Economic Transformation and the Changing International Economic Environment

The essays collected here were published between November 1990 and April 1993 as op-ed columns or articles in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, National Interest, and World Monitor. They are collected here on the premise that the whole may be more interesting and useful than the separate pieces. No changes have been made in the original texts, although in a few cases the text that was published was slightly changed from the original version. The 17 essays are divided into two parts. The first part, "Transforming Command Systems," addresses both the short-term and long-term problems of transforming the command, militarized economies of Russia and Ukraine into marketized, pluralistic ones. The subjects dealt with in this part include the six basic elements of marketization, the relationship between markets and democracy, Russia's foreign debt, and foreign assistance to Russia and Ukraine. The second part, "The Changing International Economic Environment," touches on disparate, but sometimes interacting, aspects of the new international economic environment, including the relation between economic and military power, the arms trade, the sources of Japan's economic successes, the growing importance of Asia in the world economy, and the components of Clintonomics. The second section also includes two reviews of books by Richard Nixon and Jeffrey Garten, respectively, that deal with changing international environment, especially with respect to Asia in general and Japan in particular.