ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the prevalent international issues bearing on security concerns of the USA and her allies with regard to export controls on high technology products. It deals with problems of efficiency and effectiveness of export controls and with their impact on American trade, the development of high tech industry as well as R & D. The chapter focuses on the pressures exerted in the direction of a change in the export control system. The export control systems works on two levels, the national and the multinational level. The perception of national security in the United States has to be seen in the light of the assessment of the Soviet role in the world that has prevailed over the post-war decades. Considering the problems that have afflicted Western launching capabilities, which appear crippled for years to come, this may yet become an issue of larger portent.
