RICH WORLD, POOR WORLD

A sweeping study of “how the poor countries of the world have struggled over the decades to escape their condition of impoverishment.”`

Allawi, former prime minister of finance for Iraq and author of The Crisis of Islamic Civilization, is a fine writer, scholarly and opinionated yet evenhanded. By 1945, he writes, few denied that the imperial powers had exploited colonies mercilessly and that the decolonization movement was unstoppable. The author delivers a chronological account of what followed: American hegemony, the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the continued rise of the U.S. as a global superpower. Familiar events and political figures appear, but Allawi emphasizes efforts to aid developing nations and introduces a large cast of economists, many unknown to general readers, whose widely varied ideas influenced government policy. Readers may be disappointed to learn that numerous expensive 20th-century campaigns to eliminate poverty have yielded unimpressive results. The 1980s triumph of the free market, driven by the policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and the 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union, did not improve matters. As the 21st century began, economists puzzled over rare exceptions, including the four “Asian Tigers”—Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore—who rose to prosperity despite expert warnings against government interference in the free market. Their governments interfered with great success. Then the floodgates opened, and world poverty plummeted, but this was “mainly accounted for by the incredible expansion of the Chinese economy.” Experts still struggle to explain how a nation ruled by a one-party system with little concern for human rights has produced this miracle. Allawi delivers insightful theories but has no favorite, and he avoids joining colleagues in their predictions—many now 30 years old—of China’s imminent collapse.

Fine history and equally fine economics, though the author offers more questions than answers.