No other influential American institution matches the business community in enthusiastic, uncritical support of détente. More to the point, the sobering events of the past few years—disillusioning for many who once believed that expanded East-West contacts would somehow temper the Soviet Union’s global ambitions—appear scarcely to have affected business’s attitude. Its eagerness to deal with the Kremlin has survived the repression of the dissident movement, martial law in Poland, the invasion of Afghanistan, and Soviet-Cuban trouble-making in Africa as well as in the Caribbean basin, and will doubtless survive the ruthless downing of a civilian airliner at the cost of 269 lives. Nor, apparently, has the business fraternity been swayed by the accumulation of evidence that advanced Western technology—whether openly purchased or purloined by Soviet agents—has contributed to the steady buildup of the mammoth Soviet military machine.
Business leaders, to be sure, have grown cautious about advancing sweeping claims concerning the beneficial effects of trade with the Soviets. Donald M. Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, and a man who has invested the trade issue with the status of a cause, may still assert that the “United States should give the Soviet Union a stake in peace, which we are best prepared to do through trade,” but other businessmen are now showing some wariness about the “peace through trade” slogan. Yet, prudence in attributing a humanitarian or statesmanlike dimension to economic transactions with the East has not, been accompanied by any lessening of determination to resist sanctions, embargoes, restrictions on technology transfer, or other measures designed to harmonize our trade policies with the objectives of our diplomacy and the requirements of national security.
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