East–South Relations at UNCTAD:
Global Political Economy and the CMEA
Robert M. Cutler
Abstract:
UNCTAD provides focus for
examining collective Soviet-bloc (CMEA) negotiating
behavior toward the developing countries (Group of 77) in
reponse to the initiative for a New International Economic
Order in the 1960s and 1970s. Case studies are commodities
trade and the Common Fund, the Generalized System of
Preferences, the Code of Conduct for Liner Conferences, and
the Code of Conduct for Transfer of Technology. The Soviet
bloc seeks to use UNCTAD to transform international
economic relations while conserving their place in the
existing system. CMEA–G-77 coalitions are due more to
common domestic structures of state trading than to
ideology. Their disagreements are traceable to divergent
situations within the international economy itself.
Interesting contrasts between the CMEA and the EEC as
international organizations are revealed as well. |
This article is available in  full
text.
Contents:
- The CMEA countries and the
foundation of UNCTAD
- Group D
negotiating behavior at
UNCTAD
- Commodities trade and the
Common Fund
- The
Generalized System of
Preferences
- The Code of
Conduct for Liner
Conferences
- The Code of
Conduct for Transfer
of Technology
- International organization
and CMEA foreign trade
- UNCTAD and East–South
commerce
- The CMEA and
the EEC: a few
contrasts
- Conclusion
|
| Suggested citation for
this webpage: Robert
M. Cutler, “East–South Relations at UNCTAD:
Global Political Economy and the CMEA[; Abstract],”
International Organization 37,
no. 1 (Winter 1983): 121–142, available at
<http://www.robertcutler.org/ar83ioz.htm>, accessed 16 April 2024. |
[ page 121 ]
East–South Relations at UNCTAD: Global Political
Economy and the CMEA
Robert M. Cutler
Systematic studies of recent
behavior by the socialist countries of Eastern Europe
in universal international organizations are hard to
find. Only a few works, nearly two decades old, address
the behavior of the USSR, let alone its smaller allies,
and they were completed before the UNCTAD machinery was
put in gear.[1] The
one exception to this statement concerns specialized
international organizations.[2]
UNCTAD is of interest, however,
precisely because it “is less political, more
functionally specific, and technically oriented”
than “the political organs of the United Nations
… [while] at the same time it is less
independent, more intensely political, more
functionally diverse, and less technical”
than
[ page 122 ]
the specialized agencies.[3] A focus on UNCTAD
has the added advantage of permitting some comparisons,
in a transnational context, between the collective
behavior of the East European countries and that of the
countries of the European Community (EEC) toward the
Third World. Such comparisons are usually complicated
by the fact that the intergovernmental economic
organization of the East European countries—the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA)—has
neither the juridical status nor the common foreign
commercial policy that the EEC enjoys. A focus on
UNCTAD avoids this difficulty, for the CMEA is
incarnated at UNCTAD as an autonomous collective
entity, “Group D.”[4] The particular features of
UNCTAD thus provide an opportunity not only to compare
CMEA and EEC behavior toward the Group of 77 but also
to examine the behavior of the socialist countries of
Eastern Europe as a group in a unique international
organization.
My purpose here is neither to
analyze the relative influence of the socialist states
of Eastern Europe on decisions in UNCTAD, nor to
describe quantitatively their trade with the Group of
77. I intend, rather, to understand the CMEA
countries’ response to the foundation of UNCTAD,
behind which they were a motive force; to analyze how
their behavior in the organization has been
transformed; and to compare, within the focus provided
by UNCTAD, the conduct of the CMEA with that of the
EEC. The study suggests some basic characteristics of
the East European CMEA countries’ response to the
New International Economic Order.
[ This article is available in full
text. ]
…
Notes
[ page 121 ]
I wish to acknowledge the support of the Albert
Gallatin Fellowship in International Affairs at the
Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva,
without which I would have neither conceived nor
executed this study. Members of the Institute’s
faculty too numerous to mention graciously shared their
expertise and experiences with me. The hospitality of
Professor Urs Luterbacher and his colleagues greatly
facilitated all my work. Professors Harish Kapur and
Marlis Steinert of the Graduate Institute helped to
shape the broad contours of this study by welcoming me
into their Working Group, on EEC–Third World
relations, where I presented a preliminary version of
this research; and their suggestions greatly aided its
revision. Comments by the editor of this journal led me
to reformulate some important points, which Catherine
Mannick helped me to clarify. The international civil
servants and national representatives who accorded me
interviews at the United Nations in Geneva deserve
special mention. Their names are omitted here and in
the notes, however, because they spoke in confidence. I
am grateful to all these individuals for the
opportunity to have pursued this research.
[Note 1].
Alexander Dallin, The Soviet Union at the United
Nations (New York: Praeger, 1962); Harold K.
Jacobson, The USSR and the UN’s Economic and
Social Activities (Notre Dame Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1963); Alvin Z. Rubinstein, The
Soviets in International Organizations (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1964). More recent are two
unpublished theses: John O. Lindell, “The USSR in
UNESCO” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1972)
Charles Anthony Schwartz, “UNCTAD: Soviet
Politics in the North–South Conflict”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1972). The second
of these, despite its title, deals almost as much with
the defunct Havana Charter (1948) as with UNCTAD, and
does not pursue a systematic analysis.
[Note 2]. Chris
Osakwe, The Participation of the Soviet Union in
Universal International Organizations: A Political and
Legal Analysis of Soviet Strategies and Aspirations
inside ILO, UNESCO, and WHO (Leiden: A. W.
Sijthoff, 1972).
[ page 122 ]
[Note 3].
Branislav Gosovic, UNCTAD: Conflict and
Compromise—The Third World’s Quest for an
Equitable World Economic Order through the United
Nations (Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff, 1972), p.
265.
[Note 4]. Group
D includes the member-states of the CMEA at the time of
the foundation of UNCTAD in 1964: the German Democratic
Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania,
Czechoslovakia, and the USSR. Mongolia entered the CMEA
in 1962; the LDCs that joined the CMEA later, such as
Cuba and Vietnam, continue to be part of the Group of
77, but they sometimes associate themselves with joint
statements made in the name of the East European
socialist countries. The full appellation used for the
East European CMEA countries that compose Group D at
UNCTAD is “the socialist countries of Eastern
Europe”; here, “CMEA countries” and
“East European countries” are used
synonymously with this term. Romania, which calls
itself a “developing socialist country,” no
longer participates in Group D; since the UNCTAD
sessions in Nairobi (1976), it has officially been a
member of the Group of 77. The Group of 77 includes the
LDCs, of which there are more than one hundred; Group B
is composed of the industrialized countries that
maintain a market economy.
Dr. Robert M. Cutler [ website — email ] was educated at MIT and The University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in Political Science, and has specialized and consulted in the international affairs of Europe, Russia, and Eurasia since the late 1970s. He has held research and teaching positions at major universities in the United States, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Russia, and contributed to leading policy reviews and academic journals as well as the print and electronic mass media in three languages.
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