Word: nato
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Committee than in the House as a whole, advocates of increased social spending may be able to prevent the hike in military spending. Says David Obey, a liberal Democrat from Wisconsin: "I am not going to tell old people that they have to bear a double load because our NATO allies need more money for defense...
Some of the biggest and most controversial components of the budget are projected to climb most steeply of all. In keeping with a pledge that Carter made to the U.S.'s NATO allies last spring, defense spending will rise 3% in real terms, to $125.8 billion in fiscal 1980. Much of the increase will go for strengthening U.S. forces in Europe as well as for upgrading the nation's strategic arsenal of nuclear-equipped missiles, planes and submarines in order to improve the Administration's bargaining stance in the current SALT talks with the Soviet Union. Carter...
...strategic nuclear weapons. Although Brezhnev ridicules talk about "the Soviet threat," experts are nearly unanimous in their assessment that Moscow has been arming at a faster pace than the West. In the past 15 years, for example, the Soviets have been increasing military expenditures by about 3% annually. NATO is pledged to such a hike this year, but this merely reverses years of frugality. From 1967 through 1975, in fact, the Pentagon's budget actually declined (when adjustments are made for inflation). There is little basis, therefore, for Brezhnev's assertion that the West's "military budgets are frantically growing...
...Soviet buildup in conventional weapons has been equally significant. Although Brezhnev says that "the forces of either side in sum total approximately equal each other," NATO remains outgunned and outmanned by the Warsaw Pact in the strategically crucial central and northern European regions. This remains true despite the West's recent program to upgrade its forces. Facing NATO'S 7,000 tanks and 2,700 artillery pieces, for example, are 21,000 and 10,000, respectively, for the East. In manpower NATO is dwarfed 626,000 vs. 943,000. Such overwhelming military superiority could tempt the Soviets to try enforcing...
...being told in reply that a reduction is possible only if the U.S.S.R. and other members of the Warsaw treaty cut down their forces to a significantly greater degree than the NATO countries. Otherwise, there will allegedly be a "Soviet military threat." And it is to the tune of these incessantly repeated allegations that military budgets are frantically growing and NATO forces in Europe are built...