2. than absolute necessity. 5. The rest of the developed world is much less fortunate. Western Europe is exhausting much of the mineral reserves on which her industrialization was originally based. Japan is almost completely dependent upon imports. In the best of all possible worlds trade and investment flow freely across national boundaries and the law of comparative advantage prevails. But this is an imperfect world and forces are at work that seem determined to exaggerate its imperfections. For much of the past hundred years international trade and investment has flourished. Capital and know-how flowed to where it was needed and kindly treated. Raw material resources thus developed flowed back to the major consuming centers. All benefitted, although not necessarily equally or equitably. Prior to World War II the predominant economic and social system was Colonialism, which may have been an unjust system but it did provide for a flow of capital safeguarded by a legal system and ultimately if necessary by force. Gunboat diplomacy undeniably played a role. We abandoned Colonialism and put in its place a system, if it can be called that, premised on the lofty hopes of one world with a community of democratic nations living in peace and prospering by trading with each other because it was mutually advantageous. Unspoken but implicit was the assumption that the free market system would largely prevail. Until relatively recently the gamble seemed to be won. With the multi-national corporations as the vehicle capital and know-how did flow across national boundaries. International trade did flourish. Vast new resources were brought into being. Nations like Canada and Australia, the oil-rich nations of the Middle East, and