Et effektivt amerikansk svar på den russiske oprustning vil kræve øgede bevillinger til forsvaret, samt en nøjere analyse af udgifternes fordeling inden for USA, s forsvarsprogram. Desuden analyseres ændringen af den militære magtbalance i Europa, samt Mellemøsten og Østasien.

During the Cold War, when the United States' intelligence efforts were focused on the Soviet Union, one of the primary tasks of the Central Intelligence Agency was to estimate Soviet defense spending. In Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990, Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, who spent much of their long CIA careers estimating and studying Soviet defense spending, provide a closer look at those estimates and consider how and why they were made. In the process, the authors chronicle the development of a significant intelligence analytic capability. Firth and Noren also explain what the CIA has learned since the collapse of the Soviet Union about the USSR's actual military spending during the Cold War.

This book examines the impact defense spending has on economic growth. While defense spending was not deliberately invented as a fiscal policy instrument, its importance in the composition of overall government spending and thus in determining employment is now easily recognized. In light of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent reduction in the threat to the security of the United States, maintaining defense spending at the old level seems indefensible. The media has concentrated on the so-called peace dividend. However, as soon as the federal government is faced with defense cuts, it realizes the macroeconomic ramifications of such a step. Based on studies included in this volume, we examine the effects of defense spending on economic growth and investigate how the changed world political climate is likely to alter the importance and pattern of defense spending both for developed and developing countries.

Two questions are posed: How can we explain the monotonic growth of the Soviet military budget over two decades when overall economic growth was slowing down? Can changes in this pattern be expected? Section II defines and analyzes the concept of the Soviet defense burden, then surveys empirical measures of the burden. Section III is skeptical about the extent to which the Soviet buildup is a response to external threats to security. The persistent buildup is seen instead to reflect the leadership's perception of national priorities and to be supported by a decisionmaking apparatus that maintains them. In the near future, external challenges (particularly the U.S. buildup) and opportunities will create pressures to maintain the pace of military spending, but worsening economic prospects will make it increasingly burdensome. Neither Brezhnev nor his successors are likely to have new options for dealing with this dilemma, and considerations that have induced the Politburo to try to 'middle through' will probably continue to dominate. U.S. policy has a significant capacity to influence Soviet policy in this direction.