Interdependence and Its Problems
| Author | Philip H. Trezise |
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207402900401 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
PHILIP
H.
TREZISE
Interdependence
and
its
problems
Interdependence
among
the
nations
is
so
evident
a
reality
in the
late
twentieth
century
that
the
continuing stubborn
resistance
on
all
sides
to
its
implications
would
be
thought
extraordinary
if
our
minds
were
not
conditioned
to
accept
the
notion
of
undiluted
sovereignty.
Consider if
you
will
the
view
that
large
portions
of
the
oceans
'belong'
in
some
literal
sense
to
people
who
happen
to
live
alongside
them
or
sail
ships
on
them.
This
ultimate
resource
on
which
the
life
of
the
race
depends
can
be,
in principle
and
in
fact,
polluted
and
poisoned, its
fisheries
destroyed,
its
mineral
wealth
plundered
-
and
with
'precious'
little
the
community
at
large
has
been
prepared
to
do
about
it.
There
are
large
and frightening
ideas
here
-
what,
for
example,
is
to
be
made
of
the
spread
of
nuclear
technology
that
may
put
atomic
weaponry
within
reach
of
private
persons
as
well
as
of
governments with
causes
to
prosecute?
It
is
not
my
intention,
how-
ever,
to
pursue
the
desperate
and
perhaps
final
questions
of
inter-
dependence.
Rather
it
is
to
examine
a
quite
narrow
point:
what
can be
done
to
make
economic
interdependence
more
tolerable?
This
is
an
area
in
which
the
world
has
done
somewhat
better
than
in
others
but
clearly
not
all
that
well
either,
for the
problems
that
are
on
us
are
at
least
as
formidable
as
any
that
have
been
success-
fully managed,
more
or
less,
in
the
past.
The
situation
of
the
United
States
and
Canada
provides
a
limited
but
illustrative
case
in
point.
As
joint
occupants
of a
continent,
the
two
North
American
na-
Senior
Fellow,
The
Brookings
Institution,
Washington,
Dc;
former
United
States
Assistant
Secretary
of
State for
Economic
Affairs.
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