About the Book

Face reality. Though long-promised and laboured for, Third World Development will not now come. The necessary investment is unavailable. Modern technology will not give work to the swelling tens of millions in the cities of the South. And the environment cannot tolerate further industrialization.

Instead states are collapsing into ‘Ungovernable Chaotic Entities’ under the control of warlords and mafias. State-driven, communist and neoliberal development models have all failed most of the people all the time. Most countries are only mistakenly called ‘developing’. They are not in the process of becoming Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), but Non-viable National Economies (NNEs).

What then is to be done? The ‘wealth of nations’ agenda must be replaced by a survival of nations agenda. In order to prevent increasing social and political disorders, many countries with primary production and explosive urban growth will have to abandon dreams of development and adopt instead a policy of national survival based on the search for water, food and energy security and the stabilization of their populations.

Commendations

'This book is essential reading -because of the originality of its point of view, the timeliness of its analysis and the startling propositions which it puts forward... Bristling with new ideas, the author provides us with an intelligent way into understanding better the world‘s present disorders' - Le Monde Diplomatique

'This is an original and thought-provoking book for the new Millennium, which rejects one of the most widely-held beliefs of the Twentieth Century that development is an inevitable process for Nation States... Highly readable, The Myth of Development is a useful tool for understanding the enormous problems for survival that will have to be faced by the poverty-stricken, exploding urban populations of the wrongly called "developing countries"' - Javier Perez de Cuellar (United Nations Secretary-General 1982 - 1991)

‘This provocative and well-written book may stimulate discussion and promote sound survival and development policies‘ - Choice

Contents

Introduction
1: The Twilight of the Nation-State
2: Global Empowerment and National Impoverishment
3: International Darwinism
4: The Search for El Dorado
5: Worldwide Depredation
6: Survival
Index

About the Author

Oswaldo de Rivero is a former Peruvian diplomat, ex-Ambassador to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva (he resigned because of, in his own words, a profound disagreement with President Fujimori's government), and author of New Economic Order and International Development Law (Pergamon). His views are the result of a profound knowledge of the international scene acquired during more than 20 years in a broad range of international forums. He represented his country at the UN General Assembly and on the Security Council; in the United Kingdom and the USSR; was president of the Economic Commission of the Non-Aligned Countries' summit; president of the Group of 77 countries; and chairman of the Council of the Latin American Economic System (SELA), a regional inter-governmental body set up to encourage cooperation and integration among Latin American and Caribbean countries. He has also been president of the Review Conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the United Nations Disarmament Conference; and led the Peruvian delegation during the Uruguay Round of GATT world trade negotiations. Today he lives in Geneva where he worked as a consultant until his appointment by the new Peruvian government as Ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in early 2001. He is currently writing a new book.