Third World at the Crossroads (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 205 fiscal policies, beginning with the Tax Act of 1981, "as the most irresponsible fiscal action of modern times." The budget deficit reflects fiscal irresponsibility of a supposedly fiscally conservative party. Taking aim at the Pentagon, he calls SDI a catch word which raised false expectations, similar to the title "War on Poverty." Schlesinger depicts Reagan defense spending as history's "greatest military buildup in peacetime." Despite his sage commentary, Schlesinger assigns too little importance to the role of the executive branch in formulating and implementing American foreign policy. If "public opinion constrains and determines foreign policy," the President and foreign policymakers have the privilege ofshaping and solidifying a highly decentralized public mood into concrete foreign policy goals and achievements. For instance, President Reagan came to the White House on a tide of popular disenchantment with the Soviet Union and concern about its successes abroad. But it was the "Reagan Doctrine," calling for a tougher policy against the Soviet Union and communism, which shaped and defined these sentiments into an anti-communist foreign policy against Soviet expansionism. In addition, the President is able to control these popular impulses in an effort to search for the best alternatives. The Bush administration's handling of recent hostage crises points to the fact that even if popular sentiment is pushing the President to take action, the President is capable of restraint while considering different alternatives before deciding on the best ways to achieve U.S. goals. The President is not forced to adopt a position by the public; he has the tools to direct the public mood and redefine its orientation. Moreover, if television has become an important vehicle in shaping the public attitude toward politics, Schlesinger ignores the privatization of the media as an important phenomenon in influencing the public's perception of politics . This privatization means that the information which people receive about politics is increasingly more personalized. Despite these omissions, America at Century's End remains an interesting book for its insightful observations and discussions of American domestic and global policy goals and processes. Third World at the Crossroads. Sheik R. Ali, ed. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1989. 224 pp. $42.95/cloth. Reviewed by Timothy Sisk, Ph.D. Candidate, The George Washington University. According to the World Bank's most recent World Development Report, the crisis in the Third World is deepening, not improving. In the last five years, most developing countries—with the notable exception of the newly industrialized East Asian states— have experienced a decline in real GNP, while the rest of the world has experienced years of uninterrupted economic growth. Population pressures , environmental degradation, debt, and falling agricultural production have caused instability, and for many a loss of hope. Third World at the Crossroads , a collection of fourteen essays examining the complex interrelationships 206 SAIS REVIEW of the crisis in the developing world, is an effort to show how a weave of economic , political, historical and social factors contribute to the downward spiral in the quality of life for 75% of the world's people. Sheik Ali adopts an effective interdisciplinary approach, using cross-national and case study methods, to explain the diverse issues in the debate over how to tackle these worsening conditions. Ali's goal "to draw the reader into the great controversies and debates surrounding the future of the developing nations " is well satisfied by the broad range of topics covered in this work. It is constructive to highlight issues in the debate on the Third World addressed in this book. 1.What difficulties do Third World regimesface? Sheik Ali offers a broad perspective in a well-written but overly rhetorical introductory chapter. He reviews the shared problems of underdevelopment and their manifestations, whether external (debt, vulnerable markets) or internal (instability, economic deprivation, human rights violations, environmental decay, ethnic strife). These problems are experienced by the gamut of countries considered "Third World," from oil-rich Arab Gulf states to the poorest of the poor such as Ethiopia and Mali. The special attention given to the problem ofhunger in Africa (the chapter on this topic by Andrew Conteh is twice the length of others) is a welcome emphasis on the pressing issue...