Answer: Executive Summary
Anyone who has studied elementary economics has encountered the idea that a society's output may be either "guns"or "butter" and that, once all resources are employed, having more of one entails having less of the other. Thiscategorization of output is only a metaphor to make more concrete the concepts of production possibility andopportunity cost. I propose, however, to take the categorization seriously in order to inquire into how the costs ofAmerica's cold war military activities have been distributed between the private sector and the governmentalnonmilitary sector. Accordingly, I extend the familiar metaphor slightly, dividing the U.S. gross national product(GNP) into three exhaustive classes: government military purchases, denoted by G-M; all government--federal, state,and local--nonmilitary purchases, denoted by G-NM; and all private purchases, whether for consumption orinvestment (plus net exports), denoted by P. This categorization permits one to view the societal opportunity costs ofmilitary purchases as broadly as possible. One is examining not just the division of the federal budget but the divisionof the entire national flow of production (as conventionally measured).
Explanation:
Answer:
The United States and the NATO military alliance forced the Soviet Union to continue spending heavily on military goods and troops causing the Soviets to fall behind, losing East Germany in 1989 after they rejected communist control, and were unable to influence and control satellite states.
(I was answering this question on my packet and wanted to help people who needed help on this question since it wasn't easy. I hope this helps. :b)
