Between World War II and 1988, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the Cold War. Development assistance policies were constructed against the background of geopolitics. Recent events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union present an opportunity to rethink food policy and foreign aid from an entirely new perspective. Like the policies themselves, most previous efforts to assess the philosophical foundations for development assistance to nonindustrialized countries were formulated within a political context dominated by the rhetoric of arms. Developing countries were viewed as clients for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or Warsaw Pact nations poised for military conflict. Suddenly, the dominant relationship between the United States and the nations of Eastern Europe is one of trade and investment. The philosophical underpinnings of aid and development now appear to be as influenced by goals of trade and competitiveness as by military power and geopolitics.

The events in Eastern Europe coincided with publication of the consensus report prepared by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. Titled Our Common Future and popularly known as the Brundtland report, this document marks a subtle but important departure from previous thinking. Although the report recites much common wisdom on what is to be done to enhance environmental quality and ensure global development, two themes are conspicuous by their absence. One is a geopolitical perspective that places problems of environmental decay and dysfunctional development into the context of ideological dispute about the role of markets, or political alliances with Eastern or Western power blocks.