Schlesingers case

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33453, 7 February 1974, Page 13

Schlesingers case

(A'.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright/

WASHINGTON, February 6. The Nixon Administration has told Congress that America must sustain and improve her nuclear deterrent force in spite of the detente with the Soviet Union. The Secretary of Defence (Mr James Schlesinger) told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that the Soviet Union remained America’s greatest potential adversary. “We consider it fundamental that at all times we must have available a sufficiency of ready strategic offensive forces to retaliate against a Russian nuclear attack,” he said. “Short of a sudden and dramatic improvement in the international environment, we must provide offsetting power to the multiple capabilities cf potential foes.”

i Mr Schlesinger and the (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Admiral Thomas Moorer) were appearing before the committee to justify the record Defence Department. budget of SUSBS,BOOm for the coming financial year. This figure is more than SUS7OOOm above the budget (for the present year, but (Pentagon officials and the Nixon Administration argue that much of it is taken up by inflation and increased pay for servicemen and civilians on the Defence Department payroll. Congress is expected to put up a stiff fight to prune what many senators consider to be an excessive first Pentagon budget in the post-Vietnam war era.

Mr Schlesinger repeated the assurance given to America’s N.A.T.O. allies that the United States would not withdraw her forces from Europe unilaterally before reaching agreement with the Warsaw Pact countries on mutual and balanced troop

reductions; but he appealed again for greater West European collaboration in the North Atlantic alliance. "We have had fair words from our allies. We hope these words will be matched by deeds,” he said. As a general policy Mr Schlesinger said, the United States had to expand her options in nuclear strategy, and build up her conven-tional-force strength to avoid collapsing into the cataclysm of all-out nuclear war.

This was partly the justification for changing some of the primary targeting in the Soviet Union to military, instead of civilian or industrial, Targets. “The United States -would prefer to use conventional forces if fighting were to break out — we want no early recourse to nuclear weapons,” Mr Schlesinger said. “But it is my judgment that we are thin 'on general purpose (conventional) forces. We must have more if we have to choose between suicide or surrender.”