Chapter 5 - The pipe embargo: 1962–1963

Summary

From the standpoint of the U.S., the [CoCom embargo] system has been intricately interwoven into our overall strategic thinking about the cold war and in our overall cold war posture. Trade denial is looked upon as an effective weapon of cold war regardless of how large or how small the quantities of goods involved may be, on the simple assumption that since the U.S. is richer than the USSR any trade between the two must necessarily help the USSR more than the U.S. and hence must improve the relative power position of the USSR. Trade denial has also come to be an important symbol of our cold war resolve and purpose and of our moral disapproval of the USSR.

Walt Whitman Rostow, 1963

Of course, anything one pleases can be regarded as strategic material, even a button, because it can be sewn onto a soldier's pants. A soldier will not wear pants without buttons, since otherwise he would have to hold them up with his hands. And then what can he do with his weapon? If one reasons thus, then buttons also are a particularly strategic material. But if buttons really had such great importance and we could find no substitute for them, then I am sure that our soldiers would even learn to keep their pants up with their teeth, so that their hands would be free to hold weapons.

Nikita S. Khrushchev, 1963

The most controversial example of negative linkage in West German–Soviet relations prior to 1980 was an American order forbidding the Germans to honor a sales contract to sell largediameter pipe to the USSR.