East-West Problems in Europe and North-South Conflicts

A new Europe is emerging after the politico-economic collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. The smaller countries of the former Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) have split into two groups: on the one hand, the group of fast reforming economies Poland, Hungary and the CSFR – possibly enlarged by Croatia and Slovenia -, and the slowly changing countries Romania and Bulgaria in which former communists exert no less influence than in Yugoslavia’s core Serbia. The former USSR has disintegrated into several countries, most of which are forming the Commonwealth of Independent States. The CIS and the future countries that might finally emerge from it – with separate currencies and new customs duties that impair trade – face much more difficult problems in systemic transformation than the smaller ex-CMEA countries. Without a functional memory of the market economy and a stabilizing middle class and saddled with ethnic minority problems in a period of new nationalism as well as so many new economic problems, the former USSR will face a difficult adjustment path.