ABSTRACT
Modern technology has become one of the primary sources of national power, prosperity and strategy. Technology's impact on international relations has in fact been paradoxical: it has at once fostered interdependence and cooperation and sharply divided nations by heightening national competition and enabling greater global projection of power. For one full decade, from approximately 1969 to 1979, US relations with the Soviet Union were premised on the concept of detente. In the broader context of East-West relations, this meant the opening of new channels of communications between Moscow and Washington and the expansion of trade contacts. With detente gone as a premise for East-West relations, export control policy is being reconsidered as part of a general rethinking of the premises of US policy towards the Soviet bloc. Industrial and military innovation in the twentieth century is a highly dynamic process in which leadership is a perishable commodity.
