Introduction

Abstract

The West has lived with the decline of American military power since 1969. Numerous studies have been written documenting the dramatic rise in Soviet strength and the equally significant decline of American forces. The United States itself has been fully conscious of the change in its military standing. In the words of a member of the Reagan Administration, what has taken place during the last ten years is ‘a major transformation in the relationship of military strength between the United States and the Soviet Union: the kind of transformation that historically is often found prior to a major war’.¹ The decline belongs to the world of fact: the significance pundits attach to it is a matter of interpretation. Many commentators, not all of them working from the same premiss, have constructed a myth which by selective use of the past appears to explain America’s present predicament. From this process, the United States has emerged as the agent or victim of its own destiny and the events highlighted from its recent past have necessarily assumed a symbolic importance in the making of the country the United States has become.