Debating the Debate

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Critics launch the first-strike attack on Reagan's defense plans He's been successful in developing a package of decisions that will satisfy nobody completely. The doves and the hawks and the moderates will all have some objections." So said retired Army General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1962 to 1964, summing up the debate over President Reagan's $180 billion program to beef up America's nuclear forces. Sure enough, when Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger visited Capitol Hill last week to sell the proposals, he was greeted with a barrage of skeptical questions fired from both sides of the aisle.

Reagan had rejected a plan recommended by Jimmy Carter to shuttle the new MX missiles among thousands of shelters in a vast "drag strip" in Utah and Nevada. The most heated grilling of Weinberger involved the Administration's alternative plan: temporarily housing the first 36 of the 100 proposed MX missiles in "superhardened" Titan II missile silos. Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Defense Secretary began his testimony by trying to clarify the "window of vulnerability," a term used to describe the period in which American land-based missiles could possibly be wiped out by a surprise Soviet attack. He warned: "That window will be at its widest in the period 1985 to 1986 because we have not modernized our strategic forces as we should have in the past."

Republican John Tower of Texas, committee chairman and a supporter of the dragstrip approach, acidly noted that the hardened silos would hardly make the MX invulnerable. "What is recommended does not enhance the survivability of the MX missile," he asserted. Democrat Henry Jackson of Washington argued that by shielding the MXs in fixed silos, "we're giving the Soviets a better target." Weinberger quickly fired back: "I don't agree, Senator." The Secretary pointed out that the silos solution was only temporary, and that strengthening the silos did protect the missiles. Said Weinberger: "Whatever we gain is worth it."

The most damaging doubts came not from a Senator but from the man sitting next to Weinberger at the hearings. Dressed smartly in a blue Air Force uniform with four gleaming silver stars, General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, candidly admitted that he still favored the dragstrip approach. "I remain to be convinced that the alternative provides survivability," said Jones. "I reserve judgment whether it would be wise to go ahead with hardening." The general hastily added that he and the other service chiefs fully support Reagan's decision. "I found out a long time ago," Jones drily explained, "that it was more important for me to convince the Commander in Chief than for the Commander in Chief to convince me."