Reagan Should Listen More to Military on Arms Issues

The climax approaches in the diplomacy of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Their encounters have opened more room for negotiation than any of their predecessors enjoyed. They have only a few hundred days to exploit it. We shall soon know whether the prospects sketched at Reykjavik are real.

President Reagan does not lack for advice concerning how to proceed in dealing with the Soviet Union. Much of the advice he can prudently ignore. The moment has come, however, when he urgently needs to consider counsel from sources that have weighed too lightly in his deliberations to date.

Perversely, an Administration that is proud of its hard-nosed approach to superpower politics has displayed an inability to make hard choices among military and diplomatic options. There has developed within the government a curious atmosphere that discourages open give-and-take on the full range of strategic decisions, particularly the possible trade-offs between offensive force postures and strategic defenses.

This self-intimidation is compounded of one part condescension--Reagan does not cotton to detailed analysis of military matters--and one part fear--challenging his preconceptions has seemed too risky for those warring in the bureaucratic trenches. The result has been to shelter the President from a full and direct confrontation with the evidence on which responsible policy must be based. Testimony to that truth, were any needed, came in the cavalier disregard for professional military advice in the rapid succession of proposals that Reagan put forward in Iceland.

The President needs to listen more attentively to the nation’s senior military officers as he plans future moves in the negotiations. Many observers think that the uniformed chiefs have been virtually subjugated by the strong-willed civilians brought to the Pentagon by Caspar W. Weinberger. Generously treated by the Reagan defense budgets, the services have been preoccupied with vast development and procurement programs. They have been only bit players in crafting basic negotiating initiatives.

That pattern must change. Before proceeding with the far-reaching strategic reorientation that he proposed to Gorbachev, Reagan desperately needs to hear the precise assessments of the military chiefs. The likelihood of that is enhanced by the arrival of a gifted new chairman, Adm. William Crowe, and the passage of legislation strengthening his authority to tender advice.

Could the United States safely move to eliminate all ballistic missiles within 10 years? When, if ever, could it contemplate abolition of all nuclear weapons, and at what cost in conventional-force buildup? In an era of budget stringency, should the next $10 billion go to the Strategic Defense Initiative, or would it be better invested in conventional capabilities? Given a choice between reducing offensive forces and retaining a free hand for SDI, what balance would the chiefs strike?

There has been an assumption that the Senate would ratify any agreement that Reagan concluded. Yet one detects mounting wariness in Congress about the Administration’s handling of negotiations. The Senate will surely press for honest opinions by the professional military. It behooves the President to take those opinions into account before embarking on the fateful diplomacy of coming months.

There is another voice that the President has heard, but mainly as an echo of his own. It comes from the technical leadership of his vaunted SDI. Its director, Air Force Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, is one of the nation’s most talented managers. He is also a soldier determined to do the best job that he can with the mission assigned him by the commander-in-chief.

But, by virtue of his unique role in the exploration of future strategic defenses, Abrahamson bears a distinctive burden to tender informed counsel to the President. More than any other individual, he has an obligation to explain to the President some of the realities that bear on high policy.

Foremost among them is the fact that, for strategic defenses to realize their promise, the offensive threat must be contained and reduced. As former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown has pointed out, “Everything that works well as a defense also works somewhat better as a defense suppressor.”

Legislators who know and admire Abrahamson worry that he is letting his technological enthusiasm run away with his military judgment. The President is now approaching portentous decisions. He deserves the benefit not only of Abrahamson’s “can-do” attitude but of the general’s balanced judgment as well.