ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a framework for understanding the strategic competition between the United States and the USSR. It presents particular attention to the geopolitical setting in which strategy and military power must be appreciated. The deciding feature of the US strategic predicament is the obligation have accepted to provide, in greater or lesser degree, for the security of regions far from the United States, especially those around the periphery of Eurasia that are, as a result of the Soviet military buildup, totally accessible to Soviet nuclear and nonnuclear military power. A central problem for US strategy has been the relationship between its peace-keeping or deterrent aims and the increasing difficulty of preparing in any rational manner for the wars that would have to be fought should deterrence fall. Of course military power is applied to the pursuit of political purposes.
