A New Foreign Economic Policy for the 1990s?

Abstract

Nowadays the world is going through a phase of profound and difficult structural economic changes. Adaptation to the changes is far from being painless and requires a great deal of economic effort, enlightened political leadership, and a strategy for achieving the optimal tactics and strategy. The new realities of the current stage of the scientific and technical revolution, and the social shaping of this stage constantly call for new approaches to foreign economic policy; this process seems to be common for all nations. Naturally, the restructuring and adaptation to the ever changing world has its own character in individual countries and in different social systems — as reflection of dialectics of general and particular, global and national. Can we also speak about the existence of common economic interests for the East, West, and South? Yes, in today’s interdependent world this interdependence is constantly growing. Such common interests exist and will not diminish. The desire for mutually beneficial economic links and the increasing necessity to solve a growing number of global problems create a common basis of interests on which the main foreign economic concepts, including restructuring, can be built.

Section head. Department for West European Studies. Institute ot World Economy and International Relations pMEMO). Moscow.