A conflict between two worlds—one rich, one poor—is developing, and the battlefield is the globe itself. On one side are two dozen or so industrialized, non-Communist states whose 750 million citizens consume most of the world's resources, produce most of its manufactured goods and enjoy history's highest standard of living. Demanding an ever larger share of that wealth are about 100 underdeveloped poor states with 2 billion people—millions of whom exist in the shadow of death by starvation or disease. So far, the conflict has been limited to economic pressures and proposals, and speeches in international forums. But the needs of the underprivileged nations are so pressing that some Western politicians—such as British Minister of Overseas Development Reg Prentice—describe them as a “time bomb for the human race.” There are even exaggerated fears that radical poor nations, after acquiring nuclear explosives, might try to blackmail rich nations into giving up their wealth by threatening a nuclear holocaust. A more plausible danger is that the conflict could destroy the international economic system on which the stability of much of the world is based. The have-nots are often described as the South , the LDCs or the Third World . The diplomatic vehicle often used by the poor nations is the so-called Group of 77, a consortium of developing countries within the United Nations. The leaders of the poor include such articulate spokesmen as Algeria's Houari Boumedienne, Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Jamaica's Michael Manley and Mexico's Luis Echeverria, who recite a familiar litany of sins that they believe are being committed by the First World against them: imperialism, unjust exploitation of resources, arrogance, waste and neocolonialism. Last month Nyerere told a meeting of the Commonwealth Society in London: “I am saying that it is not right that the vast majority of the world's people should be forced into the position of beggars, without dignity. We demand change, and the only question is whether it comes by dialogue or confrontation.” In the U.N. General Assembly, where they now constitute a solid and virtually unbeatable voting bloc on any given issue, the developing states have approved resolutions that demand a “new international economic order.” The meaning: massive and painful sacrifices by the rich on behalf of the poor. So one-sided have the Assembly's actions become that the U.S. has denounced them as “a tyranny of the majority”; outspoken U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Daniel P. Moynihan has characterized them as “the politics of resentment and the economics of envy.” Nonetheless, the U.S., along with other First World nations, concedes that there is a real grievance behind the angry rhetoric. This week representatives of both rich and poor states will gather in Paris for a conference that could launch a lengthy review of the complex policies affecting world trade, energy and economic development. The Problems of Poverty The basic cause of the First World-LDC confrontation is not in dispute: the glaring contrast between the opulent life of the
