ABSTRACT
The unique relevance of energy to the infrastructure of a modem economy, to transport, and to individual welfare, forces governments to treat energy policy as a specific area of action, connected to, but not identical with other issues of foreign economic policy. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan transformed what was already an identifiable tendency into an abrupt change of policy. In 1976 were United States (US) companies able to take more than 10 per cent of the Soviet orders for energy technology and hardware. There was an immediate stop on licenses for US energy exports to the Soviet Union, existing licenses granted were revoked, and energy equipment exports fell by almost 50 per cent. The large US-Soviet cooperation projects required high level, legislative decisions, so they fell victim to power politics from 1974 onwards. Trade in energy equipment was brought to the political forefront, and suffered significantly at an early stage in the general debate on East-West technology transfer.
