ABSTRACT
A presumptive case can be made for the use of multiple approaches in assessing the impact of the international action-reaction phenomenon on Soviet strategic arms decision making. For the Western policymaker, new and legitimate concerns of international scope—energy, food, nuclear proliferation, terrorism—have been thrust to the fore in years. Yet the mutual antagonism of the two superpowers and their capability to destroy each other and the rest of the world as well make their strategic arms relationship an international security problem of enduring and overriding import. Assumptions will be made in any event—about long-term Soviet international ambitions, about specific Soviet ambitions in the case of a particular weapon system, about how the relevant Soviet decisions come about, and so on. Since World War II, the strategic arms relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union has been the principal fact of life in the international arena.
