Thomas Ruckebusch

The purpose of this research project is to enhance the knowledge on American economic diplomacy towards Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold war and at the beginning of the 1990s. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the United States made of neoliberalism a significant weapon in its ideological arsenal. It was through the promotion of this politico-economic system that the Americans sought to weaken the socialist ideology in the "Eastern Bloc". To this end, many governmental and non-governmental actors became agents of the American neoliberalism who promoted it in the context of the “Second Cold War”.  It is also within this strategy that we see the emergence of public-private partnerships within a foreign policy that seeks to diversify its actors.

While the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviets seemed to have ended the Cold War with a policy of renouncing confrontation, the United States did not change its strategy. The new American president, George H. W. Bush adopted the policy of his predecessor of whom he was the vice-president. Supported by conservative think tanks, a vast "rollback policy" was introduced. Its aim was to bury socialism once and for all, but also to avoid a resurgence of nationalism in what are now called the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.