Remaking the CMEA and east-west assistance

Abstract

As argued in Chapter 1, most participants in the debates on remaking Europe in general and Eastern Europe in particular have simply written off the CMEA. Inasmuch as this decision appears to be motivated by looking at several cloaks of the CMEA that are not at the core of the current debate, the pivotal trade and payments problems of the reforming CMEA members, and the available room for cooperation on economic grounds, this assessment is incomplete at best. This chapter argues the case for remaking the CMEA, if necessary under a different name, while at the same time facilitating the further integration of the PETs and other reforming CMEA countries into global trade, financial, and monetary relations. This integration should be looked at in the context of the organized global economic framework as well as from the point of view of less formal, but no less important, private relationships in the global economy. The repercussions of remaking Eastern Europe and, in the end, Europe are many. Some of the economic aspects thereof point in the direction of the need to reformulate the postwar global economic framework in more than one respect, an issue that I shall take up in more detail in the last chapter.