Arms and the Man from Plains

...Once again, exceptions appear likely...

...military attaches must not help sell American weapons...

...And when a U.S...

...strengthening the wings," for instance, means building new ones...

...In fact, it will not even be that much...

...Cancellation of the B-l meant the laying off of 10,000 workers by its manufacturer, Rockwell International of California...

...DIFFICULTIES OF RESTRAINT Arms and the Man from PlziinsBY russell warren h°we Washington The difference between occupying the Oval Office and talking about what one would do if elected President has perhaps best been illustrated in the area of arms restraint policies...

...And almost anything South Korea could request would be justified by North Korea's possession of equivalents...

...The former are far from firm, and the latter seems more related to Capitol Hill geopolitics than to economics or detente...

...During a campaign television debate with Gerald Ford, candidate Jimmy Carter said, "We cannot be both the world's leading arms dealer and the world's leading champion of peace...

...It flies twice as fast and at lower (less detectable) altitudes, carries a heavier missile payload, has a much smaller radar profile, needs a crew of only four (to the B-52's six), and is generally safer from attack...

...Yet the Kremlin's almost immediate negative reaction was fairly predictable, given the virtual stalemate at the current salt II preparatory talks...

...A more likely reason for the choice of the B-52 lies in the patterns of influence on Capitol Hill...

...The new Administration is allowing them to be filled, and $6 billion in requests have been approved as well...

...The President has the right to adjust the ceiling to allow for inflation...

...This is meant to head off hard-sell export programs to produce economies of scale and thus reduce Pentagon procurements costs...

...itself agrees to repurchase out-of-date systems from its clients...

...It seems doubtful, therefore, that thrift was a serious factor in the decision-making on this key arm of the U.S...

...As for the Arabs, the sale of Hawk missiles to Jordan would still go through today, as will Hawks for Saudi Arabia: Israel and Iran already have them, and there are roughly equivalent Soviet surface-to-air missiles in Egypt...

...With the inducement removed, Pakistan's nuclear deal with France can go through—and later, if India buys Sukhoi bombers from Moscow, Pakistan will presumably be entitled to A-7s...

...Actually, the unilateral restraints themselves are not very great...

...the White House will find it hard to exert pressure on the new Jerusalem government if it antagonizes him...

...the President is discovering that a similar principle applies to the arms race...

...clients...

...This seems aimed at Iran's request for Northrop F-18Ls...

...The $32 billion in the pipeline means that it will be four or five years before anything changes, if then...

...The "burden of persuasion [will] be on those who favor a particular arms sale, rather than on those who oppose it," and the "transfer must contribute to national security interests...

...Upon assuming office, he was presented with a series of arms-sales restraint proposals that had been ordered by the previous Administration...

...Yet Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and nato countries are all exempt from the arms-sales guidelines...

...service, and projected foreign sales will obviously still be a factor in computing unit costs...

...Since owners of tanks and fighters, like owners of cars, need "trade-in" money to help buy the latest models, this clause would seem to be workable only if the U.S...

...The prime contractor for both the B-52 and the ALCM is Boeing of Washington...

...The annual dollar volume of sales must be kept below the 1977 level of about $10 billion...

...is the Soviet Union...

...forces...

...Another country likely to be attracted by hard-currency markets disdained by the U.S...

...Jane Sharp, the former national director of the Council for a Livable World, writing in Arms Control Today, discerns a discrepancy between Carter's emphasis on "unilateral restraint as an example to others" and his "employing coercive bargaining tactics in much the same manner as his predecessors" in international negotiations...

...But it will not prevent prior undertakings by friendly countries to purchase a system once it is in U.S...

...Preventing "brochuremanship" will be difficult, to say the least...

...land-based and sea-launched cruise missiles...

...Moscow's Middle East clients have no equivalent aircraft...

...Last month, the President sent a report to the Senate Foreign Assistance Subcommittee admitting that it will not be easy for the United States to lead the way in limiting international weapons transfers...

...Carter's aides say this also means that nato nations would not be allowed to reexport jointly-produced weaponry to nonexempt nations...

...Exceptions will be made all too often...

...Thus the U.S...

...A low-flying pilotless plane carrying a nuclear or conventional warhead, the ALCM can steer itself to a target by sensors and a map-computer...

...embassy Army aide is asked by his host country's G-4 what he thinks of the M-60 tank, is he supposed to say, "It's so good I'm not allowed to tell you...

...In March, the State Department submitted its 1976 report on human-rights violations around the world, recommending against assistance for a number of U.S...

...Ironically, to the extent that Carter's guidelines work at all, they will slow down nato standardization, encouraging Europe's preference for intra-continental projects...

...This would have happened anyway: Sales peaked in 1975, leaving a backlog of $32 billion in orders...

...It is astonishingly cheap by defense standards (average cost is $750 -000, for a more powerful punch than the bomb that fell on Hiroshima) and represents at least five years' advance over the Soviets...

...Washington has become, in effect, the world's foremost reluctant arms dealer...

...And neither California Senator—freshman Republican S. I. Hayakawa or Democrat Alan Cranston, who is retiring next year—is on the Armed Services Committee, or the Defense or Military Construction subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee...

...The U.S...

...Iraq's 40 mig-23s and Syria's 50, along with its 20 mig-25 Foxbats, probably flown by Russians (and Israel's ordered F-15s), would legitimize almost any fighter or fighter-bomber for Iran or Saudi Arabia, or even for Jordan and Kuwait...

...Of the two, though, the B-l is incomparably superior...

...The stricture is directed at trouble spots like India-Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula and particularly the Middle East...

...Still, a popular saw has it that "the problem with the rat race is that the rats always win...

...For one thing, Moscow has been seeking more curbs on U.S...

...system was a gesture to Moscow, made in the hope that the Soviets would propose an equivalent concession in salt II...

...Incidentally, this is rather unjust: India can cover Pakistan with a short-range attack plane, while a Pakistani A-4 could not fly to Calcutta and return...

...And if, as expected, Japan and Australia confirm orders for the export-only F-18L (the USAF prefers the General Dynamics F-16), it would be difficult for the President not to exercise his right to make an exception for Iran, America's best arms customer...

...And that state's Junior Senator is Henry M. Jackson, not only the second-ranking Democrat on Armed Services but its probable chairman in 18 months...

...Few would doubt the sincerity of the man from Plains in wanting to slow the dizzy escalation of overkill weaponry around the world...

...Tom halstead, executive director of the Arms Control" Association, has noted that the 1977 ceiling covers not simply hardware, but personnel and support facilities as well, and it is these that will presumably be cut...

...Resales to third countries are unconditionally banned from Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements...

...It quotes industrial sources as believing that any resultant unemployment will be "manageable," and that there will be no substantial effect on U.S...

...Navy's upcoming F-18 Hornet...

...Nevertheless, Britain and France are expected to take over more markets rejected by the U.S...

...For another, Carter has withdrawn Ford's offer to count cruise bombers as mirvs (multiple independently-targeted reentry vehicles), for which the salt I ceiling is 1,320, and proposed counting them instead as missile launchers, for which the ceiling is 2,400...

...That is the sort of semantics Richard Nixon, Theodore Roosevelt or even Henry Kuss (Lyndon Johnson's arms-sales booster) could have lived with...

...But the cruise missile was to be the B-l's main armament, too, and the B-52 is as much a strategic deep-penetration bomber as the newly-developed aircraft...

...Russell Warren Howe, coauthor of The Power Peddlers, is currently writing The Game of Weapons...

...A State Department go-ahead must be granted before arms firms can make a sales pitch abroad, and U.S...

...The impact of the guidelines will be "small," says Aviation Week, the authoritative aerospace industry organ...

...Since the Pentagon estimates the annual operations and maintenance budget for a four-engine B-l at $7.5 million, and that of an eight-engine B-52 (some of them are 25 years old) at $10.3 million, the yearly saving in the production phase must be roughly halved thereafter...

...Predictably, there has been Congressional opposition to the sale, but the Shah seems to be banking that it will go through...

...Despite the recent ban on concussion bombs for Israel, Carter has promised to make special exceptions, short of "allied" status, for Jerusalem in the future...

...Advanced U.S...

...Carter's own guidelines look like a watered-down version of these two reports, freshly refined by the pragmatic mind of Leslie Gelb, the former New York Times reporter who is the new director of politico-military affairs at Foggy Bottom...

...arms will not be coproduced by foreign countries not on the exemption list...

...With both sums projected over a six-year period, the official saving appears to be about a billion dollars a year—three-quarters of one per cent of the defense budget through 1983...

...Under this restriction, coproduction—intended to encourage nato standardization around predominantly American weapons—would become less attractive to Europeans...

...they have already done so—with Washington's blessing—in Egypt...

...Moscow previously profited from American hesitations in Peru and Kuwait, and its willingness to step in was cited by the President in his report to the Senate Foreign Assistance Subcommittee on why it will not be easy for the U.S...

...a land version of the U.S...

...An influential spokesman for defense interests, Jackson needs to be stroked if Carter's aims of holding down the Pentagon's budget and advancing detente are not to come under sniper fire...

...Indeed, recent reports suggest that the Saudis will soon be sold F-15s...

...Hitherto, resales could take place with Office of Munitions Control and, more recently, Congressional approval...

...would not have to trade any mirvs (another technology where Moscow is far behind) for the introduction of ALCMs...

...Close examination suggests that none of them is airtight...

...White House sources say this includes FMS to nato powers...

...The contrast between the reformist tone of White House arms statements and the harsh face of reality has also been underlined by the sales guidelines the President announced in May, and by his June 30 decision not to go ahead with production of the B-l...

...nuclear triad...

...No advanced weapons will be produced solely for export...

...Now, just the shorter-range A-4s are offered, because that is all India will get...

...When he was secretary of state, Henry Kissinger offered Pakistan A-7s if Rawalpindi would drop plans tor nuclear reprocessing...

...The B-l move was popularly interpreted as a preference for a cheaper program—renovating the aging fleet of B-52s that hammered Hanoi—and a swing away from classical strategic bombing toward deployment of the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM...

...Yet in each of these areas it is full of potential loopholes...

...As for dollar differences, the B-l budget was to have been $24 billion (for what turned out to be fewer that the 244 aircraft originally requested...

...to curb arms sales...

...one-eighth of one per cent of the Federal budget...

...balance of payments...

...will not be the first supplier of new advanced weapons to any region...

...and will run some $18 billion...

...The "Senator from Boeing" is also a firm supporter of Israel...

...Halstead was referring to the seven Boeing Airborne Warning and Control System planes—flying command stations still under development—that have been approved for Iran, out of nine requested...

...The B-52s will not cost much less: Refurbishing them will be a massive task in itself...

...Neither sales nor coproduction agreements abroad can be made until the weapon system involved is operationally deployed with U.S...

...Some have suggested that the scrapping of a new U.S...

...You could go higher than the present levels [on hardware] and be under the ceiling," he said...

...and manufacturers will be allowed to stretch out deliveries so as not to go over the limit...

...The sel of "arms-sales guidelines" Carter has introduced are proving to be equally elusive...

...Isn't awacs a new system...

...A similar, much cheaper system—the Grumman E-2C Hawkeye, now in service with the USAF—has been ordered by Israel...

...Carter did not cut "15" or "nine" or "seven" billion dollars from the fiscal 1978 defense budget, as he had variously promised, but a scant $2.8 billion—or about what Congress would have trimmed itself, had Ford been reelected...