Weinberger Asks More for Defense

Asserting that the large-scale U.S. military buildup has brought the “ruthless” Soviets back to arms control talks, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger implored Congress on Wednesday to resume higher spending levels for the Pentagon next year.

“Our defense recovery is in the homestretch. We cannot quit now,” Weinberger said in a speech to the national convention of the American Legion in New Orleans.

“We cannot afford a zero-growth defense budget again in 1987 and 1988, as we will have in 1986,” Weinberger said. “None of us want to return to our emaciated status of the 1970s--with low readiness, low morale and, above all, Soviet aggression.”

With a summit meeting between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev scheduled to begin Nov. 19, less than three months from now, Weinberger painted his usual harsh picture of the Soviet threat, according to a text of his speech, which was made available in Washington.

“The Soviet threat is often as ruthless as it is global,” he said. “The shooting down of the Korean airliner and the murder of (U.S.) Maj. Arthur Nicholson are prime examples.”

He referred to the downing of a South Korean Boeing 747 by Soviet fighter planes in September, 1983, and the fatal shooting in March of Nicholson, a member of a U.S. liaison unit in East Germany.

Weinberger, noting that Soviet policy under the Brezhnev Doctrine calls for “intervention to protect any socialist state,” said the Russians used the doctrine to “justify their presence not only in Eastern Europe but in Afghanistan, as well.”

“And more importantly,” he said, “it could justify Soviet intervention in support of a socialist regime in Nicaragua. The Soviet security belt does not extend to our shores. And I will assure you this: President Reagan will not let our back be put to the wall in Nicaragua.”

Weinberger stoutly defended the U.S. arms buildup, particularly the Administration’s proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” that would develop a space-based missile defense system.

“Some doubt the promise of our (SDI) technology,” he went on. “Others ignore history with the dangerous, if not utopian thought that we are safe only when we have no defense. Well, let me tell you this: It was not Soviet ‘good will’ that brought them back to the (arms control bargaining) table in Geneva. It was SDI--and our military force improvements.”

On another topic, Weinberger, accusing the news media of twisting “procurement horror stories (to) embarrass us,” contended that “our very real achievements” are being largely ignored.

He said that a wide-scale audit of defense contracts that he ordered on taking office in 1981 had indeed uncovered “a few items with outrageous prices. . . . These discoveries were sensationalized in the press, to the exclusion of the facts on our refusal to pay.” But in the meantime, he said, 68,000 Pentagon audits over the last four years have saved nearly $8 billion.

Also, tightened management practices caused the annual growth rate of major weapon costs to fall from 14% in 1980 to less than 1% in 1984, Weinberger added.