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Moscow's New Lever on the West
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15424 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1989 |
3,290 Words |
| Author
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Milton R. Copulos
Milton R. Copulos is president of the National Defense Council
Foundation and the author of over 450 publications on energy
and the environment, including Energy Perspectives (1979) and
The Oil Industry, Yesterday and Today (1987). |
Most Americans can still recall the painful price U.S. dependence on foreign oil extracted in the 1970s. Few, however, are aware of a far more perilous resource dependence that has evolved in recent years.
Since the middle 1980s, the United States and its NATO allies have come to depend increasingly on the Soviet Union to meet their needs for energy and for a number of strategically critical minerals. If permitted to grow unchecked, this dependence would, at best, leave the West's economic health hostage to the whims of Soviet planners. At worst, it could open the door to disruptions of essential energy and mineral commodities in time of conflict. Attempts to raise the issue, however, have fallen by the wayside in the euphoria accompanying the advent of the "kinder, gentler" Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev.
No matter what resistance they may encounter within the Soviet Union itself, there is little doubt that Gorbachev's twin "reform" programs, glasnost and perestroika, have been an unqualified success on the public relations front. Yet, thoughtful Soviet scholars warn that past periods of liberalization often gave way to extreme repression and previous relaxations of superpower tensions were followed by periods of sharp confrontation. Moreover, even the "new" Soviet Union is likely to remain America's principal geopolitical rival.
In reviewing past history, expanded trade relations in particular hold potential for mischief. During the detent of the 1970s, Moscow took advantage of the heightened commercial activity to acquire a variety of sensitive technologies essential to modernization of its strategic capabilities. Perhaps the best
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