International Power Structure and the New International Economic Order *

The military power in the present international structure is largely concentrated in the advanced industrial First World and the Soviet Union, while the economic power, though a little more diffused after the energy crisis, is still with the First World. The stability of this system rests largely on actual or implied threat of the use of force by those who possess the nuclear and conventional weapons. Thus the NPT, far from being a vehicle for disarmament, legitimizes both the nuclear weapons and the inegalitarian order that rests on it. The emerging new pattern of East-West rivalry is considerably heightened in the setting of the growing North-South tension, as shown in Zaire recently. Obviously, the renunciation of nuclear weapon by its present possessors will be the first step towards creating a new order made explicit in the NIEO declaration.