Truman's Point Four Summary

Although it might seem that this week’s topics have different themes, I think all of them had a common background; motivation related to the political forces that shape our world. From the passage of King’s Leopold’s Ghost that shows how powerful nations certainly shape trade and progress; to the fundamental issue of why and how the current notion of development was created; to the issues of how development plans interact and affect the less favored nations. It is unquestionable that the common denominator is how political forces are fundamental to understand all of situations in the readings.
In this sense, King Affonso’s dilemma with the Portuguese emperor Don Joao about slavery trade and how its population was being affected is a very powerful …show more content…
It is obvious that Truman’s Point Four was mainly motivated by the political/economic scenario of the post-war period. The United States had just won the war and Truman focused the nation in charge of fostering “development and capital investments in other countries.” Pushed for the new saint grail of solving poverty: “Increase industrial activity and production.” And establish democracy as the only way to achieve development. This view is supported by Rist’s paper where he states that Truman speech marks the invention of the term development as a way to separate the rich and powerful countries from the poor ones. In this sense, situating those countries in a “superiority” level in which the now “underdeveloped” countries must follow their doctrines and/or advices if they want to become a developed nation in the future. Once again, it is possible to see how political and economic power are the true drivers of those interactions and not the true necessity of making the world a better …show more content…
In his article, Daron Acemoglu, points out that there are “two main candidates to explain the Fundamental causes of differences in prosperity between countries are geography and institutions.” He goes ahead and slightly refutes the geographic theory. But he agrees that all the bad indicators of the underdeveloped countries are related to the lack of strong institutions that will foster the growth of the country. Acemoglu recognition of the necessity of these type of institution can also be understood as a claim to a more open political interaction in those countries. Personally, I believe that strong institutions are the results of open political interactions and that it is the only way to combat against corruption. However, if we let the bad political scenario of those nations continue, then it is extremely hard to truly help a country to become