Penguin Dictionary of International Relations

Product Description The Penguin Dictionary of International

Relations provides an authoritative overview of this complex and constantly shifting subject. Ranging from the Arab–Israeli conflict to weapons of mass destruction, this is an indispensable and comprehensive guide to the events, organisations, theories and concepts that are shaping today’s global community. From the

PublisherSome sample entries:LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES (LDCs) This term has been used for some time within the United Nations to describe those states at the bottom of the hierarchy, at least in terms of economic criteria. The UN defines these states as those having the lowest per capita GDP, the lowest levels of literacy and the smallest share of secondary or manufacturing industries input into GDP. The colloquial term Forth World is sometimes used to refer to these states. Bangladesh, with something like one-quarter of the total population of the LDCs is a paradigm of this class of states. In many instances they show negative growth rates of per capita income annually and they run the real risk of `dropping out' of the system altogether if their prospects cannot be improved.

FREE WORLD A term associated with Cold War era indicating those parts of the world not subject to communist influence or domination. Sometimes used as a synonym for the West, although this was erroneous as it was clearly the intention of US policy-makers to include non-Western and Third World states under this rubric. In the immediate post-war period the United States was the architect of a number of overlapping global alliances which John Foster

Dulles referred to as the `Free World Alliance'. CONTRABAND

Categories of war materials which, under international law, may be seized by one belligerent when supplied by a neutral to another.

However, the exact definition of `war materials' has always been a contentious matter and interpretations have tended to be expansive.

Thus, the category of `conditional contraband' refers to seized material which may have been destined for innocent peacetime use but which has been deemed by a belligerent as useful to the war effort. In the age of total warfare, the distinction between permissible and non-permissible goods has further collapsed with the result that during the two twentieth-century world wars relations between belligerents and neutrals were often strained.

Lack of clear unequivocal legal guidance has inevitably resulted in a good deal of auto-interpretation on this issue.