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The EC: Powerhouse in 1992
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19837 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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5 / 1991 |
2,722 Words |
| Author
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William R. Smyser
William R. Smyser is a senior associate at the Carnegie
Institution in Washington, D.C. |
Nowhere in the world is the great divide between the developed and the developing world more starkly evident than along the border between Eastern and Western Europe. The gap between the states on the two sides of the Elbe River and the Thuringian Forest is now greater than it has been at any time since the fall of Rome. It represents not only the division between East and West but also between poor and rich.
The states on the western side of that line are among the most prosperous in the world, and those on the eastern side are struggling to find the means and the method to travel along that same road. The great task for the next generation of European statesmen, East and West, will be to reduce that divide.
This will require not only great resources but also new ways of addressing problems of development. The relationship between Western and Eastern Europe could easily develop into one that imitates the vast differences between North and South, with Eastern Europe as a semi-permanent dependency for which the West provides aid but in which the actual prospects for development remain in question.
Equally important, however, are the distinctions of specific states, separate national economies, and even individual sectors and industries. For even within vastly resourceful Western Europe, there are several states (such as Ireland or Portugal) that have not reached the same level of development as their neighbors, and in Central and Eastern Europe, there are some states like Hungary or Czechoslovakia that have better prospects than others in the East. And within each country, some industries offer greater promise than others.
The systemic struggle in Europe has been decided, and it has been decided in favor of the Western democratic and capitalist system. The East Berliners who poured into the West, like the other Central and East Europeans who rejected the communist autocratic systems, were not voting with their feet but with their entire beings. But those people did not vote for classic capitalism or even for classic liberalism. They were voting for a system that combined political freedom, the entrepreneurial spirit, and a state role that protects individuals from failures in the system.
The capitalism that triumphed in Western Europe is not the kind that Adam Smith or his purest disciples might have envisaged, nor it is the type denounced by Karl Marx. It is a particularly European brand, one that tries to combine the innovative
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