
First World Countries
The
concept of the First World first originated during
the Cold War, where it was used to describe
countries that were aligned with the United States
. These countries were
democratic and
capitalistic.
After the fall of the Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World"
took on a new meaning that was more applicable to the times.
Since its original definition, the term First World has come to be
largely synonymous with
developed
and/or highly developed countries (depending on which
definition is being used).
First World countries in general have very advanced economies and
very high
Human Development
indices. On the other hand, the
United Nations defined the First World on the
wealth of the nation's
Gross
National Product (GNP). The definition of the First World is
now less concrete than during the
Cold
War.
Global dynamics between the First World and the other Worlds were
essentially split into two. Relationships with the Second World
were competitive, ideological and hostile. Relationships with
Third World countries were normally
positive in theory, while some were quite negative in practice
(e.g. wars). Present inter-world relationships are not so rigid,
although there is a disparity in terms of the First World having
more influence, wealth, information and advancements than the other
worlds. The First World continues to leave its mark globally
through its resource consumption; over-consumption and global
warming have sparked global negotiations on the environment.
Globalization is a increasingly
important phenomena which has been fueled largely by the First
World and its connections with the other worlds. A example of
globalization within the First World is the
European Union which has brought much
cooperation and integration to the region.
Multinational corporations also
provide examples of the First World's impact on globalization, as
they have brought economic, political and social integration in
many countries. With the rise of the multinational corporation, the
problem of
outsourcing has risen in many
First World countries. As jobs are shipped off shore, First World
citizens are scrambling for employment.
Definition
After
World War II the world split into
two large geopolitical blocs, separating into spheres of communism
and capitalism. This led to the
Cold War,
during which the term First World was highly used because of its
political, social, and economic relevance. The term itself was
first introduced in in the late 1940s by the United Nations. Today,
the First World is slightly outdated and has no official
definition, however it is generally thought of as the capitalist,
industrial, developed countries who aligned with the United States
after World War II.
This definition included mostly the countries
of North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan
. In
today's society the First World is viewed as countries who have the
most advanced economies, the greatest influence, the highest
standards of living, and the greatest technology.
After the Cold War
these countries of the First World included member states of
NATO
, US aligned states, neutral countries who were
developed and industrialized, and former British colonies. Countries were also
placed into the First World based on how civilized the country was.
According to Nations Online the member countries of NATO after the
Cold War included:
- Belgium
, Canada
, Denmark
, France
, West Germany
, Greece
, Iceland
, Italy
, Luxembourg
, Netherlands
, Norway
, Portugal
, Spain
, Turkey
, United Kingdom
and the United States
The US aligned countries included:
The neutral countries included:
And the former British Colonies also included in the First World
were:
Human Development Index
[[File:UN Human Development Report
2009.PNG|thumb|right|350px|Global Human Development Indices
The Human Development Index is a worldwide organization where
different indicators are used to classify countries based on their
developmental status. Statistics like
GDP,
GNP,
literacy, and
education are combined to form a list of countries ranging from
very high human development to low human development. The countries
with very high human development ratings are said to be the most
developed and industrialized countries in the world. If the
classification of the First World is based on the definition above,
the Human Development Index is a good indicator in identifying
First World countries. Hence, according to the Human Development
Index, thirty eight countries are ranked as having very high human
development. Most of the countries on this list coincide with the
data on countries listed in Nations Online. The countries that are
on the Human Development Index but not on the NATO list above
include
- Finland
, Liechtenstien
, Singapore
, Hong Kong,
China
, Andorra
, Slovenia
, Kuwait
, Cyprus
, Qatar
, Czech Republic
, Barbados
, Malta
, United Arab
Emirates
, and Brunei Darussalam
.
Variations in definitions
Since the end of the Cold War, the original definition of First
World is no longer necessarily applicable. There are varying
definitions of the First World, however they follow the same idea.
John D. Daniels, past president of the Academy of International
Business, defines the First World to be consisting of "high-income
industrial countries." Scholar and Professor George J. Bryjak
defines the First World to be the "modern, industrial, capitalist
countries of North America and Europe." L. Robert Kohls, former
director of training for the U.S. Information Agency and the
Meridian International Center in Washington, uses First World and
"fully developed" as synonyms.
Other Indicators
Varying definitions of the term First World and the uncertainty of
the term in today's world leads to different indicators of First
World status. In 1945, the
United
Nations (UN) used the terms first, second, third, and fourth
worlds to define the relative wealth of nations (although popular
use of the term fourth world did not come about until later). They
were defined in terms of
Gross
National Product (GNP), measured in U.S. dollars, along with
other socio-political factors. The first world included the large
industrialized, democratic (free elections, etc.) nations. The
second world included modern, wealthy,
industrialized nations, but they were all under communist control.
Most of the rest of the world was deemed part of the
third world, while the
fourth world was considered to be those nations
whose people were living on less than US$100 annually. If we use
the term to mean high income industrialized economies, then the
World Bank classifies countries according
to their
GNI or gross national income per
capita. The World Bank separates countries into four categories:
high-income, upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and
low-income economies. The First World is considered to be countries
with high-income economies. The high-income economies are equated
to mean developed and industrialized countries. According to the
World Bank the countries with the top GNP include:
Three World Model

NATO Countries
The terms First World, Second World, and Third World were used
originally to divide the world's nations into three categories. The
model did not emerge to its end state all at once. The complete
overthrow of the status quo post-World War II, known as the Cold
War, left two superpowers (the United States and Soviet Union)
vying for ultimate global supremacy. They created two camps, known
as blocs. These blocs formed the basis of the concepts of the First
and Second Worlds.
Early in the Cold War era, NATO and the
Warsaw Pact were created by the United States
and The Soviet Union, respectively.
They were also referred to as the
Western Bloc
and the Eastern
Bloc. The circumstances of these two blocks were so
different that they were essentially two worlds, however they were
not numbered first and second. The onset of the Cold War is
famously marked by
Winston
Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech. In this speech,
Churchill describes the division of the West and East to be so
solid that it could be called an iron curtain.
In 1952, the French
demographer Alfred
Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to the three estates
in pre-revolutionary France. The first two estates being the
nobility and clergy and everybody else comprising the third estate.
He compared the
capitalist world (i.e.
First World) to the nobility and the
communist world (i.e. Second World) to the clergy.
Just as the third estate comprised of everybody else, Sauvy called
the Third World all the countries that were not in this Cold War
division, i.e. the unaligned and uninvolved states in the
"East-West Conflict." With the coining of the term Third World
directly, the first two groups came to be known as the "First
World" and "Second World," respectively. Here the three world
system emerged.
However, Shuswap Chief George Manuel believes the
Three
World Model to be outdated. In his 1974 book
The
Fourth World: An Indian Reality, he describes the emergence of
the
Fourth World while coining the
term. The fourth world refers to "nations," e.g. cultural entities
and ethnic groups, of indigenous people who do not compose states
in the traditional sense. Rather, they live within or across state
boundaries (see
First Nations). One
example are the American Indians of North America, Central America,
and the Caribbean.
Post Cold War
With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Eastern Bloc ceased
to exist; with it, so did all applicability of the term Second
World. The definitions of the First World and Third World changed
slightly, yet generally described the same concepts.
Relationships with the other worlds
In the Past
During the Cold War Era, the relationships between the First World
and the Second World and the First World and the Third World were
very rigid. The First World and Second World were at constant odds
with one another via the tensions between their two cores, the
United States and the Soviet Union, respectively. The Cold War, by
virtue of its name, was a primarily ideological struggle between
the First and Second Worlds, or more specifically the U.S. and the
Soviet Union. Multiple doctrines and plans dominated Cold War
dynamics including the
Truman
Doctrine,
Marshall Plan (from the
U.S) and the
Molotov Plan (from the
Soviet Union).
The extent of the odds between the two
worlds is evident in Berlin
- which was
then split into East and West. In order to stop
their citizens in East Berlin from having too much exposure to
Western and Capitalistic wealth and happiness, the Soviet Union put
up the Berlin
Wall
within the actual city.
The relationship between the First World and the Third World is
characterized by the very definition of the Third World. Because
countries of the Third World were noncommittal and non-aligned with
both the First World and the Second World, they were targets for
recruitment. In the quest for expanding their sphere of influence,
the United States (core of the First World) tried to establish
democracy and capitalism in the Third World. In addition, because
the Soviet Union (core of the Second World) also wanted to expand,
the Third World often became a site for
proxy
wars.

The Domino Theory
examples include
Vietnam
and
Korea
. Success
lay with the First World if at the end of the War the country
became capitalistic and democratic, and with the Second World if
the country became communist. While Vietnam as a whole was
eventually communized, only the northern half of Korea remained to
be communist. The
Domino Theory
largely governed United States policy regarding the Third World and
their rivalry with the Second World. In light of the Domino Theory,
the U.S. saw winning the proxy wars in the Third World as a measure
of the "credibility of US commitments all over the world."
Currently
The movement of people and information largely characterizes the
inter-world relationships in the present day. A majority of
breakthroughs and innovation originate in Western Europe and the
U.S. and later their effects permeate globally. As judged by the
Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, most
of the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years were from former
First World countries (e.g. the U.S. and countries in Western
Europe).

Global distribution of Malaria
risk.
The disparity between knowledge in the First World as compared to
the Third World is evident in healthcare and medical advancements.
Deaths from water-related illnesses have largely been eliminated in
"wealthier nations," while they are still a "major concern in the
developing world." Widely treatable diseases in the developed
countries of the First World,
malaria and
tuberculosis needlessly claim many
lives in the developing countries of the Third World. 900,000
people die from malaria each year and combating malaria accounts
for 40% of health spending in many African countries. Malaria as
well as other diseases already conquered in the First World, wreak
havoc in the Third World, trapping "communities in a downward
spiral of poverty." However, many First World countries are making
plans to help Third World countries gain access to information and
advancements. U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged to "end
deaths by malaria by 2015" by achieving "universal access to
proven, low-cost malaria treatment and prevention efforts."
The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(
ICANN) recently announced that the first
Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will be available as soon as
the summer of 2010. These include non-Latin domains such as
Chinese, Arabic, and Russian. This is one way that the flow of
information between the First and Third Worlds may become more
even.
The movement of information and technology from the First World to
various Third World countries has created a general "aspir(ation)
to First World living standards." The Third World has lower living
standards as compared to the First World. Information about the
comparatively higher living standards of the First World come
through television, commercial advertisements and foreign visitors
to their countries. This exposure causes two changes: a) living
standards in some Third World countries rises and b) this exposure
creates hopes and many from Third World countries immigrate - both
legally and illegally - to these First World countries in hopes to
attain that living standard and prosperity. In fact, this
immigration is the "main contributor to the increasing populations
of U.S. and Europe." While these immigrations have greatly
contributed to globalization, they have also precipitated trends
like
brain drain and problems with
repatriation. They have also created
immigration and governmental burden problems for the countries
(i.e. First World) to which people are immigrating to.
Environmental Impact

CO2 emissions per capita
It has been argued that the most important human population problem
for the world is not the high rate of population increase in
certain Third World countries, but rather the "increase in total
human impact." The per-capita impact - the resources consumed and
the wastes created by each person - is varied globally; the highest
being in the First World and the lowest in the Third World:
inhabitants of the U.S., Western Europe and Japan consume 32 times
as much resources and put out 32 times as much waste than those in
the Third World. Also, for example, first world countries, such as
America, Australia, Japan, Canada are producing the most CO2 in the
world, contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions in a massive
way. These first world countries use natural resources until near
depletion occurs; this happens because the country has the wealth
to buy these products.
There are the exceptions, first world
countries like Norway
, Sweden
, and
Germany
have worked with the environment and benefited
economically from being environmentally sustainable.
As large consumers of
fossil fuels,
First World countries drew attention to environmental pollution.
The
Kyoto Protocol is a treaty that
is based on the
United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was
finalized in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio. It proposed to place
the burden of protecting the climate on the United States and other
First World countries. Countries that were considered to be
developing, such as China and India, were not required to approve
the treaty because they were more concerned that restricting
emissions would further restrain their development.
International Relations
Until the recent past, little attention was paid to the interests
of Third World countries. This is because most international
relations scholars have come from the industrialized, First World
nations. As more countries have continued to become more developed,
the interests of the world have slowly started to shift. However,
First World nations still have many more universities, professors,
journals, and conferences, which has made it very difficult for
Third World countries to gain legitimacy and respect with their new
ideas and methods of looking at the world.
Development Theory
During the Cold War, the
modernization theory and
development theory developed in the West
as a result of their economic, political, social, and cultural
response to the management of former colonial territories. Western
scholars and practitioners of international politics hoped to
theorize ideas and then create policies based on those ideas that
would cause newly independent colonies to change into politically
developed sovereign nation-states. However, most of the theorists
were from the United States, and they were not interested in Third
World countries achieving development by any model. They wanted
those countries to develop through liberal processes of politics,
economics, and socialization; that is to say, they wanted them to
follow the Western liberal capitalist example of a so-called "First
World state." Therefore, the modernization and development
tradition consciously originated as a Western (mostly U.S.)
alternative to the Marxist and neo-Marxist strategies promoted by
the "
Second World states" like the
Soviet Union. It was used to explain how developing Third World
states would naturally
evolve into developed First World
States, and it was partially grounded in liberal economic theory
and a form of Talcott Parsons' sociological theory.
Globalization
The United Nations's
ESCWA has written that
globalization "is a widely-used term that can
be defined in a number of different ways."
Joyce Osland from
San Jose
State University
wrote, "Globalization has become an increasingly
controversial topic, and the growing number of protests around the
world has focused more attention on the basic assumptions of
globalization and its effects." "Globalization is not new,
though. For thousands of years, people—and, later,
corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in
lands at great distances, such as through the famed
Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China
and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people
and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries.
In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization
are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First
World War in 1914."
World Trade Organization
As defined by its website, the
World Trade Organization (WTO) is
"is the only global international organization dealing with the
rules of trade between nations." Established not long ago in 1995,
it's predecessor was the
General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This organization focuses on economic
growth and development in regards to negotiations amongst
international trading.
117 of the 153 countries belonging to the WTO are considered
developing countries like the United States, and the European
Union. Countries like China, Brazil, India and South Africa are
considered some of the most influential members within the WTO.
Developing countries are said to receive special treatment and
provisions according to certain agreements held by the WTO. This
special treatment could be defined as: "including longer time
periods to implement agreements and commitments, measures to
increase their trading opportunities and support to help them build
the infrastructure for WTO work, handle disputes, and implement
technical standards." The use (or misuse) of these privileges can
be, and ofen are, questioned and challenged by other members.
Amongst these developing countries are smaller, more intricate
groups a.k.a. alliances. The Cairns group of seventeen is composed
of developed and developing nations, and has existed since the
mid-1980's. While this alliance has seemed to disappear over the
years, another group of twenty or "G-20" has risen; made up of
countries like India, China Egypt, Argentina and South Africa.
Various groups continues to develop to handle such issues as
development, membership, and regional trade.
The European Union
The most prominent example of globalization in the first world is
the
European Union (EU). The European
Union is an agreement in which countries voluntarily decide to
build common governmental institutions to which they delegate some
individual national sovereignty so that decisions can be made
democratically on a higher level of common interest for Europe as a
whole. The result is a union of 27 Member States covering with
roughly half a billion people. In total, the European Union
produces almost a third of the world’s gross national product and
the member states speak more than 23 languages. All of the European
Union countries are joined together by a hope to promote and extend
peace, democracy, cooperativeness, stability, prosperity, and the
rule of law. In a 2007 speech, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European
Commissioner for External Relations, said herself, "The future of
the EU is linked to globalization...the EU has a crucial role to
play in making globalization work properly...".
Just as the concept of the First World came about as a result of
World War II, so did the European Union. In 1951 the beginnings of
the EU were founded with the creation of
European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC). From the beginning of its inception,
countries in the EU were judged by many standards, including
economic ones. This is where the relation between globalization,
the EU, and First World Countries arises.
Especially during the
1990s when the EU focused on economic policies such as the creation
and circulation of the Euro, the creation of
the European Monetary
Institute, and the opening of the European
Central Bank
.
In 1993, at the Copenhagen European Council, the European Union
took a decisive step towards expanding the EU, what they called the
Fifth Enlargement, agreeing that “the associated countries in
Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of
the European Union.” Thus, enlargement was no longer a question of
if, but when and how.
The European Council stated that accession could occur when the
prospective country is able to assume the obligations of
membership, that is that all the economic and political conditions
required are attained.
Furthermore, it defined the membership criteria, which are
regarded as the Copenhagen criteria, as follows:
- stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of
law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities
- the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the
capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within
the Union
- the ability to take on the obligations of membership including
adherence to the aims of political, economic & monetary
union
It is clear that all these criteria are characteristics of
developed countries. Therefore, there is a direct link between
globalization, developed nations, and the European Union.
Multinational Corporations
A majority of
Multinational
Corporations find their origins in First World countries. After
the fall of communism, Multinational Corporations proliferated as
more countries focused on global trade. The series of
General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and later the
World Trade Organization (WTO)
essentially ended the protectionist measures that were dissuading
global trade. The eradication of these protectionist measures,
while creating avenues for economic interconnection, mostly
benefited developed countries, who by using their power at GATT
summits, forced developing and underdeveloped countries to open
their economies to Western goods.
As the world starts to globalize, it is accompanied by criticism of
the current forms of globalization, which are feared to be overly
corporate-led. As corporations become larger and multinational,
their influence and interests go further accordingly. Being able to
influence and own most media companies, it is hard to be able to
publicly debate the notions and ideals that corporations pursue.
Some choices that corporations take to make profits can affect
people all over the world. Sometimes fatally.
The third industrial revolution is spreading from the developed
world to some, but not all, parts of the developing world. To
participate in this new global economy, developing countries must
be seen as attractive offshore production bases for multinational
corporations. To be such bases, developing countries must provide
relatively well-educated workforces, good infrastructure
(electricity, telecommunications, transportation), political
stability, and a willingness to play by market rules.
If these conditions are in place, multinational corporations will
transfer via their offshore subsidiaries or to their offshore
suppliers the specific production technologies and market linkages
necessary to participate in the global economy. By themselves,
developing countries, even if well educated, cannot produce at the
quality levels demanded in high-value-added industries and cannot
market what they produce even in low-value-added industries such as
textiles or shoes. Put bluntly, multinational companies possess a
variety of factors that developing countries must have if they are
to participate in the global economy.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is very controversial and
affects every part of business from manufacturing through to
design, software development, financial control, logistics
management, customer support and sales. Outsourcing has been
praised as cost-effective, efficient, productive and strategic -
but also condemned as evil, money-grabbing, destructive, ruthless,
exploiting the poor. Outsourcing involves the shift from domestic
to foreign production of the intermediate input. As a consequence
of outsourcing, the skill-intensity of production rises within
sectors of the economy.
Most outsourcing is by large companies, yet small companies provide
most jobs in America and Europe, and most of the economic growth.
Big companies create headlines but the greatest impact is elsewhere
and almost invisible. The UK has 3.3 million companies. If each one
takes on just one more person on average, the result would be more
than 3 million new jobs, and that is what has happened in the last
few years, with unemployment at very low levels despite several
million people added to the labor force. Yet 6,000 redundancies at
a factory is mistakenly seen as a national crisis.
Research shows that some of the new economic activity generated in
developing countries by outsourcing will generate new demand for
goods and services in the country where the jobs have moved from
(e.g., America). McKinsey Global Institute estimates that for every
dollar US corporations spend on outsourcing to India, 33c gets 33c
and the US economy benefits by $1.14. This is based on several
assumptions: that 69% of displaced service workers will find new
jobs within a year, and will end up earning 96% of their previous
wages - backed up by 1979-1999 data. However older workers may be
out of work for a long time, especially if their education is
poor.
See also
References