There's much to say about inward vs outward oriented development!! But I'll save my bills perhaps for later, and toss in a coin or two. the South (US South) managed to make basic consumer goods, weapons and ammo, etc., for four years, while coming close to defeating the GAR in battle. This was perhaps the most ISI intensive effort in history, in a "country" not known for its skill in manufactures, with most of its resources trained and deployed to plant, gin, ship, insure, etc., cotton and a few other products for export. But the ruling class, a small minority (since most so-called planatations were small-time), was fighting for their whole way of life.... against the hated North as well as the feared Southern blacks and poor whites. Similarly, Cuba has had some success in inward looking development and ISI (started in 1925 under Machado). The reason has got to be 1/Fidel and 2/a Party and a great part of the population fighting for a socialist way of life (I deliberately simplify by skipping the question of state and society, or the absence of an independent civil society) against the Yankees and also those exiles, a minority now I think, who wish to return to the homeland and take back their properties, positions, status, and "place in the world." There are other examples, but the history you relate on Rhodesia/Zimbabwe suggests something similar. The white were fighting to stay independent of the Brits and also to keep blacks from attaining any real power - again, a two-front war.
If there's something in what I'm saying, some "functional equivalent" perhaps needs to be developed in other countries across the world. I'm told that Malaysia sort of invented nationalism to get as far as they have.
I do believe, and am presently working on this question and lots of related ones, that the choice is between a plurality of national/regionalist models of development, where first things come first, like eradicating poverty, on the one hand, and a single global model of development under the rule of the US, on the other. The big question it seems is, has the latter, relatively young in historical times, developed to the point at which the former becomes impossible? Impossible without taking apart or breaking down a wide range of economic, social, political and cultural arrangements, interrelations, etc?
Now is the time to deal with the big question and all the little questions that need answers before it is possible to answer the big question. It may be that we need a "best practices" center, on internet, in person on the ground, everywhere, where people from different countries that know something about inward vs outward looking development, what is needed to succeed, the pitfalls, etc. so that the collective wisdom, on a world scale, of left economists to unions to village or farmer organizations to progressive ecologists, government officials, statisticians, etc., et al. could teach and learn from one another. the World Social Forum would be the ideal place, perhaps. Wherever it is, it has to be truly bottom-up to be credible and also to work. And whatever it is, it has to be "red-green." Such a World Alternatives Center - or TIAA in place of TINA - would freak out the North esp. the US ruling classes. Jim O'Connor