ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some general propositions about Western security interests and Soviet economic liberalization. Soviet political liberalization hinders economic reform because it makes the austerity measures needed for financial stabilization more difficult to take. The experience of attempts at market reform in several socialist countries shows that it cannot be effective without reform of the ownership system in the direction of a mixed economy. Economic liberalization and political liberalization are probably not, in the long run, separable. Market reform is inseparable from opening up the economy to the wider world. The Soviet authorities have in response to Western policies opted for three complementary policies. The national security rationale of the strategic embargo logically requires the continuation of coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls arrangements for as long as the Warsaw Pact and Atlantic Alliance continue to point weapons at one another. In general, domestic economic reform in the Soviet Union and East European countries is the key.
