figures for defense spending -- or, indeed any figures at all. Nor are there any reliable procedures for estimation. The Kremlin spends in a way that is different from how Washington spends; some outlays in the U.S. military budget occur analogously in the Soviet civilian budget, and vice versa.

Our side customarily calculates their side's defense expenditures by counting up the number of their missiles, tanks, ships, soldiers, and so on, and trying to guess how much the total would cost in this country. In the days before spy satellites, these figures were often arrived at by looking at tourist photographs. Once the CIA had counted up the Soviet's "observables," as they were known in the jargon, it would then count up U.S. observables and calculate their cost in rubles--