In recent years a new economic nationalism has been bom in the developing countries of the “Third World.” The embargo imposed on consuming countries by the Arab producers, followed by the manipulation of prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), sparked the beginning of a significant redistribution of world wealth.

The demand of the Third World for a changed world economic order was highlighted at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on raw materials and development in April, 1974. The industrialized countries evidenced their concern about their “right of access” to other scarce raw materials besides petroleum. But the larger issue dealt with reducing the vast inequities in the international economic order.