In the introductory chapter of a major volume on American-Soviet security cooperation, the editors summarize the perspective from which the contributors have addressed their subject:

The starting point of this study is the hypothesis that the United States and the Soviet Union perceive that they have a strong interest in managing their rivalry in order to control its costs and risks. This shared interest . . . is coupled with a more diffuse recognition of two other goals: namely, the desirability of developing over time a more cooperative, orderly, and stable US-Soviet relationship, and regional and global institutions and arrangements that create some additional order in the international system from which the two superpowers benefit at least indirectly. However, although the United States and the Soviet Union may subscribe to these longer-range goals, they have rather amorphous and somewhat divergent conceptions of what the norms, ‘rules’ and modalities of a more cooperative relationship and a better structured international system should be.1