ABSTRACT
The US consensus about the world had collapsed, and public opinion in the United States became polarized. With that polarization, the center of gravity within each political party shifted toward its ideological extreme. Geopolitically, the cold war has become global in scope, while at the same time narrowing into a primarily US-Soviet affair as Western Europe has gradually opted out of the East-West competition. While the overall US-Soviet strategic balance is unlikely to change dramatically, given the scale of existing arsenals and additional deployments, internal indecision will make it more difficult for the United States to build a more stable security and arms-control relationship with the Soviet Union. In 1983, US share of the world economy was approximately 25 percent—more than double the share of the next largest country. US loss of nerve and the collective loss of control are not products of objective circumstances but rather a matter of subjective indecision.
