Carter group 'may revise nuclear stance’

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 7

Carter group 'may revise nuclear stance’

NZPA-Reuter New York The Administration of President Jimmy Carter is taking tentative steps that may alter the nation’s nuclear strategy, the “New York Times” reports. The newspaper says drastic revision of the American policy of relying upon the threat of widespread retaliation to deter the Soviet Union from waging nuclear war is aimed at improving the . United States’ capacity to wage limited nuclear war while remaining able to engage in large-scale warfare.

This change in philosophy is being undertaken quietly, with little public debate, arid officials willing to talk about it will do so only anonymously, the newspaper says.

The present renewed interest in civil defence, with plans for evacuating urban centres, is the strongest sign that the United States may shift away from the wide-

spread-retaliation policy, the newspaper says. Both the re-emergence of civil defence and proposals to build new larger, more! accurate inter-continental' missiles may point to the [ acceptance of the idea that a nuclear war could be fought with the Soviet Union, it says. This would mean a nuclear war lasting weeks or months, but without laying waste to both nations. The newspaper says that for some time American military experts have maintained that the Soviet Union, in its weapon-development and civil-defence policies, has acquired the capacity to fight; limited nuclear wars. A minority view that the United States should develop ! the same capacity now appears to have gained a hold in the Carter Administration, the report savs. It says the United States Defence Secretary (Mr Harold Brown) and President Carter’s National Security Adviser, (Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski) are leading proponents of this view.