ABSTRACT
The West has two sets of national security export controls: the multilateral Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls system, whose seventeen members are the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, Japan and Australia; and the unilateral system of the United States (US). Early 1980s, the unilateral export control system of the US functioned as an instrument of foreign policy rather than of national security. Concern that the commercial costs of export controls were likely to be increasing as the system became more demanding resulted in the launching of an inquiry into the matter in 1984. The NAS report considered the indirect costs of export controls to US industry, though it made no attempt to quantify these. High technology is both economically and psychologically important. The interest of Western business in the markets of the East is as keen as popular enthusiasm in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for the fruits of a market economy.
