Most Americans can still recall the painful price U.S. dependence on foreign oil extracted in the 1970s. Few, however, are aware of a far more perilous resource dependence that has evolved in recent years.
Since the middle 1980s, the United States and its NATO allies have come to depend increasingly on the Soviet Union to meet their needs for energy and for a number of strategically critical minerals. If permitted to grow unchecked, this dependence would, at best, leave the West's economic health hostage to the whims of Soviet planners. At worst, it could open the door to disruptions of essential energy and mineral commodities in time of conflict. Attempts to raise the issue, however, have fallen by the wayside in the euphoria accompanying the advent of the "kinder, gentler" Soviet Union of Mikhail Gorbachev.
No matter what resistance they may encounter within the Soviet Union itself, there is little doubt that Gorbachev's twin "reform" programs, glasnost and perestroika, have been an unqualified success on the public relations front. Yet, thoughtful Soviet scholars warn that past periods of liberalization often gave way to extreme repression and previous relaxations of superpower tensions were followed by periods of sharp confrontation. Moreover, even the "new" Soviet Union is likely to remain America's principal geopolitical rival.
In reviewing past history, expanded trade relations in particular hold potential for mischief. During the detent of the 1970s, Moscow took advantage of the heightened commercial activity to acquire a variety of sensitive technologies essential to modernization of its strategic capabilities. Perhaps the best example of this was the USSR's purchase of equipment to manufacture precisely machined ball bearings. The bearings were used in the inertial guidance systems of the Soviet's intercontinental ballistic missiles, vastly improving their accuracy.
Moscow's growing penetration of Western energy and strategic mineral markets, however, is actually a far grater potential that to the West than the acquisition of any specific technology or piece of equipment. This is because the USSR thereby gains a lever to pressure the West without resorting to direct military confrontation.
The prospect of such a tactic, it should be noted, is not mere speculation: China, Albania, and Poland, to cite a few examples, have all at one time or another been punished by suspensions of Soviet mineral or energy exports. Indeed, even the United States has been the target of a suspension of exports. During World War II, the United States came to rely on the Soviet Union for approximately one-third of its manganese and one-fourth of its chromium. In 1948, when Stalin blockaded Berlin, the United States responded by embargoing shipments of a number of goods to the Soviet Union. The Soviets retaliated by embargoing mineral shipments to the United States. The outbreak of the Korean War forced the United States to initiate a massive subsidy program to develop alternative suppliers, which was not entirely dismantled until the 1960s.
History demonstrates, therefore, that the danger of politically motivated disruptions of Soviet mineral exports is real. The question is: How much damage could be done? To answer, one must know the extent of
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