U.S.-Soviet relations 1980-88: The politics of trade pressure

The United States applied trade pressure on the Soviet Union on a large scale during the 1980s for the attainment of political objectives. Although initially triggered by the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, trade pressure became a concerted American policy aimed at influencing Soviet domestic and international behaviour, and expressing displeasure with Moscow's actions at home and abroad. The thesis looks at the ability of U.S. trade pressure to influence or shape Soviet behaviour and policy. The thesis, which is based upon a combination of American and Soviet primary sources as well as memoir and other publications, assesses both the economic and political effect (with greater emphasis on the latter) of Washington's application of economic measures in the early 1980s on Soviet policy on human rights, dissent, Jewish emigration, and the Third World. Two introductory chapters chart the overall development of Soviet-American relations during the years concerned. Four further chapters analyse the degree of economic and political success generated by American trade pressure. Two of these look at the economic effect of U.S. trade pressure in terms of denying the Soviet Union access to both strategic and non - strategic goods. The other two chapters concentrate on the political success of trade pressure, with particular reference to human rights and regional conflicts in the third world. A final chapter reviews the major literature on trade pressure, and sums up the results of the thesis which aims to alleviate some of the shortcomings prevalent in works on trade pressure and argues that U.S. trade pressure on the Soviet Union largely failed to have the desired effect of influencing Soviet domestic and international behaviour