Pentagon Discounts War Peril, Cites Soviet Changes

In language remarkable for a document that once trumpeted the dangers of Soviet military might, the Pentagon’s eighth annual edition of “Soviet Military Power” concludes that “the likelihood of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union is perhaps as low as it has been at any time in the post-war era.”

“There is no question but what the Soviet Union today is different than the one that was examined nearly a decade ago,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Wednesday in unveiling the 1989 version of the yearly Pentagon assessment.

From the cover photograph of smiling Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan to the subtext, the Pentagon report--conceived by former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger as a means of justifying a massive U.S. military buildup--is dramatically different too.

It has become a testament to a superpower in the throes of change, brought about in large part by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Like past editions, the 1989 version of “Soviet Military Power” documents an arsenal of conventional and strategic nuclear weapons that is larger and more modern than last year’s. But its subtitle, “Prospects for Change,” reflects a dramatic shift in tone from years past.

Taking note of the transformation, Cheney said: “We clearly are encouraged by Secretary Gorbachev’s announcement of changes away from hostile Soviet intentions of the past and toward a more benign defense posture.”

Last April, Cheney predicted that Gorbachev would fail in his bid to reform the Soviet Union and would be replaced by a more hard-line leader. On Wednesday, however, the defense chief was far more conciliatory, underscoring some of the report’s laudatory statements.

Cheney also announced that he will host the Soviet defense minister, Marshal Dimitri T. Yazov, in Washington during a six-day visit beginning Sunday.

“We’re in the year of good feeling,” said a senior Defense Department official, who observed that the report’s tone reflects an Administration consensus more accurately than it does Cheney’s more skeptical views of the Soviet Union.

“Nobody here is going to kick over the traces,” the official said. “It’s a sensible approach--hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic.”

Last year’s report, prepared under former Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci’s direction, maintains that “although Soviet goals and objectives had not changed, Gorbachev and his allies realized that new policies were needed to restructure the Soviet system. . . . What has not changed is the reliance of the Soviet Union on military power to undergird its political policies.”

This year’s report strikes a distinctly different note.

“The Soviet leadership’s ‘new thinking’ in world affairs has begun to have a major impact on Soviet military power,” the report states. “Under Gorbachev, the Soviet leadership has begun to reassess the utility of military force as the most effective means of achieving . . . foreign policy objectives.”

Cheney cautioned, however, that “while the Soviets promise to become less threatening, we must ensure that our perceptions of Soviet forces are in line with the actual threat.”

During the past year, Cheney said, the Soviet Union has made “major improvements in every leg of its strategic triad (of air, land and sea-based nuclear weapons), but especially to its intercontinental ballistic missile force.”

With the deployment of the Soviets’ two mobile missiles, the rail-based SS-24 and the road-riding SS-25 in the last four years, the Soviets have “significantly enhanced” the ability of their long-range missile force to survive an American nuclear strike.

The report indicates that while Soviet production of many weapons has declined since 1986, production of tanks, bomber aircraft and long-range, sea-launched cruise missiles has shot up. After adjusting for inflation, Soviet defense spending has increased an average of 3% per year since 1985.

In a barb aimed at Congress, which has cut back key Pentagon programs in recent weeks, Cheney said that America’s defense spending has declined by a combined total of more than 11% over the same period.

“While certainly we can welcome more benign Soviet intentions, it would be a mistake for us, based simply on an expression of those intentions, to suddenly change our own strategy, unilaterally reduce our own commitments in the military area or significantly reduce our allocation of resources,” he said.