EonCommander: It's called the Star Wars project, AKA missile defense. But, to answer a variation of my own question: the U.S. would win. the USSR had a formidable Navy, yes. However, their main branch of Armed Forces was dedicated to Ground Battles. Given this, we could effectively Embargo the country to death, epecially if our Combined forces joined up with Western Europe. If other alliances besedes NATO and the Warsaw pact got involved, that's totally different.
star wars was never completed. now we use missiles to shoot down other missiles. this technology was not available in the early 80s. you should read Red Storm Rising.
we still would have become independent... after WWI. and the global economy would be what it was in the 50s.
what if there was no tv?
edit: oops. i was reading the wrong question second try - we would reverse engineer their tech and develop ftl travel