ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the material basis for the New Right's symbolic construction of the Soviet threat in the late 1970s and early 1980s, what will be labeled here as 'the second cold war'. The business conflict approach to the emergence of the second cold war is offered here as a challenge to the conventional view that increased anti-Soviet rhetoric and policy during the Carter and Reagan eras was solely a response to an objective problem or threat. The chapter attempts to examine the generalized move to the right among influential business groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s and to explore the extent to which this shift contributed to the right turn in foreign and military policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Associated with the rightward shift of the US business community was the growth in power of the military-industrial complex.
