Raymond Vernon

If wishing can make it so, the trade between the advanced industrialized countries of the West and the command economies of the East will be growing rapidly in the years ahead. The Soviet Union has made no bones about its strong desire to expand the scope of East-West trade. Businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians in the Western countries have been only a little more equivocal. Some countries have made an occasional effort to screen out technologies with important military application, while the United States has also sought to break down Soviet restrictions on the emigration of Russian Jews. But the West, too, has been on the side of expanded trade.

Just a few years ago, multinational enterprises were busily and profitably occupied in spreading their subsidiaries across the globe. Today, the world is awash with actions and proposals that would restrain the multinational enterprise and would alter its relations to nation-states.

If the world should erupt before these words are in print, the fault is unlikely to lie with the policy of détente. So far, the advantages of détente have been somewhat more evident than the costs. The capacity of the two superpowers to communicate effectively in the white heat of the Middle East crisis, for instance, must surely be counted as a significant dividend.

Author's Note: The major conclusions of this article will be expanded in "Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of U.S. Enterprises," to be published in September 1971 by Basic Books, Inc., New York.