Word: laird
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Whatever he is doing, he is well aware that he is a man leaning into stiffer gales of controversy and challenge than any of his nine predecessors. For all his problems, Laird is remaining remarkably vertical. He has made tactical errors in hard-selling his views, but the Administration won the Senate vote on the antiballistic-missile program, an issue on which he staked his personal prestige. Two of the most antimilitary Democratic Senators, Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, praise the Republican Secretary's toughness and intelligence. "Most important," says Proxmire, "is that he does not stand...
...Laird carries a hawkish reputation, based partly on a book published seven years ago, A House Divided: America's Strategy Gap, which laid out an explicit better-dead-than-Red line. He still boosts the brass, as in his speech last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Skirting the invidious "militaryindustrial complex," usage, he said: "The military-industrial-labor team is a tremendous asset to our nation and a fundamental source of our national strength." Meanwhile he is actively engaged in putting the "team" on a slenderizing diet and preventing contractors from abusing the bidding process that has inflated...
Like the Nixon Administration overall, Laird marches under no grand ensign. After seven months, the White House still has no catch phrase to match New Frontier or Great Society. Laird's Pentagon has no strategy label comparable to "flexible response" in Robert McNamara's day or even the "bigger bang for a buck" of Charles E. Wilson's time. Like Nixon himself, Laird seems unencumbered by?some would say unequipped with?any particularly abiding philosophy. He is the only Secretary of Defense to come from Congress. Half his life ? he will be 47 next week ? was spent...
...Nixon and Laird, the two partisans with well-earned reputations for maneuvering factions and votes and no experience at all in managing armies or industries, have launched much-needed studies of the nation's fundamental strategic goals and the military means needed to achieve them. David Packard, whom Laird drafted from the chairmanship of the Hewlett-Packard Co., to be Deputy Defense Secretary, heads one study group. Before many hard decisions...
From the standpoint of orthodox military thinking, almost any diminution of forces or equipment amounts to a weakening. Moreover, cutting training operations will obviously affect readiness. The question, however, is whether the force level or degree of preparedness can be reduced without damaging real security requirements. Laird did not address himself to that issue except by implication. If indeed the country's security interests are being put in jeopardy by any of the steps taken, however reluctantly, by the Pentagon, then Congress or the Administration or both should be called to account. It appears, to the contrary, that Laird...