Indeed the experts now take a sombre view of the success of perestro'ika. One of our NATO studies, for instance, looks at the future prospects for the Soviet economy. What is interesting is that the actual outcome would seem to make very little difference. And these small rates of projected growth do not allow for the likely increase in the Soviet population which would make them even more modest. So even the most optimistic assumption does not provide sufficient growth to make a significant qualitative difference to either the Soviet economy or Soviet society.
Political reform is thus coupled with economic necessity - that much is clear.
The same can also be said in the case of the two other Warsaw Pact reformers - Poland and Hungary. The Institute for Economic and Market Research in Budapest, for instance, has said that only one in three Hungarian companies would survive in free trade with the West. Poland is not a Third World country even if its per capita GNP now approximates that of Indonesia. The NATO Summit Declaration has given the West the overall conceptual architecture that it must have in its approach to the East. The judgements that have to be made are highly political.