact), the Russians stepped in to finance the public-sector plant. By 1974 this plant had yet to produce sheet steel. For the period 1962-72 Indian steel production grew a bare 1.8 percent per year, while Japanese grew more than 13.4 percent per year.

Granted that much economic policy is concerned with political stability, it remains the case that the relative economic failure accompanying political success in regimes such as that of India sooner or later begins to undermine the very success. Promises are made, and political stability requires some measure of performance. When it is not forthcoming, regimes change. They become less democratic. They become less independent.

Neither development can be welcomed by the United States, India has now exploded a nuclear device. That may well prove the most important event of 1974. Other Third World nations are likely to follow. Hence, political stability in the Third World acquires a meaning it has never in the past had for American strategic thinking, as well as for our general view of world politics.

World society and world organization have evolved to the point where interests are disposed of in international forums to a degree without precedent. Witness the current negotiations at the Law of the Sea Conference. Two thirds of the world is covered by the sea and the United Nations claims the seabed. That seabed, especially around Hawaii, is rich in "manganese nodules"-concentrations of ore which American technology is now able to exploit. At this moment we have complete freedom to commence industrial use of the high seas. This freedom is being challenged, however, and almost certainly some form of international regime is about to be established. It can be a regime that permits American technology to go forward. Or it can assert "internationalized" rights to exploitation. The stakes are enormous.

TO TELL THE TRUTH

What then does the United States do? The United States goes into opposition. A loyal opposition. We are a minority. We are outvoted. This is neither an unprecedented nor an intolerable situation. The question is what do we make of it. In going into opposition, three central issues commend themselves as points of systematic attack: first, the condition of international liberalism; second, the world economy; third, the state of political and civil liberties and of the general welfare. The rudiments of these arguments need only be sketched.

It is the peculiar function of "radical" political demands that they bring about an exceptional depreciation of the achievements of liberal process. But the truth is that international liberalism and its processes have enormous recent achievements to their credit. It is time for the United States to start saying so.

One example is the multinational corporation which, combining modern management with liberal trade policies, is arguably the most creative international institution of the 20th century. A less controversial example is the World Health Organization. In 1966 it set out to abolish smallpox, and by the time this article is read, the job will more than likely have been completed-in very significant measure with the techniques of American epidemiologists. Here, as in a very long list of examples that could be cited, a liberal world policy has made national

sense.

In 1973 the "planetary product, as estimated by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State, grew at a real rate of 6.8 percent, an astonishing figure. The Third World product expanded by 7.6 percent, no less astonishing.

Simultaneously it is to be asserted that these economies do less well than they ought that the difference is of their own making and no one else's. It is time we asserted that economic growth is governed not by Western or American conspiracies, but by its own laws.

A commentator in The Statesman, Calcutta's most prestigious journal, recently warned:

It would be unwise for policy planners in the developing world to dismiss too easily the premise of a society that worships success: if you are poor you have only yourself to blame. Development is a matter of hard work and discipline. So if you are not developing fast, it is not because the rules of the game are stacked against you or that structural changes are never easy to bring about, but because you are lazy and undisciplined. The general disenchantment with economic aid flows from this. It is difficult for Americans to understand why such substantial flows of food and money have made so little impact.

Well, the time may have come when it is necessary for Americans to say, "Yes, it is difficult to understand." And it is time we stated that inequalities in the world may not be so much a matter of condition as of performance. The Israelis, the Nigerians, the Taiwanese do well. It is a good argument.

THE CASE FOR LIBERTY

Speaking for political and civil liberty is something that can surely be undertaken by Americans with enthusiasm and zeal. Surely it is not beyond us, when the next Social Report comes along, to ask about conditions in many countries of the Third World of which almost everyone knows, but few have thought it politic to speak of.

It is time that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell. A good many Third World countries would not welcome a sustained comparison between the liberties they provide their own peoples and those which are common in the United States.

For the United States to go into opposition in this manner requires reversal of roles for American spokesmen. In Washington, three decades of habit have created patterns of appeasement so profound as to seem wholly normal. And yet how interesting the results might be. The results, say, of observing the occasion of an Algerian's assuming the presidency of the General Assembly with an informed tribute to the career of the liberator Ahmed Ben Bella, still presumably rotting in an Algerian prison cell. The results of a discourse on the disparities between the (1973) per-capita GNP in Abu Dhabi of $43,000 and that of its neighbor, the Democratic People's Republic of Yemen, with one-thousandth that. This need not be a uniformly scornful exercise; anything but. The Third World has more than its share of attractive regimes-Costa Rica, Gambia, Malaysia, to name but three. Half the people in the world who live under a regime of civil liberties live in India. The point is to differentiate, and to turn their own standards against regimes for the moment too much preoccupied with causing difficulties for others, mainly the United States.

It is past time we ceased to apologize for an imperfect democracy. Find its equal. It is time we grew out of our supersensivity about the feelings of new nations. It is time we commenced to treat them as equals, a respect to which they are entitled.

The Third World must feed itself, for example, and this will not be done by suggesting that Americans eat too much. It is one thing to stress what is consumed in the West, another to note what is produced there. In 1973, 17.8 percent

of the world's population produced 64.3 percent of its proauct—and not just from taking advantage of cheap raw materials.

In the same way, the Third World has almost everywhere a constitutional heritage of individual liberty, and it needs to be as jealous of that heritage as of the heritage of national independence. It should be a source of renown that India, for one, has done that, and of infamy that so many others have not.

And equality, what of it? Here an act of historical faith is required: what is the record? The record was stated most succintly by an Israeli socialist who told William F. Buckley, Jr., that those nations which have put liberty ahead of equality have ended up doing better by equality than those with the reverse priority. This is so, and it is something to be shouted to the heavens. This is our case. We are of the liberty party, and it might surprise us what energies might be released were we to unfurl those banners.

To have halted the great totalitarian advance only to be undone by the politics of resentment and the economics of envy would be a poor outcome to the promise of a world society. At the level of world affairs we have learned to deal with communism. Our task is now to learn to deal with socialism. It will not be a less difficult task. It ought to be a profoundly more pleasant one.

U.S. POLICY TOWARD THE UNITED NATIONS

Senator JAVITS. I was going to ask Mr. Moynihan, because of the tendency of people to run rather than read, if he could summarize of how he feels the U.S. policy toward the United Nations ought to be adapted to the present situation which is characterized, without in any way being invidious on the particular item, by the vote on the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States as proposed by President Echeverria of Mexico, whom I have just conferred about that very matter. They voted 120 to 6, the United States being 1 of the 6, and the question would be, should it be our policy to avoid such one-sided votes by abstaining or some other way avoiding such a crushing defeat. I hope very much that we would not avoid it. You are going to be the representative. It is very important that you deal with it. Also what should be the policy of the United States respecting the advocacy of its position in the face of that kind of a situation, which is not uncharacteristic of the United Nations today.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Exactly. Senator, let me first say that in a world organization such as the U.N., you bring different styles of political and legislative behavior. I mean here to be only descriptive. I think it ought to be understood that there are legislatures around the world in which perfectly competent men, of integrity, men of sincere purpose enact legislation which is seen as stating an ideal goal. That legislation is far from being a statutory requirement which must thereafter most rigorously be adhered to such that it first has to be most. meticulously examined. It is rather a version of what things ought to be like. Such legislation says: Let us establish the ideal and hope in time we might attain it. In those situations, in all truth, pronouncements can be more readily accepted by people who do not perhaps intend immediately to adhere to and abide by them.

If you look at the international labor treaties of the ILO, which we have had now for 55 years, I am sorry to say there is almost an inverse relationship between the number of labor treaties that have been ratified in given countries and the standards of labor in the societies involved.

And I think that it probably behooves us to understand this is the style of some countries and it is not ours and maybe there are situations where you have to accept it.

It also behooves other nations, however, to understand our position in these matters and in particular to be interested enough in us to

know that when we take exceptions, and we are sticky and we are hard to convince on things like this, it comes out of what to us is honorable, political, legislative tradition. You do it; you do not say, well, somebody is going to do it some day. You understand that you should do it right here and now. It is perfectly clear that actions of the last General Assembly produced the impression of the nontotalitarian nations of the world divided with respect to economic cooperation, when in fact that division does not exist in practice. Our relations with Mexico are close; regarded as indispensable by both of us. It seems to me that nobody was the better off for having brought it down to who said yes and who said no. As much as possible the avoidance of that kind of situation where the things that the United States must take exception to were the lesser part of the charter and certainly not essential to it; the things with which we agreed were certainly important and the largest part of the subject.

Consider some of the things we took issue with, as for example, this question of the right to nationalize foreign properties. I was in India when this issue was being argued and you learn a little bit about the problems here.

Now, the Government of India has a meticulous record of compensating anybody who for whatever reason has their government taken over, their property taken over by the government. India is a country which operates under a legal system very similar to our own. The decisions of the Supreme Court two blocks away from here are cited every day in the Supreme Court of India. They are just as careful in this matter as we would be ourselves. Yet, as a matter of principle, they did not want to have to say in writing that they would in fact do what in fact they did do; such is sensitivity.

Now, I think I can understand how they might not wish to feel obliged to behave the way in fact they intend to behave. But now that the poorest nations of the world have gone on record as not being responsible for compensation of foreign investments that are expropriated, or nationalized, they must now face the fact that the new, the oil-rich nations with enormous resources to invest and looking for investment, know this. Where are those investments going? Are they going to the poorest countries that need them? Or are they coming to the industrial nations which certainly can use investments but are not at the same level of necessity. They are coming to the latter, and why are they? Because the investments elsewhere are risky. And why are they risky? Did not the U.N. design a big charter saying you have no international obligations for recompense? Whose interest was that? Was it in the interest of the poorest countires to go on record in such a way that investment will avoid them? I do not think it was. And whose investment? The investment of that same Third World.

I think a little more time to argue that case may have persuaded a lot of people that maybe last year was not the best year to enact something like that and maybe a vote is not the best way to decide it. Yet it is behind us. All I would say, having gotten it out of their system, let us hope we can proceed on issues Secretary Kissinger talked about, which involve specific and real problems with real countries and real solutions. Not consensus voting.

Senator JAVITS. I am sure it will interest all of us to know that is exactly the line I took with the President of Mexico.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Did you?