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America's Stake in the Soviet Future

By Graham T. Allison and Robert D. Blackwill
Summer 1991
Article Summary and Author Biography

The USA should make a massive commitment, of Marshall Plan proportions, to assist the USSR to build a post-communist free market economy. This would act as a powerful inducement for reformers like Gorbachev to abandon all ambition to retain any commitment to communism. The West should (1) provide copious communications infrastructure (2) enlist Soviet help in global security management issues (3) offer massive economic aid "conditional upon political pluralization and a coherent economic program for moving rapidly to a market economy".

Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill are members of the faculty of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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