Volume 35, Number 2 · February 18, 1988
Restoring American Independence
By Felix G. Rohatyn
More than two hundred years after the Declaration of Independence, the United States has lost its position as an independent power. While we are still without question the world's leading military power, our predominance in weapons does not give us the freedom to act on our own. The hundreds of billions of dollars we have spent on weapons systems were simply part of an escalating process by which nuclear and conventional weapons were manufactured to deter and neutralize their corresponding equivalents in Soviet military power. Few of these weapons systems are ever likely to be used, or indeed could be used without causing unimaginable disaster to both sides. However, the drain on our economy created by the combination of high levels of defense spending, large tax cuts, and continuing growth in entitlement programs is turning the US into a historical anomaly: a first-rate military power and a second-rate economic power.
Feature, 3891 words
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