OPEC and the Third World: The Politics of Aid

This book has two great merits. It brings together for the first time, from widely scattered sources, all the statistics on OPEC members' aid to other countries. Second, it discusses with cool detachment why and how that aid was dispensed. The author also examines the question of how much that aid was motivated by solidarity with the Third World vis-a-vis the First and by common interest in the creation of a New International Economic Order. The answer is "not much," owing to more urgent national and regional (mainly Arab) political priorities, differences within OPEC, and the overriding importance of relations with the industrial West.