Ours is a world in which the volume of the external trade of the vast majority of nations has greatly expanded and continues to be on the rise. Transnational intercourse of all kinds is now a feature of an interdependent world economy in which no nation can afford to stand aloof from a market-place which has assumed global dimensions. It is also a world where many nations, and not only of the Socialist bloc, conduct some of their transnational business themselves, or else they entrust it to state-owned cor porations and to agencies of the state. In these circumstances it becomes of prime...