Space defence plan could help Soviets: report

Press, 14 January 1986, Page 34

Space defence plan could help Soviets: report

Washington NZPA-Reuter

President Reagan’s “Star Wars” space defence project could backfire against the United States by providing a huge tonic for the Soviet Union’s lacklustre economy, an American research organisation reports. The private, New Yorkbased Council on Economic Priorities said that the multi-billion dollar United States Strategic Defence Initiative, as “Star Wars” is officially known, could propel the Soviet economy into the twenty-first century as Moscow sought to keep up with Washington in a space defence race. “Although it is difficult to determine the precise impact of such a system on the Soviet economy, it may have a disconcertingly positive effect,” wrote the C.E.P. director Ms Alice Marlin, in a commentary on a special study of Soviet anti-missile technology. The study, by a Harvard University Soviet economics specialist, Eric Stubbs, said that the Soviet Union was at present 10 years behind the United States in computer, sensing and tracking technologies needed for viable defences against nuclear missiles. But the report said that Moscow’s pursuit of strategic defence “could well provide a powerful incentive to

reform the Soviet technical infrastructure.” “The result could be a more modern, vigorous and technically capable U.S.S.R. in the twenty-first century,” it added. Mr Stubbs wrote: “It is worth considering that United States efforts to force the Soviet Union into an accelerated ‘star wars’ race that the U.S.S.R. is presently less-equipped to fight may, in the long run, backfire. “Pressuring the Soviet Union towards this policy change may not be in the best long-term interests of the United States.”