Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...pendulum of public concern about national and foreign policy is swinging back after the doldrums of the post-Vietnam era. Heightened worries about diminishing resources, about inflation and unemployment, and about relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have prompted a reassessment of American spending priorities...
...military policy is formulated in a vacuum; defense spending is partly a function of perceived foreign military threats; in our case, this reads the Soviet Union. It therefore comes as no surprise that budget comparisons between the competing superpowers are made. However, such comparisons are commonly overdrawn and, indeed, may be very misleading...
Official estimates place Soviet military spending at about $160 billion today, anywhere from 25-45% above our own efforts, depending on whether U.S. military retirement costs are included. But this figure betrays the difficult methodology involved in arriving at such a comparison. The Soviets publish a much lower budget figure, generally considered to underestimate their military effort. The U.S. therefore prices the Soviet budget by estimating what it would cost us to field the same army and equipment, but often overlooks disparity in the quality of troops and equipment...
Such pricing problems are compounded by the variability in ruble-dollar exchange rates, leading economists to make estimates varying as much as 50%. Such difficulties give little confidence in Soviet defense budget estimates...
Several years ago, Henry Kissinger exclaimed: "In God's name, what is military superiority?" He was pointing out the inadequacy of presuming Soviet "superiority" from budgetary comparisons. Such conclusions overlook not only methodological problems, but also two other important issues: perceived foreign threats and past military spending...