Page 104 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-1984 93

The historical context in which the NWICO emerged is revealing.
In the early 1970s, both the US decision to undermine the Bretton
Woods fixed exchange system and the assertion of economic power
77
by OPEC stimulated the unification of somewhat disparate LDCs -
some seeking the alleviation of poverty, and others pursuing develop-
ment policies aimed at escaping the Third World altogether- under
the general quest to establish a so-called New International Economic
Order (NIEO). Its proponents sought an international system featur-
ing Keynesian-type global economic mechanisms. In the early 1980s,
however, with the collapse of the power of OPEC, West European
states became far less interested in accommodating NIEO reforms.
Moreover, the recession experienced in the United States in the mid-
1980s greatly reduced, at least for a few years, First World demands
for LDC products, including oil. Interest rates reached post-1945
highs and Third World debt payments - mostly contracted in the
1970s - became dangerously unmanageable. Both the NIEO and the
NWICO thus affirmed general efforts to redress deepening North-
South dependency patterns, particularly in light of growing US bud-
get deficits and subsequent Congressional cuts to America's UN and
foreign aid support payments. In the 1980s, the US government, while
reforming its own welfare state, had little interest in efforts to develop
a kind of global Keynesianism. Importantly, neither the NIEO nor the
NWICO threatened the ongoing survival of international capitalism -
in fact, it can be argued that such reforms to the system constituted
(and still constitute) essential components in capitalism's long-term
stability. 78
The election of Jimmy Carter in 1976 generated a re-evaluation
among American state officials on how best to counteract the
NWICO. A shared view among White House and State Department
personnel that a hard-line anti-UNESCO policy likely would fuel the
alienation of LDCs and that this, in tum, would only result in escalat-
ing threats to more pressing US policy interests (especially in relation
to the desire of the Carter administration to promote a relaxation in
US-Soviet relations) guided US-UNESCO policy for the rest of the
decade. In 1977, Senator McGovern, through the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, recognized the existence of an international
information imbalance and the need to provide LDCs assistance in
efforts to develop their communication infrastructures. McGovern
argued that both 'the information sector' and more general 'interna-
tional communications and information' activities were of 'grave
import' to the future power capacities of the United States.