"They Want a Monopoly"

Star Wars, arms control, the military budget. Name the subject and the Pentagon's response is to stress its responsibility to counter actual and potential Soviet threats. Over coffee with editors of TIME last week, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger expounded on that view in detail. Excerpts:

On the Soviet Star Wars program. They spend at least as much on defense as they do on offense; we think a little more. We know that they have not only done a lot of research, but done some testing and development in the use of lasers for the destruction of missiles, and we have not. I think they want to maintain a monopoly. (Soviet Leader Mikhail) Gorbachev said almost as much in Paris. He said we have quite enough arms competition on the ground, and we do not want to have it in space. The President is aware that it could be destabilizing if you give one side a shield that the other could not penetrate, and therefore that side would be safe to launch a war behind it. He has said that if we find that we can do this, before we deploy we would share it with the world. What kind of world would it be if the Soviets get this without the slightest intention of sharing it with anybody?

On the American SDI. We are making much greater progress than we anticipated. The barriers we saw to progress are crumbling. For one thing, we are making very great progress with being able to focus and project laser beams through conditions that used to distort them in the atmosphere. One reason this is expensive is that we are pursuing about five different methods of trying to destroy missiles outside the atmosphere. We are not working down one path and giving that up if it does not work. I think if the Soviets see that we are obdurate and not going to, as the President has said many times, take away this hope from the world, then maybe they will regroup and decide how much they want a reduction in offensive systems and perhaps come back with that.

On the U.S.S.R.'s arms-reduction offer presented last week in Geneva. There is finally a Soviet proposal. There has not been one for a long time, and so I think that is encouraging. But a great concern that I always had is that when you start out with an asymmetrical situation and you propose equal reductions, it still leaves the gap. Our proposals were sharp reductions that brought us down to parity. I do not think this Soviet proposal would do that. The other thing that I think is of concern is the composition of it. They would count everything, no matter where it was, that might hit the Soviet Union. They would not draw any distinction between aerial bombs and missiles. In order to get the reductions, we would be brought down very far below the number of their warheads. There is a limitation on range of cruise missiles that we would find very disadvantageous. Finally, I personally think what they intend is no new systems deployment permitted. The Soviets having deployed their new systems, this would prevent us from going ahead with the small (Midgetman) missile, the MX, the "Stealth" (bomber).

On the U.S. military budget. Everything in the Soviet Union is quite literally decided by four, five, six, seven men in the Kremlin. They do not have worries about whether the individual citizen is happy. It is very much more difficult in our society to sustain the military effort. In Congress at the moment there are more people interested in getting the deficit down than people worried about the fact that military budget cuts increase the risk. A great many people are trying to freeze the defense budget to almost 1990. I do not think that is possible. You cannot allow these (deficit) considerations to be ( determinative. The defense budget has to be determined by the size of the threat. And the size of the threat is going up; it has not diminished at all. I think we have made a very substantial improvement in U.S. readiness. The problem is that it is very easy to lose the effects of that if you give up or do not do nearly enough. Then you defer maintenance again, and you do not modernize even though the Soviets are generations ahead of us in some systems.