Ex-Defense Chiefs Urge Arms Treaty OK

Former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said Tuesday that the Soviets are likely to cheat on the proposed medium-range missile treaty, as they have on past arms control accords, but he urged the Senate to ratify it anyway.

There is no reason to believe that the Soviet Union has changed its ways, said Weinberger, who resigned as defense secretary in November after seven years in the post. The Soviets violated previous treaties, he said, “and I think we can expect they’ll cheat in the future, whenever they decide it’s in their national interest to do so.”

Nevertheless, he joined four other former defense chiefs dating back to the John F. Kennedy Administration--Robert S. McNamara, Elliot L. Richardson, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown--in recommending ratification.

Their comments came before the Foreign Relations Committee, one of three Senate committees hearing testimony on the INF (intermediate-range nuclear forces) treaty, which was signed last Dec. 8 by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. It calls for the elimination of all ground-based nuclear missiles with ranges between 300 and 3,000 miles.

Gen. John R. Galvin, military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the treaty carries some risks for U.S. and European security but that they can be overcome by modernizing remaining nuclear weapons and non-nuclear forces.

Galvin differed from his predecessor at NATO, retired Gen. Bernard W. Rogers, a staunch opponent of the treaty, in saying that he can carry out his military mission of deterrence and defense with the weapons that are left after the treaty takes effect.

“We can strike the targets we need to strike,” he said. “Maybe we can’t strike as many as before, but neither can the Soviets.”

Compliance Guarantees

Richard R. Burt, the U.S. ambassador to West Germany, told the Armed Services Committee that rejection of the treaty would be “a serious betrayal of an understanding we’ve had (with NATO allies) for seven years.” European leaders agreed to the placement of U.S. missiles in Europe over massive domestic protests with the understanding that the United States would negotiate elimination of the weapons with the Soviets.

The former defense secretaries supported the treaty with varying degrees of enthusiasm. McNamara supported it “without reservation,” while the skeptical Weinberger was won over by the number of Soviet missiles it would eliminate. Schlesinger cautioned that the United States should not put too much faith in the treaty’s provisions for guaranteeing compliance.

Although the agreement provides for on-site inspection of missile destruction and permanent monitoring of SS-20 missile assembly facilities in the Soviet Union, Schlesinger warned that cheating could take place in areas not open to U.S. inspectors. The former officials agreed that there is little incentive for the Soviets to cheat on the medium-range missiles, but they emphasized that this may not be the case in the proposed treaty now under negotiation that would make deep cuts in long-range strategic nuclear weapons, the so-called START (strategic arms reduction talks) treaty.

“I think basically this is a satisfactory verification regime, given the weakness of Soviet incentives to cheat and our desire not to allow the Soviets to intrude into the United States,” Schlesinger said.

“What I am concerned about is that this verification regime be regarded as a talisman that makes us complacent about the outcome. The real problem lies in the START area. In the START area we are going to have to have much greater rights of intrusion in order to deal with presumed violations.”

The problem in agreeing on verification measures for a strategic arms treaty is not only greater access to the Soviet Union, but increased access to U.S. facilities by Soviet inspectors.