Global Peace and Security: Trends and Challenges by Wolfram F Hanrieder

Author:Wolfram F Hanrieder [Hanrieder, Wolfram F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429721823
Google: fbuZDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-05-20T09:38:02+00:00

Conclusion

The brief examination of the various strengths and weaknesses of supplier countries in their technology trade with the Middle East offers several lessons. First, it points to the utility of applying broader lessons of foreign economic policymaking in industrialized states discussed in a rich and varied literature to various commercial relations with the Third World of which technology trade is one example. Second, it suggests that there is more than one road to Mecca, that the rewards of technology trade can be won by employing different national strategies. Further, policymakers in supplier states should seek to tailor their approaches both to the particular historical strengths their country enjoys with potential trading partners and to the unique features of their domestic economies and policymaking processes. Finally, the joining of a discussion of foreign economic policymaking with an analysis of the various features of technology transfer, which here has been called a generic process, reveals considerable common ground on which the interests of technology suppliers and recipients can negotiate commercial deals that provide advantages to both. In an age when it has been fashionable to speak rhetorically about the need for a New International Economic Order with the often empty expectation that change will come only when the North grants large concessions to the South, it is important to identify instrumentalities of change that, properly managed, can win support by virtue of the prospect for mutual benefit.

It is appropriate to conclude with a word of caution. Much of this argument was developed by studying the dynamics of change in the Middle East in the 1970s. In ways we are only now beginning to realize, the opportunities offered to oil producers by virtue of the increase in oil prices were unprecedented in the experience of the developing countries. The ability to pay for large quantities of technology imports vastly simplified the task of modernizing in this way. The eagerness of Western suppliers to service this market in view of their oil dependence undoubtedly permitted Arab negotiators to secure better terms than would be possible under “normal” circumstances. In a world of oil glut and plunging oil revenues, the common ground we carefully circumscribed has certainly shrunk in ways that may lead some to reject technology trade as a strategy offering mutual benefits. The advantage of the 1970s and the peculiar circumstances attending those years was that it permitted mutual benefits to be identified clearly. Those benefits remain in the murkier 1980s, but it will take more time to see them and more astute management to ensure that they are realized.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.