This is a comforting paradigm for people in the defense sector, because it implies there is more predictability to their business than the geopolitical forces driving demand might otherwise suggest.
In the four years of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule (including in recent months), there have been a number of features of Soviet foreign and defense policy that are difficult to reconcile with the optimistic Western paradigm for explaining Gorbachev's rule and future Soviet behavior.