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Aid to the Soviet Union: What Next?
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18277 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1990 |
2,100 Words |
| Author
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Kate Holder
Kate Holder is research associate of European studies at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
D.C. |
Just as the countries of Eastern Europe last year chose the "Sinatra" approach to reform away from Soviet control, so have the Western industrialized states agreed, for now, to aid the Soviet Union each in their own way. Indeed, the July summit of the Group of Seven (G-7) in Houston produced no consensus on immediate steps to aid an economically and politically fractious Soviet Union. (The G-7 includes the United States, Japan, Britain, West Germany, France, Italy and Canada.) In typical summit fashion, the Western leaders agreed to create a joint task force to study the problem when it was clear that negotiations would fall short of concrete proposals.
This lack of Western resolve also clouded the Soviet aid issue at the European Community's (EC) summit of heads of state in June. The EC summit participants commissioned a study of the Soviet economy after Franco-German progressiveness regarding aid predictably clashed with British restraint. That study, due in October, will collaborate with the results of the G-7 task force, whose findings are due by the end of the year. Only then will the allies consider them together in an effort to formulate a collective aid policy.
Western governments are still reeling from the reverberations of East-West strategic change, which began last year. It is little wonder, then, that they hesitate about how to advance economic reform of their heretofore Cold War nemesis. West Germany's enthusiasm to extend aid to the Soviets is compelled by its drive for unification with the German Democratic Republic, while the United States remains tentative due to budget deficits and strategic questions stemming from residual superpower competition. Japan, meanwhile, prefers to aid the Chinese rather than the Soviets, who arrogated four Japanese islands after World War II. Nevertheless, dire economic forecasts and supplications by leaders such as Vaclev Havel of Czechoslovakia encouraged the West to recognize the political merits of extending aid to the former east bloc. As a result, the leading industrialized countries of the Group of 24 (G-24) quickly reached consensus to provide comprehensive economic aid to Poland and Hungary.
The West has only very recently agreed, however, to back political pledges to aid the Soviet Union with concrete economic support. This is due to the fact that until now, Gorbachev's political agenda has outpaced any plans for economic reform. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the Soviets are entering an unprecedented phase of adopting free-market economic principles that, if implemented, will largely dictate political reforms. In the future, perestroika will
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