A conference was held at Stanford in May 1992 on possible cooperation between the United States and Russia on early warning of ballistic missile attack. Included in this volume is a briefing paper that was prepared immediately after that meeting.

In August 1991, the people of Moscow and Leningrad demonstrated to the world that democracy is an idea whose time had come for the Soviet Union. As a result, the Soviet
government received a mandate for political reform. This reform, if successful, will result in a political system that will be very different from any that the people in the Soviet Union have ever known-a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Hand in hand with political reform, the Union and its republics will be attempting sweeping economic reforms. While recognizing how difficult it will be for the Soviet Union to achieve economic reform, it is also important to observe that it is at least conceivable now. A critically important component of economic reform in the Soviet Union is the conversion of their defense industry from a centrally managed monolith to a collection of independent, privately owned enterprises, producing civil products.

In a revolutionary situation in which communism has been discredited and the Communist Party has been labelled a totalitarian organization, 'socialism' is a dirty word in the Soviet Union today. The polarisation between Gorbachev's communist apparat and Boris Yeltsin's new cadres of liberals has left little room for alternative ideas or movements.

Yet a handful of socialists are trying to carve out a third path. Led by Boris Kargalitsky and Mikhail Milutin, the Socialist Party of Russia has concluded that the peoples' interests are not represented by either the old system nor the new liberal agenda. Rather, they seek to build a truly socialist society out of the rubble of stalinism.

Operational arms control can take many forms, and one of the most important is direct military-to-military talks. The 1989 Dangerous Military Activities agreement, in which military officers headed negotiations for the first time, should not be considered the final step in improving U.S.-Soviet military-to-military relations.  It should be seen instead as a major step forward toward a much deeper and wider network of discussions and agreements which reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings and potential incidents between the militaries of the two states.

This conference report contains papers presented September 14-16, 1990, at a symposium at Stanford University, sponsored by the Institute of Far Eastern Studies (IFES) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC).

After eight years of marathon negotiations, the United States and the Soviet Union are finally close to concluding a strategic-arms-reduction treaty (START). At the 1990 Washington summit, U.S. president George Bush and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev signed a communique concerning the reduction of strategic nuclear arms. Although the agreement is not the long-awaited START, the two presidents reaffirmed their determination to have the treaty completed and ready for signature by the end of 1990. The marked progress toward nuclear disarmament by the two superpowers has once again caused vast repercussions. While hailing progress, many people show more concern for the implications of the treaty for the future of arms control.

The world is facing truly breathtaking changes, in particular from the socialist countries. The traditional rigidity of communist regimes and the preeminence of the communist parties in these countries are breaking down. Strong voices of nationalism within the Soviet Union are challenging the very integrity of the union itself. Thus, a bipolar world--where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States, and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), led by the Soviet Union, represent both .an ideological schism and a superpower confrontation--is no longer the basis or even a dominant force for threatened conflict.

The recognition is growing that such factors as economic strength, abundance of basic resources, productivity, and the health and morale of the population are in many respects stronger bases of national security than are military forces. This recognition conflicts sharply with the concept of national security as defined in the Dictionary of Military Terms (issued by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff) as "a military or defense advantage over any foreign nation or group of nations."

In view of all these developments, the realization that military power and national security are not synonymous is becoming more prevalent in the United States.  More attention is focusing on internal threats from deficiencies such as those in education, from erosion of the country's infrastructure, drugs, and problems of the environment. This attention, in turn, has deflected public concern and attention from military issues. The decreased concern not only has diminished the priority given to military preparedness but also, unfortunately, has lessened the concern with arms control.

This paper addresses the steps that the United States should take to insure the continuation of its position of influence and involvement in world commerce and geopolitics in light of the developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.  The developments are both positive--prodemocracy movements, lessened tensions--and negative, the latter suggesting that there may well be a period in which pent-up ethnic, ideological, and nationalistic pressures could give rise to local conflicts and regional disputes throughout the world, not just in Eastern Europe.