ABSTRACT
Modern science and technology are part of the wave of the future in Africa. The computer signifies the potency of information and communication; nuclear energy signifies a capacity for both production and destruction. Western technology, culture, and life-style became the conscious or unconscious reference points not only for public policymaking but for individual private behavior over most of the world. In regard to the nuclear impact on relations between the Western alliance and the Soviet bloc, nuclear power has been liberating for the Third World on the sideline. Most political scientists have seen political development as a process of acquiring Western skills of government, Western restraint in political behavior, and Western-derived institutions of conflict resolution. Positive trends may need to be facilitated; negative ones, arrested. A science of anticipation has therefore to be developed. A decline in Western dependence on oil in favor of dependence on nuclear power would constitute a reconsolidation of Western economic hegemony in the world system.
