North/South: The United States Responds to the New International Economic Order

Abstract

Launched in 1974, the Group of 77’s appeal for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) challenged the liberal international economic order that the United States had built during the 1940s and still superintended. This article follows the responses of U.S. policymakers in the mid-1970s to the NIEO and its proponents. U.S. officials, it argues, concurred that the NIEO was a challenge to the postwar status quo but disagreed as to how that challenge should be met. Within the Ford administration (1974–77), Secretary of State Henry Kissinger favored prudent appeasement; others preferred to confront the G-77, resulting in a confused and partial policy. While the Carter administration (1977–81) proved more inclined to conciliate the G-77, its efforts, too, encountered significant obstacles, with the result that its response to the NIEO proved no more constructive than the Ford administration’s had been.