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Chernenko has proved to be as inflexible as Andropov in dealing with the U.S. In a Pravda interview published last week, Chernenko expressed doubts about the conciliatory tone of recent White House statements and gave the Administration no credit for such initiatives as the proposal of a treaty banning chemical warfare. "The introduction of new words does not mean a new policy," he declared. Chernenko maintained his insistence that the Geneva arms talks, which the Soviets broke off in November after Britain and West Germany began to install new intermediate-range U.S. nuclear missiles, would only resume when the U.S. and its NATO allies took measures "to restore the situation that existed" before the deployment. Soviet policy, Chernenko warned, was not subject to "transient vacillations" or dependent on the outcome of U.S. presidential elections. Said he: "Hints about some sort of 'calculations' on our part in conjunction with the elections in the U.S. are an attempt by someone to conceal his own reluctance to reach agreements."
The White House responded that it was "disappointed by the tone" of Chernenko's remarks.
Despite the Soviet leader's disclaimer, Administration officials remain convinced that the Soviet Union will make no moves this year that could hi any way help Reagan's re-election campaign. Retired General Brent Scowcroft, head of the President's bipartisan Commission on Strategic Forces, returned from a recent visit to Moscow with a gloomy assessment of the prospects for a breakthrough in arms control. Said he: "The political and psychological atmosphere between Washington and Moscow is as bad as it's been in my memory."
The Pentagon did little to improve that atmosphere last week when it published its third edition of a glossy booklet entitled Soviet Military Power.
Generously illustrated with color photographs of Soviet warships at sea and drawings of missiles blasting off, the 136-page report singled out as particular causes for con cern the continuing deployment of SS-20 missiles (the current total: 243 launchers aimed at Western Europe and 135 launchers in Asia), the modernization of the SS-18 and SS-19 intercontinental missiles, the testing of two new strategic weapons called SS-X-24 and SS-X-25, and the imminent deployment of three long-range cruise missiles.
Unveiling the book at a special press conference, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger described the Soviet goal as nothing less than "world domination." He added:
"Everything we see in this book, and everything we see in information that we are not able to share with you at this time, confirms that that is the kind of war machine they are trying to acquire." The official Soviet News Agency TASS accused the Reagan Administration of stooping "to the most shameless lies to misrepresent the existing balance of forces between the Soviet Union and the U.S. so as to justify to world public opinion its attempts to achieve military superiority." Domestic critics had a simpler explanation: they noted that the Pentagon report now appears as regularly as cherry blossoms just about the time Congress is considering the defense budget.