The essays in this volume are designed to throw light on the relations between two of the major novel and unique features of the current epoch of human history, features which distinguish the last quarter century from any other episode in the long record of man's efforts to deal with the problems of his society.

Change has been the one constant in the brief but eventful history of the United Nations. Whatever its shortcomings, the UN has proved itself responsive to the turbulent forces of a dynamic age. Whether it will be able to marshal these forces, to channel them for productive ends, remains to be seen.

The key role of trade in the development process is widely accepted today. Two recent events, both relating to international organizations, underscore this acceptance. One was the convening in 1964 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and its establishment as a permanent organ of the UN system. Under UNCTAD's aegis a continuing examination is being conducted as to ways of reshaping world trade policies in the interests of the developing countries. The other event was the adoption early the following year of a new set of articles on trade and development in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In the new articles recognition of the role of exports in economic development was established for the first time in the text of the GATT itself, and a constitutional basis was provided for GATT's many activities designed to promote the exports of developing countries. Elsewhere in this volume are essays evaluating the contributions of UNCTAD and GATT toward the promotion of development in the world's poor countries. In this essay I will rather explore more generally the relation between international trade and economic development and discuss some of the problems that have arisen in the effort to make trade a more effective instrument of development.

Among the features that distinguish the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GAIT) from other international organizations concerned with the trade of less developed countries are two that are especially significant. GATT is the only interregional organization in which the undertakings by members take the form of contractual commitments. It is also an organization that is concerned with trade not only between developed and less developed countries but within these two groups as well. The question can be raised, however, as to whether an organization so constituted and oriented is suited to the task of facilitating the export earnings of the less developed countries or whether, on the contrary, a more specialized body, devoted exclusively to that task, is likely to achieve better results.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), held in Geneva from March 23 to June 16, 1964, was a diplomatic event of major importance—and aturning point in the evolution of international organization. It was the largest and most comprehensive intergovernmental conference ever held, involving 2,000 delegates from 119 countries. It was the first major conference in which the lines were drawn sharply on a North-South rather dian on an East-West basis. And, what is of more lasting significance, it gave birth to continuing machinery that has already had a profound impact both on international institutions and national policies.

One would not ordinarily think of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as of particular importance to the less developed countries. Nevertheless, in recent years the less developed coun-tries have come to have a very high regard for the IMF; and the IMF, in turn, has become the great defender of the interests of the less developed countries. This entente has evolved out of the course of events. In the current discussions on international monetary reform the IMF has be-come the spokesman for universal participation in reserve creation. This suits the institutional interests of the IMF. At the same time it makes the IMF the advocate of the interests of the less developed countries

The World Bank Group consists of three closely affiliated intergovernmental institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (hereinafter referred to as the Bank, IBRD, or the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the International Development Association (IDA). These institutions are the chosen multilateral instruments of governments for providing external capital on a global basis to help finance the development of the world's low-income countries

Regional development banks can serve as focal points for regional and subregional cooperation, thus promoting economic integration. They are institutions whose objectives are neither national nor global and whose leadership and staffs have a regional outlook.

The first and immediate challenge confronting these regional development banks is the financing of regional projects which are beyond the reach of national development banks. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has devoted only limited resources to such project, with a few spectacular exceptions, especially the Indus River project. A purely national approach to planning and financing development does not make sense in most of Latin America and Africa because many nations on these continents are “minicountries,” too small to form economic units of development. Many national borders have been determined by political and diplomatic history rather than by economic factors; frequently, they cut across natural development units such as river basins or mineral deposits. Moreover, except in Europe, the very dearth of strong national institutions makes regional development banks important; they provide additional financial intermediaries to be interposed between the developing regions and the world financial centers, as well as between various national financial institutions of the member countries of the regions concerned.

Technical assistance remains a poorly understood tool for promoting development. Programs continue to grow, but persistent questions are raised about their effectiveness by practitioners and academic observers. Today's uncertainty contrasts dramatically with the exuberance which attended the launching of two landmark technical assistance programs, the Point Four Program of the United States and the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA) of the United Nations.

International organization of aid presents two basic difficulties: 1) Major economic development aid should best be conceived as a supplement to total national development effort, not to single parts of it. This means that a program approach rather than a project approach should be applied in financing. Only a program can show whether projects are additional and optimal. While every program must be spelled out in projects, the sum total of individually worked out projects will not add up to a program.

The problems of development assistance have loomed large on the OECD agenda ever since its establishment, first as the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and then as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Briefly recapitulated, OEEC was created in 1948 to provide for the joint European execution of the Marshall Plan and for the close economic cooperation that the United States' aid offer had launched. Whatever the actual contribution of OEEC, the postwar European economic recovery was remarkably quick. Few international organizations have been thus blessed with the satisfaction of seeing their objectives so amply fulfilled.

The inter-American system represents the first attempt to implement the idea of regional cooperation. Regardless of general world opinion about the system's success, since its inception at the beginning of the nineteenth century the nations of the Americas have tried to establish a juridical order capable of solving their mutual problems, to jointly face the defense of the hemisphere, and to preserve peace in the region. In fact, however, these policies, initially expressed by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, were first pursued unilaterally and later, after the First International Conference of American States in 1889–1890, through an ineffective collective body. They did not achieve the desired objectives and in fact only led to such violent forms of imperialism as the “big stick policy” and interventionism.

This essay aims to assess the prospects of a larger role for multilateral assistance in world development. It does not attempt to review the familiar, often extreme, arguments made in favor of either bilateral or multilateral aid. It rejects the notion that the realizable possibilities of the many multilateral institutions and programs treated in detail in the other essays in this volume can be assessed as a unitary whole. The effort here will be to identify the specific kinds of multilateral aid which have especial potential of political support from aid-giving countries in the near future. As for the more distant future the reader is forewarned that the domestic politics of assistance, at least in this decade of stagnating support of aid of all kinds, recognizes no significant distinction between multilateral and bilateral aid. The web of will to help others develop is finely and infrangibly woven.

More rapid industrial and agricultural development of the economically underdeveloped three-quarters of the globe is the most important long-run task in international relations, with the sole exception of avoiding major warfare. While economic development depends primarily upon domestic efforts to marshal and direct resources, both human and material, the marshaling and direction of supplementary external resources can assist materially in attempting to achieve that objective. While the major external resources necessary to supplement domestic efforts will continue to be governmental and intergovernmental assistance, there has been for some time now, and will doubtless continue to be, a substantial insufficiency of such resources.

The relationship between international organization and developing countries is one of interdependence: developing countries place hope in disinterested help through international agencies; and the needs of the developing world provide stimulus to the expansion of international organization. Yet these two contemporaneous processes of political development—the growth of international organization and nation building in developing areas—may not always be in step. Education is a convenient viewpoint from which to examine this relationship, with its element of discord and of convergence of interest. Education is a prominent aspiration of governments and people in developing countries and is widely considered to be a most efficacious instrument for modernization. This subject-matter limitation also makes it possible to focus on two international organizations: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the agency primarily responsible for educational systems; and the International Labor Organization (ILO) because of its recent emphasis both on training in occupational skills and on the relevancy of the manpower factor for educational policy.

The world is witnessing not only a population explosion but a family planning revolution. For the first time in history there is concrete evidence that people throughout most of the world accept the need for family planning and desire that family planning services be made available to them. And for the first time in history we have the technical means to implement family planning programs—the pill, the intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD), and other methods. Moreover, research now under way suggests that reliance on a contraceptive pill that must be taken daily or an IUCD that is presently unsatisfactory to 25 percent of those using it will some day be of only historical interest—mere shadows reflecting the dim dark ages in the history of family planning. Already researchers have had success with an injectable contraceptive that provides long-standing immunity from pregnancy.

It is characteristic of our time that its most profound problems are global, involving all men, yet the nations into which men have divided themselves have never been as numerous nor as sharply diverse. A hundred years ago poverty was the common lot of most human beings; today we find two sets of nations staring at each other across the oceans, one rich and one poor, with a growing gap between them. The technological revolution has continuously improved the levels of living in the rich countries; in the poor ones its principal effect has been to multiply human misery by causing a rise in human numbers at rates higher than ever before experienced.

The United Nations Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology to Development has said:

The considered view of the Committee is that, in present circumstances, the wider and more intensive application of existing knowledge, suitably adapted to local conditions, provides the best prospect of securing rapid advancement in the developing countries.

Development planning has become a routine activity for large numbers of corporations as well as for public authorities at various levels, particularly national governments. The time has come to make an attempt to create a framework for all these activities at the highest, that is, the world, level. Several of the most important arguments in favor of the construction of such a world “indicative” development plan1 will thus be discussed in this introductory section.

Unctad I, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held in Geneva in the spring of 1964, marked a major milestone in international concern with and approaches to the problems of less developed countries. The principal achievements of this mammoth, contentious, allegedly economic gathering, however, were in the political realm. Economic issues of great importance were raised but not resolved. Instead they were consigned for study and consideration to the elaborate continuing machinery born at Geneva, as well as to various previously established agencies, and eventually to the agenda for UNCTAD II, convened in New Delhi in early 1968.