Pentagon Eases Tone on Soviets : Report on Moscow’s Military Power Notes Changes in ‘Posture’

The Pentagon today released a toned-down assessment of Soviet military power, declaring that the Soviet threat to the United States is much changed from a decade ago.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in releasing his department’s eighth annual report on “Soviet Military Power”--conceived by former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger as a means of justifying a massive U.S. build-up--said the United States was “clearly encouraged” by changes in the Soviet Union “toward a more benign defense posture.”

Defense Minister’s Visit

At the same time, Cheney announced that Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov will visit the United States next week in another sign of warming relations between the superpowers.

Pentagon officials said Yazov will visit Washington and probably other areas of the United States Sunday through Oct. 6.

Cheney told a news conference that the Soviet Union is still a major military power. But he wished Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev well in his push for civil and defense reforms and said “military-to-military exchanges are a very useful thing.”

Cheney released the 159-page 1989 version of the slick color book whose title this year was altered to: “Soviet Military Power--Prospects for Change.” It was minus much of the tough rhetoric of past issues.

“Soviet military capabilities continue to constitute a major threat to our security,” Cheney said in the preface of the book. But he conceded that there were “dramatic changes occurring in the Soviet Union.”

On this year’s cover is a photograph of Soviet troops in armored personnel carriers withdrawing from Afghanistan in February. Last year’s cover was a picture of Gorbachev on the deck of a Soviet nuclear missile submarine.

Cheney repeated U.S. charges that Moscow is modernizing its strategic nuclear forces, has already deployed mobile intercontinental missiles and has not yet carried out Gorbachev’s promises of deep cuts in conventional forces.

And he warned against congressional cuts in U.S. defense based on “a kinder, gentler Soviet Union.”