Truth in Advertising for ‘Star Wars’ : Congress Can Cap Spending, Negate Unrealistic Sales Pitch

Congress as an institution is not equipped to run U.S. foreign policy and, as a generality, shouldn’t try. Sometimes, though, a President doesn’t leave the folks on Capitol Hill much choice. A present case in point is the move in both houses to restrict funding for Ronald Reagan’s favorite project: the Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI.

The President is seeking a 77% increase in funding for the “Star Wars” program at a time when the military budget as a whole is being held to zero growth. The House appears likely to slash the request roughly in half. And, much to President Reagan’s dismay, almost half the members of the Republican-run Senate signed a letter last month urging that the increase in Star Wars spending be held to no more than 3%.

Military spending is not, of course, a purely foreign-policy issue. Congress, as the keeper of the purse strings, routinely second-guesses the executive branch on funding for this or that weapon project.

In moving to rein in Star Wars spending, members of Congress obviously have budgetary realities in mind. They are reflecting a concern, too, that other vital areas of military research and development are being short-changed because of the top priority being given to SDI. But they also have an eye on the potential damage to this country’s role in the world, and to the already dim prospects for arms control, as a result of the Administration’s obsession with the SDI program.

Joseph S. Nye Jr., a Harvard professor and national-security expert, made the half-serious suggestion lately that truth-in-advertising rules be applied to SDI. His point is well taken.

The Reagan Administration’s official position is that the purpose of the Star Wars program is to make possible a determination, in the early 1990s, whether an effective system of defense against strategic nuclear missiles is technologically and economically feasible.

But of course Reagan will be long gone by then; his term will expire in early 1989, and it is doubtful that his successor--whether a Democrat or a Republican--will have similar enthusiasm for a project as expensive and as uncertain as SDI. So Star Wars zealots inside and outside government are maneuvering to nail down an irreversible commitment while the popular Reagan is still in office.

That, unfortunately, produces a well-nigh-insurmountable obstacle to the negotiation of a new treaty reducing the offensive nuclear arsenals on both sides.

The arms-control talks in Geneva have been stymied by the Soviet insistence on abandonment of the Star Wars program as a condition of reductions in offensive nuclear arms, countered by Reagan’s seeming refusal to accept any constraints at all.

Common sense tells you that, given some give on each side, the two postures should not be irreconcilable.

By no conceivable stretch of the imagination could a multilayered missile defense system, which is what the Administrations is pushing, be ready for deployment in this century. If the Soviets were willing to reduce their existing strategic arsenal in return for an American promise to accept restraints on development of a system that does not yet exist, it would seem a worthwhile bargain.

Until lately Soviet negotiators begged the question by insisting that an SDI ban should include everything but laboratory research and maybe even that--a clearly unacceptable proposition, because Soviet compliance would be impossible to verify.

But Gorbachev’s latest proposal purportedly drops the insistence on an outright Star Wars ban in favor of a moratorium lasting perhaps 15 to 20 years. It is said to accept the reality that both sides are going to continue research into strategic missile defense, and suggests a willingness to negotiate the line between acceptable and unacceptable research and development.

When dealing with the Soviets it is always wise to suspect that there is a joker in the deck. But the new plan obviously is worth exploring, and Reagan has announced his willingness to do just that.

However, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and his top aides are visibly unenthusiastic about negotiating any restraints that would interfere with their plans to proceed with Star Wars development tests, even if that means breaking the 1972 ABM treaty. At this stage it is difficult to believe that on this point they are out of step with Reagan, who clearly would like to go down in history as the President who began the process, in his words, of rendering nuclear missiles “obsolete.”

But it is here that Nye’s remark about the need for truth in SDI advertising is relevant. It is a fact that hardly anybody except the President himself really believes that it is possible to build a leakproof missile defense system of the sort that would really be necessary to make strategic nuclear missiles obsolete, no matter how many tens of billions are spent. Yet the SDI sales pitch--and, to a considerable extent, the structure of the research program--is built on this dream.

What may be possible is the construction of a limited system that would enhance nuclear deterrence by complicating the job of one nation contemplating a preemptive strike against another. But that isn’t what the President is selling.

In any event the transition to a mixture of offensive and defensive strategic systems would have to be handled very cautiously, lest it goad the other side into an offsetting buildup of offensive missiles and thereby defeating the purpose.

It would be especially foolhardy to lightly throw away the ABM treaty, which set strict limits on development and deployment of anti-missile systems. To do so could well be the beginning of the end for the Atlantic alliance, whose European members are emotionally dedicated to the treaty as a symbol of nuclear sanity.

Against this background, the path of responsibility for Congress is simply to hold spending for SDI to roughly present levels. That would keep the program alive, pending determination of whether Gorbachev is serious in the Geneva negotiations or is merely playing games.

But a budgetary cap would slow the Administration’s headlong pursuit of SDI with reckless disregard for the effect on other vital military programs and on this country’s relations with its allies and its major potential adversary.