SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF CROATIAN ECONOMY IN CONDITIONS OF GLOBALIZATION

Sustainable development is closely related to preservation of basic functions and characteristics of national economies. This paper questions the sustainability of a small economy, like Croatia, in the light of ecological source and sink limits and finite oil supplies. Globalization process is introduced as a force which is creating more threats than opportunites for long-term development of a small economy: it is challenging political and economic sovereignty of national economies, linking together distant and functionally unrelated economies, and stretching natural resources worldwide. Convergence between the world economies is an unlikely precess and asymetries of developmental traits may prove to be a natural attraction of the world economic system. In such an environment, de-globalization may repeat it self having major consequences for small economies highly integrated in global trade. Such consequences are likely to have adverse effect on the national security regarded here in its economic, demographic, ecological and democratic dimensions.