Word: rearmament
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Reagan has recently told a number of close acquaintances in private that he honestly believes that thanks to his rearmament policies in the first term, the U.S. is now strong enough to give higher priority to negotiation; he would like to leave a legacy of statesmanship. The big question is not so much what Reagan wants in a second term but whether he knows how to get it. His aides have been, and remain, sharply divided, from the Cabinet-level disagreements of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz down to the trenches of the bureaucracy...
Less than two years ago, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Syria's air force was decimated and its army routed. Today, thanks to massive rearmament by the Soviet Union, a faltering U.S. foreign policy and above all the adroit leadership of President Hafez Assad, Syria has emerged as the leading powerbroker in the Middle East. Having forced Lebanon to renounce its U.S.-sponsored agreement with Israel, Assad not only scored a major diplomatic triumph but established himself as the man to see for a Middle East settlement. This is even if, in trying to stabilize Lebanon...
...decisive point is that we use our freedom to achieve good relations with the Soviet Union, rather than confrontation. East-West relations today are preoccupied with disarmament, rearmament or arms control. Experience teaches that it is not disarmament that points the way to peace, but rather that peaceful relations open the door to disarmament. States arm themselves against one another when there are poor relations between them, when they have no common interests or when these are not developed, when cooperation is rejected or not even attempted. But where concrete fields of cooperation are exploited or created, arms problems present...
...Haig was due to travel to Rome for a NATO foreign ministers' meeting. Anticipating European pressure, he wanted to promise to begin negotiations by the end of the year. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger argued, however, that the U.S. should make no such move until the huge rearmament program that Reagan was in the process of launching was well under way and until the Soviets showed a willingness to consider deep reductions in their arsenal. "What the alliance wants, or at least what it needs," Weinberger told Haig over breakfast at the Pentagon in early
Syria's rehabilitation as a power in the region has been achieved in large part with the help of the Soviet Union. After the Syrians lost $1 billion worth of military equipment, including 86 planes, last year, the Soviets offered an even vaster arsenal. The rearmament, which includes some 75 SA-5 surface-to-air missiles, is estimated to have cost $2 billion. Some 3,000 Soviet advisers are assigned to the Syrian army, and an additional 5,000 Soviet soldiers and technicians maintain the new missile batteries and communication posts. If Syria is able to afford such costly...