Soviet defence build-up ‘may mislead leaders’

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 8

Soviet defence build-up ‘may mislead leaders’

NZPA Washington The United Slates Secretary of Defence (Mr Harold Brown) says that the Soviet Union’s military and civil defence preparations could mislead Soviet leaders into thinking their country could survive a nuclear war.

Mr Brown, in a copyrighted interview in “U.S. News and World Report,” says that the Soviet’s military build-up so far has not shifted the strategic balance against the United States, but he says that if the present trends continue “then I think the situation five years down the road could be a serious one.” Mr Brown says there is a

“potential danger” that the Soviets are preparing to fight a nuclear war rather than simply deter one. “I can’t say whether that’s the Soviet doctrine and plan. I’m not sure that their own political leaders know themselves. But I believe that they are building up military forces that might mislead them into thinking that such a strategy was feasible for them,” Mr Brown says. The Soviet Union also has been building up its civil defence system over the past few years, a move that is being” carefully studied by United States defense officials, Mr Brown says. “The level of the Soviet civil defence effort is of some concern because it suggests that they may —

mistakenly, in my belief — arrive at the conclusion that they couid survive as a functioning and powerful country after an all-out thermonuclear exchange,” Mr Brown says. On Western Europe, Mr Brown says that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries have to maintain economic and political strength, as well as military, to ward off any threat from the Soviet Union. Mr Brown says the American forces in N.A.T.O. are in the best shape they have been in over the past 16 years. The defence chief says it is appropriate to maintain United States military forces in Europe while pulling out of South Korea.