The foregoing discussion should give a preliminary idea as to how markets linkage and leverage constrain the toolkit of policy options available to LDC as well as rendering development trajectories significantly vulnerable to exogenous forces. These ideas could be developed in much greater and detail, but this has already been done rather thoroughly. It is useful at this point to stress two insights overlooked by dependency analysis with regard to the global economic order. First, dependentistas naively painted a leveled economic playing field for all nation-states (in both trade or monetary regimes), as stylized accounts of liberal economists would have it. Second, dependency did not acknowledge that power politics between countries. for good or bad, will always shape in important ways the attributes of the international economic system - and thus the setting within which individual development strategies are pursued. Political economist Robert Gilpin (2000, 42) puts it in more concrete terms: "the dominant powers in the international system play a major role in defining the purpose of the international economy and the principal rules governing international economic activities." Only someone blind to the political dimension of international economic relations of international economic relations could deny that asymmetrical power relations skew the rules of the global economic order in ways unfavorable to Latin Americaand to the developing world in general. The world trade regime provides an and to the developing excellent example. The benefits for the developing world of lower tariffs for products in which they specialize cannot be overstated. We are endlessly reminded by reputed trade economists that freer trade in agriculture would do much more for many poor countries than any amount of foreign aid or debt much more relief. Yet, the narrow political interests of the powerful nations prevail. Whereas successive trade rounds have reduced the average tariff on manufactured goods from 40% to 4% in the past fifty years, the figures for agricultural tariffs remains close to 40% (Economist, 25). The developed world has used much political muscle in making sure the door to their agricultural markets remains shut. In short, developing nations often get short-changed in international economic forums. The process of globalization is fueled in important ways, not only by technological trends, but also by deliberate political decisions. The strong inevitably shape the nature of global economic much more than the weak (i.e., the developing nations). Blinded by their economicism, this rather basic insight was missed by most dependency writers.