Guns and Butter Loom as <i> Glasnost’s </i> Big Hurdle

Speaking in California last August, President Reagan called on the Soviet leadership to “show some glasnost in your military affairs” by disclosing true military expenditures and allowing public debate of national security questions.

The President should make the point again during his May 29 summit visit to Moscow because the issue is important both for the future on East-West relations and the evolution of a more pluralistic system of governance in the Soviet Union. At least some knowledgeable Soviets agree.

Within weeks of Reagan’s remarks, two influential Soviet journals, including the party organ, Kommunist, carried articles making a case for greater openness in military affairs--not as a favor to Washington but in the Soviet Union’s own interest.

The most pointed comment came from Novy Mir, the literary review, in an article calling for “detailed official calculations of the balance of military potentials, facts about military budgets and other information of a military character.”

The absence of openness, observed the author, makes it easy for Western “opponents of detente” to make worst-case interpretations of Soviet intentions.

It’s worth noting, too, that Marshal Sergei S. Akhromeyev, the armed forces chief of staff, acknowledged in January that Soviet defense spending is higher than publicly reported. The one-line figure announced each year does not, he said, “include arms procurements.” Neither, according to Western experts, does it include military research and development.

Within two or three years, the marshal indicated, the Soviet Union will begin publishing a true defense spending total--”everything that enters into the heading of military spending, in conformity with international standards.”

Yet the Kremlin is unlikely, to put it mildly, to produce a detailed rundown on weapons and costs of the sort provided annually to Congress by the Pentagon. Until the Soviets see fit to release a lot more information than they do now, it will remain very hard to establish the cooperative, constructive relationship with the West that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev needs--and says that he wants.

Gorbachev entered office in 1985 determined to modernize the creaky Soviet economy and get it moving again. According to U.S. estimates, the average annual growth of the Soviet gross national product slid from more than 5% in the 1960s to less than 2% in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Gorbachev, making the case for his program of perestroika , or reconstruction, recently told party officials that if higher vodka sales and higher oil prices were purged from the economic statistics of the Brezhnev era, the country actually has had a no-growth economy for 20 years.

Gorbachev’s far-reaching reform program holds long-term promise, but has meant stiff resistance from bureaucrats and party officials whose powers and perks are threatened. There are signs of a serious rift within the Politburo itself.

Perestroika’s prospects will be greater if accommodations can be reached with Washington on arms and other issues, and if military spending cuts actually free more resources for the civilian economy.

U.S. intelligence analysts estimate that savings from arms control, if actually transferred to the civilian economy, could spark as much as two percentage points extra growth in the Soviet gross national product.

Most Western experts are convinced that Gorbachev does want to put the arms race on hold while he tries to deal with the Soviet economy.

To make such restraint palatable at home, the Kremlin has taken to downgrading a military threat from “imperialism.” To reassure the West of his sincerity, the Gorbachev Kremlin now talks of “sufficiency” instead of “superiority” as the goal of Soviet military policy.

As things stand, though, it is very hard for the West to know how much of this may be smoke and mirrors.

U.S. defense officials say that despite Soviet talk of a switch to a defensive strategy, the Soviet armed forces are still structured for a blitzkrieg -type assault on Western Europe.

The CIA believes that Soviet weapons procurement leveled off in the mid-’70s. But they also see a big increase in military research and development and a growing emphasis on higher quality weapons.

It is arguable, therefore, that even if significant reductions are made in missiles and even conventional forces, the savings won’t go into the civilian economy, but into new and better weapons down the line.

The point is that we don’t really know. And because we don’t, we have to hedge on the side of caution, not just in deciding how large our own forces must be but in setting the rules for allowable trade with the Soviets.

This, in turn, limits the practical scope for Soviet reallocation of the mix between guns and butter.

If Gorbachev does want to cut military outlays and channel the savings into perestroika , he and his colleagues would do well to swallow the inhibitions and introduce some meaningful glasnost into military affairs.