First World War

The concept of the First World was originally one of the "Three Worlds" formed by the global political landscape of the Cold War, as it grouped together those countries that were aligned with the Western Bloc of the United States. This grouping was directly opposed to the Second World, which similarly grouped together those countries that were aligned with the Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union. However, as the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the definition largely shifted to instead refer to any country that boasts a well-functioning democratic system with little prospects of political risk, in addition to a strong rule of law, a capitalist economy with economic stability, and a high standard of living. Various ways in which these metrics are assessed are through the examination of a country's GDP, GNP, literacy rate, life expectancy, and Human Development Index.[1][better source needed] In colloquial usage, "First World" typically refers to "the highly developed industrialized nations often considered the Westernized countries of the world".[2]

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 often used because of its political, social, and economic relevance. The term itself was first introduced in the late 1940s by the United Nations.[3] Today, the terms are slightly outdated and have no official definition. However, the "First World" is generally thought of as the capitalist, industrial, wealthy, and developed countries. This definition includes the countries of North America and Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.[4] In contemporary society, the First World is viewed as countries that have the most advanced economies, the greatest influence, the highest standards of living, and the greatest technology.[citation needed] After the Cold War, these countries of the First World included member states of NATO, U.S.-aligned states, neutral countries that were developed and industrialized, and the former British Colonies that were considered developed.

First World War

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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 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).[9] There are some references towards culture in the definition. They were defined in terms of Gross National Product (GNP), measured in U.S. dollars, along with other socio-political factors.[9] The first world included the large industrialized, democratic (free elections, etc.) nations.[9] The second world included modern, wealthy, industrialized nations, but they were all under communist control.[9] 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.[9] 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.

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 blocs were so different that they were essentially two worlds, however, they were not numbered first and second.[11][12][13] The onset of the Cold War is marked by Winston Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech.[citation needed] In this speech, Churchill describes the division of the West and East to be so solid that it could be called an iron curtain.[citation needed]

In 1952, the French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to the three estates in pre-revolutionary France.[14] The first two estates being the nobility and clergy and everybody else comprising the third estate.[14] 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 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".[14][15] 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.[13]

During the Cold War era, the relationships between the First World, Second 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, as its name suggests, was a primarily ideological struggle between the First and Second Worlds, or more specifically, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.[17] Multiple doctrines and plans dominated Cold War dynamics including the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan (from the U.S.) and the Molotov Plan (from the Soviet Union).[17][18][19] The extent of the tension between the two worlds was evident in Berlin -- which was then split into East and West. To stop citizens in East Berlin from having too much exposure to the capitalist West, the Soviet Union put up the Berlin Wall within the actual city.[20]

Some 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 communist.[21][dead link] The Domino Theory largely governed United States policy regarding the Third World and their rivalry with the Second World.[22] 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 U.S. commitments all over the world".[citation needed]

The movement of people and information largely characterizes the inter-world relationships in the present day.[23] 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).[24]

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".[25] 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. Each year 900,000 people die from malaria and combating the disease accounts for 40% of health spending in many African countries.[26]

The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that the first Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) would be available in 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.[27]

Until the recent past, little attention was paid to the interests of Third World countries.[31] This is because most international relations scholars have come from the industrialized, First World nations.[32] As more countries have continued to become more developed, the interests of the world have slowly started to shift.[31] 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.[31]

The most prominent example of globalization in the first world is the European Union (EU).[35] 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.[36] The result is a union of 27 Member States covering 4,233,255.3 square kilometres (1,634,469.0 sq mi) with roughly 450 million 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.[36] In a 2007 speech, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for External Relations, said, "The future of the EU is linked to globalization...the EU has a crucial role to play in making globalization work properly...".[37] In a 2014 speech at the European Parliament, the Italian PM Matteo Renzi stated, "We are the ones who can bring civilization to globalization".[38]

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.[citation needed] 2351a5e196