ABSTRACT
World War II and increasingly acrimonious post-war relations with the Soviet Union and other new communist states helped shape post-war US and Western export control policy. As early as December of 1947, the United States resolved to use export controls, targeted at the Communist bloc, for purposes of protecting national security. Shortly after the Berlin blockade and the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, the US Congress passed the Export Control Act (ECA) of 1949 to insure that nothing of military or strategic significance was exported to communist states. Virtually unchanged, the ECA of 1949 governed US export control policy for the next two decades. The Export Control Act and the Battle Act formed the legislative cornerstones of US export control policy until 1969. Considerable controversy has surrounded US export control policy, with some saying it is too strict while others contend it is too permissive.
