ABSTRACT
US security planners understood at the beginning of the Cold War that sound economic policies can prevent war. With the World Bank, the United States sought to boost the economic recovery of Europe and to jump-start the Third World, at all times ensuring that economic development was consistent with democracy and market capitalism. Economic relations are conducive to peace only if they are secure, balanced, and safe. Almost every nation complains about the fairness of the international economic order. Many economists fear that the world is breaking up into three regional trade blocs overseen by the EEC, Japan, and the United States. If the United States is serious about promoting sustainable development in the Third World, it will have to revamp the international economic system in four ways: forgive Third World debt, create a binding code of conduct for multinational corporations, rethink the rules of global trade, and reorient development assistance.
