ABSTRACT
The United States is currently in one of those brief periods in history during which there is an opportunity for critical reappraisal and change in its control of exports to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Recent Soviet actions have ended the euphoria of the detente era, and the temporary embargo of selected commercial products to the Soviet Union provided a break in the momentum of East-West trade over the past decade. Some may feel that the recent revision of the Export Administration Act, which emphasizes the control of critical technologies and assigns to the Department of Defense the responsibility for defining these critical technologies, has completed the process of export control review and that a new policy will automatically follow this mandate. Much work remains to be done to implement this policy, however, and the task before the administrators is urgent. If policy changes are not effected during this brief opportunity, a forthcoming Soviet peace initiative will reinforce the inertia of the past, and the U.S. will be committed to repeating the mistakes of the 1970s.
