ABSTRACT
The strategic balance between the two major power groups co-exists with and is affected by the economic, political and strategic problems of the Third World, or the ‘South’. The financial and balance of payments problems of Western oil importers may thus outweigh their preoccupations with the East-West strategic balance except in its central confrontation. The ‘balance of terror’ exists because of the nuclear destructive capacities of the Soviet Union and the United States, capacities so great that since Nagasaki neither government has been prepared to use them in even the smallest way for fear of unleashing the whole Armageddon. For the countries of the South, the enormous costs of the East-West strategic balance appear a vast waste of vital resources, and the balance itself offers a political opportunity to play one side against the other. The east Asian balance, in its present form, is comparatively new and is a potential constraint on Soviet initiatives.
