Bush Gives Mixed Review to Soviet Troop Cut Offer

President Bush said Wednesday that he welcomes Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s promises to reduce his nation’s military forces, but he criticized the plans as insufficient to eliminate the Soviet Union’s “significant numerical superiority.”

In a generally upbeat review of the U.S. and Soviet military posture in Europe as he approaches next week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit conference, Bush described Gorbachev’s approach as “forthcoming” and said: “Through negotiation, we can now transform the military landscape of Europe.”

With the potential harmony of the NATO meeting threatened by an intense dispute over the future of the alliance’s nuclear arsenal, Bush adamantly defended the role of nuclear weapons--and particularly the short-range missiles that are at the center of the controversy--in deterring military aggression.

And the President, seeking greater openness throughout the military realm, challenged the Soviet Union to “open the ledgers” and “publish an accurate defense budget”--a step Gorbachev has promised but has yet to carry out.

The speech, delivered at the 108th commencement exercise of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, was the fifth and final installment in a series summing up the results of a four-month review of U.S. foreign and national security policies--a review that has brought little outward change in U.S. policies, while leaving Bush open to criticism that arms control talks have been unnecessarily delayed.

Looking at changes that he said are taking place in the East and West, Bush said that “we are witnessing the end of an idea--the final chapter of the communist experiment.”

At the same time, he said, the United States and its allies are “stronger, really, than at any point in the postwar period.”

The address preceded by two days Bush’s departure for the May 29-30 summit conference in Brussels, which has been called to celebrate NATO’s 40th anniversary. The speech reflected in its tone the pressure that Bush has come under in Europe to respond to Gorbachev’s unilateral plans to reduce the Warsaw Pact’s nuclear and conventional weapons.

The Soviet leader pledged last December to cut Soviet military forces in Eastern Europe by 50,000 troops and 5,000 tanks. In addition, he said that the overall size of the Soviet military force would be cut by 500,000--a 10% reduction. Then, in a meeting two weeks ago with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in Moscow, he said that the Soviets would remove about 500 nuclear weapons--about 5% of their short-range nuclear stockpile--from Central and Eastern Europe.

In the most recent arms reduction proposal--presented Tuesday to U.S. negotiators in Vienna--the Soviets offered a detailed plan under which they would carry out a wide scaling-back of military forces, including a cut of 1.26 million troops, Administration officials said.

The proposal appeared to take U.S. officials by surprise.

One White House official who is generally highly skeptical of Soviet proposals described it as encouraging and said that the Soviets have “put a little more meat on the bones” of their initial proposals. “We have to look at the meat,” he said.

Such proposals have been well received in Western Europe but have been denounced by the Bush Administration as little more than the central elements of a public relations offensive.

National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said that Bush’s view of Gorbachev’s approach as “forthcoming” does not reflect a change in the Administration’s assessment of the proposals.

Rather, he said, “it’s a matter of appearance. The President felt he appeared too negative before, so he’s trying to appear more positive now.”

The more moderate approach, White House officials agreed, will serve Bush well when he encounters the 15 other NATO leaders, many of whom are looking on the Gorbachev proposals with greater favor than Bush has expressed in the past.

At the heart of the NATO dispute is a proposal by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to move quickly into negotiations with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact over the future of short-range nuclear weapons--those with ranges of less than 300 miles--in Europe.

The United States maintains that such NATO weapons--which the alliance already has agreed to modernize--are needed to offset what Bush called a “massive” Warsaw Pact advantage in conventional, or non-nuclear, weapons, including tanks, artillery and personnel carriers. The President therefore has opposed any steps to negotiate the size of the nuclear stockpile until the conventional arsenal is brought into balance, for fear that such talks would inexorably lead to efforts to remove all nuclear weapons from Europe.

“The unilateral reductions that President Gorbachev has promised give us hope that we can now redress that imbalance,” Bush said. “We welcome those steps because, if implemented, they will help reduce the threat of surprise attack.”

Bush said that the proposals “confirm what we’ve said all along--that Soviet military power far exceeds the levels needed to defend the legitimate security interests of the U.S.S.R.”

“And we must keep in mind that these reductions alone--even if implemented--are not enough to eliminate the significant numerical superiority that the Soviet Union enjoys right now,” the President said.

Bush, speaking on the academy campus near the shores of the Long Island Sound, agreed that the economic and political reforms Gorbachev is undertaking in the Soviet Union are “indeed dramatic.”

“The process is still ongoing, unfinished,” Bush said. “But make no mistake--our policy is to seize every, and I mean every, opportunity to build a better, more stable relationship with the Soviet Union--just as it is our policy to defend American interests in light of the enduring reality of Soviet military power.”

The President said that deterrence of war--through the maintenance of a military force powerful enough to inflict unacceptable damage on an aggressor--would remain a central element in U.S. defense policy.

“In today’s world, nuclear forces are essential to deterrence,” Bush said.

He added that the short-range nuclear forces “contribute to stability, no less than strategic (or long-range) forces, and thus it would be irresponsible to depend solely on strategic nuclear forces to deter conflict in Europe.”

The President also urged that close attention be given to the regional powers, whose emergence, he said, “is rapidly changing the strategic landscape.”

“In the Middle East, in South Asia, in our own hemisphere, a growing number of nations are acquiring advanced and highly destructive capabilities--in some cases, weapons of mass destruction--and the means to deliver them,” he said.

“Our task is clear: We must curb the proliferation of advanced weaponry; we must check the aggressive ambitions of renegade regimes, and we must enhance the ability of our friends to defend themselves,” Bush said.