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The Administration unquestionably regards the SALT process as the best means for maintaining the "rough parity" between the American and Soviet strategic arsenals. But if progress at SALT falters, Carter has made it clear, parity can also be maintained by continuing to modernize the U.S. arsenal. This was resoundingly seconded last week when the Senate, by a nearly unanimous 90-to-3 vote, authorized the Pentagon to spend $35.9 billion in fiscal 1978 on developing and procuring weapons and equipment. This is actually $60 million above the Administration's total request, which includes some $10.6 billion for new strategic systems, such as the B-l supersonic bomber and a deadly accurate guidance mechanism for the Minuteman III intercontinental missile. The House of Representatives had already approved an almost identical military authorization bill. Whether Carter gives the green light to the new systems could depend in large part on the final shape of SALT II or the prospects for comprehensive arms cutbacks in a SALT in.
Steps were also taken last week to counter the U.S.S.R.'s continuously expanding conventional war machine. During a meeting at NATO headquarters' in Brussels, U.S. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown persuaded the Alliance's defense ministers to promise they would aim at an annual after-inflation increase in defense spending "in the region of 3%." At the same time, however, the ministers acknowledged that "for some individual countries [specifically Italy and Britain], economic circumstances will affect what can be achieved." Repeatedly warning that the Soviet arms buildup in Europe had become ominous, Brown declared that "the NATO countries have no alternative other than to try to respond in part to [it]. The competition is not going to be one-sided." He urged the Alliance to "carry out force improvements at a rate and to a degree that will enable them to deter a Soviet military threat and to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining political advantage through intimidation based on a military preponderance."
Brown also persuaded his colleagues to approve an immediate "quick fix" program that would 1) increase the Alliance's supply of antitank missiles, 2) stockpile added munition reserves in forward areas, and 3) improve the means of rushing reinforcements to the front in the event of an attack. The defense ministers then endorsed Brown's call for a long-range program to improve, among other things, NATO'S air defenses. If the Alliance seriously starts moving toward these ambitious goals, the Soviet Union will be facing an increasingly credible conventional deterrent to an attack. One other possible benefit: such a display of NATO resolve might make Moscow more willing to compromise at the long-stalemated Vienna-based East-West talks on mutual force reductions in Central Europe.