(FORTUNE Magazine) – The growing appetites for products will come from the Third World, and its ambitions and demands will mimic in most ways everything that has gone before in Western society. Once television is there, people of whatever shade, culture, or origin want roughly the same things. While a microwaveable dinner is unthinkable for a tribeswoman in South Africa today, it will not be in ten or 20 years. Still, one should approach the Third World with great caution and be prepared to be underwhelmed by it. Although the generalities of income and distribution systems are probably much alike in many of these countries, the whole history, culture, and disposition of the people are critical to success. There are countries where, for example, graft is endemic and the authority system is based upon opaque rules of conduct that don't sit easily with Americans. For instance, we stayed out of Nigeria, where others have made money, because conditions are not yet stable enough to entice foreign capital on our terms. The Third World's scarcity of capital will be characteristic of the Nineties. It would just be a wildly inflationary misallocation if capital is poured into where it cannot be digested, or put into schemes that are out of sync with local needs. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, must have international assistance on a par with the Marshall Plan. I believe that will come. But to approach the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe on an ad hoc basis and say, ''By God, the pent-up demand there will be enormous,'' is to ignore the reality. The infrastructure has no digestive system. When the assembly line goes down in Russia, it's down for four days for want of a trained mechanic. Many things that we take for granted -- such as a transportation system that works or an accounting system that reflects costs -- are mostly absent from the Soviet Union. A chief scientist at Heinz, just back from a trip there, said, ''One of the things we really noticed is the great nutritional deficiency.'' So thinking of the vitamin B complex, someone asked which nutrient are Russians deficient in. He replied, ''Food.''