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A Third World Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Ali A Mazrui
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Abstract

At odds in 1987 were the philosophies of a United States grounded in political liberalism and a Soviet Union grounded in economic redistribution. While these principles may have defined these two nations' domestic policies and official international stances, Mazrui argues that the United States did little to propagate liberalism and the Soviet Union did little to encourage economic redistribution. Moreover, his critique seeks to reveal that each superpower's actions ultimately supported the other's philosophy. From this twist of intent and effect, Mazrui turns to the proclivity toward violence that the United States and the Soviet Union displayed in international affairs. Consequently, he calls into question the ethical justification of the means by which the superpowers repeatedly failed to accomplish their intended ends.

Type
Special Section: Superpower Ethics
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 1 , March 1987 , pp. 9 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1987

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References

1 See, for example, Blackburn, Peter, “Nigeria: The Year of the IMF,” Africa Report 31:6 (1986) 18–20Google Scholar; Onwuka, Ralph I. and Aluko, Olajide, The Future of Africa and the New International Economic Order (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Wood, Robert E., “The Debt Crisis in North-South Relations,” Third World Quarterly 6:3 (July 1984) 703–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Payer, Cheryl, The Debt Trap: The International Monetary Fund and the Third World (New York: Monthly Review, 1974)Google Scholar.

2 For a discussion of American development aid via, say, the Peace Corps program, which has no real Soviet equivalent, see Redmon, Coates, Come as You Are: The Peace Corps Story (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 See Wionczek, M.S., Some Key Issues for the World Periphery: Selected Essays (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982)Google Scholar; Weiss, T.G. and Jennings, A., More for the Least Prospects for Poorest Countries in the Eighties (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1983)Google Scholar; Chauhan, S.K., Who Puts Water in the Taps? Community Participation in the Third World Drinking Water, Sanitation and Health (London: Earthscan, 1983)Google Scholar; and Chuta, E. and Setheraman, S.V., eds., Rural Small-Scale Industries and Employment in Africa and Asia: A Review of Programmes and Policies (Geneva: International Labor Organization, 1984)Google Scholar.

4 Nkrumah, Kwame, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Heinemann, 1968)Google Scholar.

5 Schelling, Thomas C., Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966) 26–27Google Scholar.

6 Netanyahu, Benjamin, Terrorism: How the West Can Win (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986)Google Scholar. Israeli Ambassador Netanyahu offers a defense of state-sponsored terrorism, especially Israeli state terrorism.