THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2025 45 The traditional approach of deploying export controls may have sufficed in the past. But will it prove effective against more innovative foes like the People’s Republic of China? BY DARROW GODESKI MERTON Foreign Service Officer Darrow Godeski Merton is currently on a university economic training assignment at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has previously served in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Juba, and at the U.S. Mission to the African Union, in addition to domestic tours with the Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, the Bureau of African Affairs, and the House Foreign Affairs Committee as a Pearson Fellow. His essay on the future of the Foreign Service won second place in the 2024 AFSA Centennial Writing Competition. Victory has a thousand fathers, and the outcome of the Cold War is no exception. While scholars largely agree that the Soviet Union was unable to keep pace with the United States because of economic stagnation, they often link this stagnation to their own favored explanations, ranging from the inefficiencies of centrally planned economies and neglect of the consumer sector to economic overextension through costly subsidies to client states. As technology competition between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) intensifies, analysts have increasingly examined the role that U.S. export controls played in the Soviet Union’s slide from parity to obsolescence, seeking to glean insights relevant today. Although massive differences exist between the technological ecosystems of the USSR and today’s PRC, the Cold War provides the most direct historical comparison available for evaluating the efficacy of export controls. To “engineer policy” effectively, policymakers must start by defining clear objectives and then continually assess those objectives against real-world outcomes. If we want to build a better evidence-based policy process for technology competition, the Cold War offers a vital, if imperfect, test case. It forces FOCUS ON ECONOMIC DIPLOMACY COLD WAR INSIGHTS FOR Evidence-Driven Tech Competition Today ART–ISTOCKPHOTO/HANSCHE
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