End of the Cold War: European Unity, Socialism, and the Shift in Global Power

145 Pages·1990·8.324 MB·English

by  Bogdan Denitch

THE
END
OF THE
COLD
WAR
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T HE
end
OF THE
cold
WAR
European Unity,
Socialism, and the
Shift in Global Power
Bogdan Denitch
uiiviibtty t>f Mihfteipt^ fr £§s:
• , MiNrtmp&ysn "/•
Copyright © 1990 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
2037 University Avenue Southeast, Minneapolis, MN 55414.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Denitch, Bogdan Denis.
The end of the Cold War : European unity, socialism, and the shift
in global power / Bogdan Denitch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8166-1872-0. - ISBN 0-8166-1875-5 (pbk.)
1. Europe—Politics and government—1945- 2. Cold War.
I. Title.
D1053.D46 1990
940.55 —dc20 90-10873
CIP
The University of Minnesota is an
equal-opportunity educator and employer.
Tb Michael Harrington (1928-1989)
Companion, friend, and comrade
for forty years
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Contents
Preface: The End of the Cold War, Background and
Consequences ix
Introduction: European Unity: A Unique Historical
Opportunity 3
1. European Security, Unity, and the End of the Cold
War 15
2. The Germanys, German Unity, and European
Autonomy 30
3. The End of an Empire: Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union 45
4. European Social Democracy: The Neocorporatist
Compromise 64
5. The Euroleft, Socialists, and the New Social
Movements 81
6. A New Europe: The Implications for the World 97
Bibliography 113
Index 119
Vll
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Preface
The End of the Cold War
Background and Consequences
The three developments that will dominate the international political
scene for the remainder of the twentieth century are the end of the cold
war between the alliances led by the United States and the Soviet Union;
European unification, which will expand the European "space" from
the European Economic Community (EEC) to the European Fair Trade
Association (EFTA), with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union increas-
ingly sharing in the "common European home"; and the democratic
upheavals and reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which
mark the end of the communist dictatorships. Each of these develop-
ments will have massive consequences, and together they are trans-
forming the world order as we have known it since the end of World War
II. Not the least of the consequences will be the decline of both the
United States and the Soviet Union in relative significance as the econ-
omies of a unified Europe and Japan assume even more importance
and as sheer military power decreases in importance. In assessing the
three new historical developments that make the 1990s a "hinge" de-
cade in the United States, one needs something that is all too rare in
this country, a non-U.S.-centered historical perspective. It is not at all
strange that it should be rare, for our schools do not teach history at all
seriously. They certainly teach little or nothing, even on a university
level, about the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union, the
region in which recent events make these changes possible.
Knowing so little of their past, and therefore inevitably understand-
ing so little either of their present or of their most probable futures, how
are we to judge the prospects for democratic reforms in the nations of
that region? How are we to evaluate the probable impact of the collapse
ix