Reagan Aide Ellsworth Suggests Increases in Military Spending

The next president should be prepared to intervene more forcefully in international politics and "to attend to the immediate economic interests of the United States," Robert F. Ellsworth, Reagan adviser and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said yesterday.

Ellsworth said the U.S. should "recognize the Soviet Union as the central threat to the international system," and increase military spending by $25 billion a year for the next five years.

Once Again

"The president must be willing to go out and stir up the waves of political passion, with which to roll over his opponents and the bureaucracy in Washington," he said.

Speaking at the Center for International Affairs (CFIA), he criticized the "incoherence" of U.S. foreign policy, and said "world order theorists" in charge of the State Department are guilty of "separating diplomacy from military force."

Ellsworth stressed that U.S. reluctance to intervene was causing losses in the ongoing competition with the Soviets. Criticizing the current policy for its regional concerns, he said "the president has to be prepared to play power politics" and to counteract the Soviet "aura of power that intimidates our allies."

He called the U.S. presence in the Middle-East "fragile" and said, "I think our foreign policy should actively put the U.S. in parts of the world where democracy and freedom do not exist."

Ellsworth said that increased military spending would not necessitate a draft. Rather, the U.S. must invest more money in equipping the military and in training the personnel he said.