Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger said today that “We may be facing a situation where the Middle East is the potential tinderbox that the Balkans actually were in 1914.” He made the statement in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Administration’s $92.8 billion defense budget for fiscal 1976. He warned that further reductions of American armed forces would not advance arms control negotiations and detente but would instead create a weakness that might invite miscalculation.
In another portion of his statement, Schlesinger said the ability of the Soviet Union to increase its naval force in the 1973 Middle East war had surprised the U.S. He also warned that the U.S. must be careful of the demands it put on its allies because of the economic drain resulting from the increased price of Middle Eastern oil.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
