Despite Reforms, Reagan Sees Moscow as ‘Most Significant Threat’ to America

President Reagan, in a sometimes stern assessment of U.S. security strategy as he begins his final year in office, said Wednesday that the Soviet Union remains “the most significant threat” to American interests, despite Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform programs and the afterglow of last month’s Washington summit.

“We must not delude ourselves into believing that the Soviet threat has yet been fundamentally altered or that our vigilance can be reduced,” Reagan said in his second annual report to Congress on national security strategy.

“In the Soviet Union we hear talk of ‘new thinking’ and basic changes in Soviet policies at home and abroad,” Reagan said. “We will welcome real changes, but we have yet to see any slackening of the growth of Soviet military power or abandonment of expansionist aspirations.”

He said that Washington “will continue to judge the Soviets by their actions rather than their words.”

The report, required each year under a 1986 law, was written in the first person, although a senior Administration official said it was the work of hundreds of officials at the State Department, Defense Department, CIA and other agencies. It contained no new initiatives for Reagan’s last year, concentrating instead on a review of U.S. interests and the long-term strategies needed to protect them.

In a warning to Americans and to U.S. allies overseas, Reagan said that the Soviet Union may be more dangerous today than it was a decade ago because Gorbachev’s urbane style and talk of economic reform have made Moscow appear to be less threatening.

“The new style of Soviet policy has its political impact,” Reagan said. “Moscow is moving in new directions, offering an array of initiatives, putting old assumptions in doubt, attracting new support internationally and sometimes placing Western governments on the defensive. This poses a new, continuing and more sophisticated challenge to Western policy.

“While the much-publicized reforms of the new Soviet leadership have raised expectations of more benign Soviet policies, there is as yet no evidence that the Soviets have abandoned their long-term objectives,” he said.

On the contrary, Reagan said, much of Gorbachev’s economic program seems to be designed to “prevent further domestic economic and technological obsolescence” and thus put Moscow on a stronger footing in its relations with the West.

“The most significant threat to U.S. security interests remains the global challenge posed by the Soviet Union,” the President said.

Reagan also threw cold water on Soviet overtures toward participation in the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--the main organizations for economic cooperation among market-oriented nations. The President said that there is no room for Moscow in those organizations unless the Soviet Union abandons its Communist system.

“While we note recent Soviet policy statements regarding ‘reconstruction’ and economic reform, the Soviet economic system remains at this point fundamentally incompatible with participation in Free World institutions,” Reagan said. “Policy statements must be translated into positive actions before such participation can be considered.”

The New York Times, in a dispatch based on a leaked copy of the report, said Wednesday that Reagan had “opened the door” to Soviet participation in the economic organizations. But State Department spokesman Charles Redman said there was nothing in the President’s report that would support that conclusion.

“We have no evidence that the Soviet Union is either capable of, or willing to assume the obligations of membership in these organizations,” Redman said.

The report made no effort to assess the number of Army divisions, Air Force wings and Navy task forces that would be required to achieve the Administration’s strategic objectives although some Capitol Hill critics, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), have said that Congress wanted just that sort of detail.

In a belated critique of last year’s report, Aspin said earlier this month that the Administration failed to “estimate the military forces needed to achieve (U.S. objectives) with reasonable confidence.” There was no difference between the 1987 and 1988 reports in that regard.

However, Reagan chided Congress for making cuts in the Pentagon and State Department budgets, which he said will make it more difficult for the nation to meet its strategic objectives.