inadequate and often misleading description of the complex inter-
relationship that now exists between countries in a wide variety of
economic circumstances.”^61 Her administration, like an increasing
number of governments in the North, was simply not ready to support
a structural reform of the global economic system.
Conservatives considered that the developing countries were too
ideological in their approach to international economic issues. This
attitude, it was argued, had engendered a shopping list of contra-
dictory demands whose only rationale was the need to please as many
Third World leaders as possible. The South’s confrontational strategy
was also denounced on the grounds that a number of the governments
who backed it were corrupt and undemocratic, and therefore not in
a position to lecture others on matters of morality. For the right, the
developing countries had no choice but to become more realistic and
pragmatic. In calling for more pragmatism, conservatives sought pri-
marily to have the poor nations give up the notion that the imbalances
of the global economy could be corrected through the adoption of an
international treaty. They also aimed to convince the Third World
that, despite its acknowledged importance, justice had to remain
subordinate to order in the hierarchy of international values. The
momentum generated in the 1970s by the negotiations on a new inter-
national economic order and by the creation of the Brandt Commis-
sion was thus gradually lost. On the right, this turn of events was
viewed in a positive light, as it put an end to a diplomatic enterprise
that was considered a huge waste of energy. On the left, it was seen as
a major setback, and the beginning of a “lost decade” for development.
Nothing illustrated the marginalization of the North–South debate
more pointedly than the failure of the Cancu ́n Summit in 1981.^62
Following up on the Brandt Commission’s report, this summit brought
together twenty-two heads of state of the North and the South, for
discussions on four interrelated topics: food, trade, energy, and finance.
The developing countries hoped that, with its informal setting, the
(^61) Margaret Thatcher, “Response to the Brandt Report,” in Friedrich Ebert
Foundation (ed.),International Responses to the Brandt Report, London,
62 Temple Smith, 1981, p. 105.
Jean-Philippe The ́rien, “The Brandt Commission: The End of an Era in North–
South Politics,” in Ramesh Thakur, Andrew F. Cooper, and John English (eds.),
International Commissions and the Power of Ideas, Tokyo, United Nations
University Press, 2005, pp. 27–45.
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