ABSTRACT

Western opinion-formers and policy-makers are virtually unanimous in modelling the transition process of the post-communist states in terms which imply their reconstruction on Western models and their integration into a coherent international order based on Western power and institutions. Underlying this virtually universal model are assumptions that are anachronistic and radically flawed. It assumes that the system of Western-led institutions which assured global peace and world trade in the post-war period can survive, substantially unchanged or even strengthened, the world-wide reverberations of the Soviet collapse; the only issue is how the fledgling post-communist states are to gain admission into these institutions. This assumption neglects the dependency of these institutions on the strategic environment of the Cold War and their unravelling, before our eyes, as the post-war settlement disintegrates. Both GATT and the European Union are creatures of the post-war settlement which rested on the division of Germany and Europe and US hegemony

in Western trade and security policy. It was always foolish to imagine that they could survive unscathed the reunification of Germany and the United States’ retreat from global leadership prompted by the disappearance of the Soviet threat. In the event, the after-shock of German reunification has been to derail the movement to European monetary and political union. Whatever form may ultimately be assumed by the European Union, it is unlikely to be that of a federal superstate; and there is at least a real chance that in taking the federal project in Europe off the historical agenda, German reunification has returned us to all the classical dilemmas of an inherently unstable balance of power in Central Europe. It is not unreasonable to hope that these dilemmas can be coped with, on the basis of the many layers of co-operation that have evolved during the last few decades between the nation-states that comprise the European Union, once the mirage of a transnational European state has finally dissolved. At the same time, the weakened strategic commitment of the United States to the European continent has diminished the significance of the successful completion of the Uruguay Round. The final agreement, completed in December 1993, proved far less ambitious than any that was earlier conceived; and the nature and powers of GATT’s successor, the World Trade Organization, remain vague and uncertain. The GATT agreement has yet to be ratified by the US Congress: an eventuality that remains likely, but, partly because of earlier Congressional ratification of NAFTA (which in effect created a regional trading bloc), cannot be taken for granted. The prospect of a world of regional blocs has not, in the event, been altogether dispelled by the GATT agreement. Even NATO has suffered a paralysis as to its future role which is far from being resolved and which is only compounded by its indecisive and ineffectual stance in the intractable war in former Yugoslavia.