Peru, in the period 1976-1979, along with half a dozen or so other countries occupied the center stage in the discussion of developing countries, which fact serious difficulties in meeting their external debt service and which face equally if not more serious problems of internal adjustment—especially little if any economic growth—as they try to raise themselves out of their financial crises. The countries which might be on such a problem list1 each have their own specific problems. All of them, in one way or another, have had a major fiscal problem which has absorbed the bulk of domestic credit into the public sector and created strong pressures to borrow abroad. Of course, the individual causes of the public sector problem vary. In several countries, especially those which export copper, adverse export prices since 1974 have contributed significantly to development problems. The "list" of countries will no doubt change and quite probably expand in the next year or two, especially if there is an almost inevitable recession in the United States.

The Antarctic Treaty was signed by twelve countries in 1959. This group, together with those countries having territorial claims prior to signing the treaty—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom—would try with great difficulty to reconcile the opposing interests of (1) countries that for decades had been actively defending their claims of sovereignty over sectors of Antarctica; (2) superpowers that, while not asserting any claims of their own—although certainly reserving the right to do so in the future—did not accept those of other countries; and (3) a number of countries that had been invited to participate in the treaty because they had been active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year.

The British experience with federations is not a happy one. Attempts to combine its smaller and poorer colonies into some form of larger political and economic union as part of its decolonization process are generally reckoned to have failed. Almost without exception, the individual colonies decided to go it alone, to seek independence on their own, that is.

The former West Indian colonies are a case in point. Notwithstanding several attempts to bring them closer together, they have shown a remarkable tenacity to retain their individual existence and identity. The 1958 Federation, the most ambitious attempt to weld them into a nation, ended in failure after only three years and much internal wrangling. The larger islands of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago went on to become independent on their own. A further attempt to amalgamate the remaining units, the so-called "Little Eight" into a Federation of the Eastern Caribbean also failed, after which Barbados sought independence on its own.

In 1880, the famous Chilean politician and historian, Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, wrote: