The pendulum of public concern about national and foreign policy is swinging back after the doldrums of the post-Vietnam era. Heightened worries about diminishing resources, about inflation and unemployment, and about relations between the United States and the Soviet Union have prompted a reassessment of American spending priorities.

Two issues which will be generating public controversy in coming months are the fiscal 1980 defense budget and the imminent SALT II agreements, both of which Congress will be voting on. Unfortunately, much of the public awareness about the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and the defense budget is based on faulty information and misinterpretation. Seven myths are prevalent in the current debate:

Myth 1: Defense spending is at a relatively low level, particularly since Vietnam.

The Carter Administration has requested a defense authorization for fiscal year 1980 of $135.5 billion. Some contend that military spending has declined because it is a lesser percent of three indices commonly used in government presentations: as a percent of the federal budget, of gross national product and of net public spending.

Yet examining military spending in longer term perspective, namely since World War I, affords a different interpretation. The current budget is higher than any other period of U..S. history excepting World War II, which approached $300 billion yearly (in constant 1978 dollars) and Vietnam which peaked at about $170 billion (in 1978 dollars). It is higher now than during the Korean War and the past fifty years of relative peace. We are on a rising slope of military spending, with official projections of $178 billion by 1984.

Myth 2: The Soviets are outspending us militarily and are therefore superior.

No military policy is formulated in a vacuum; defense spending is partly a function of perceived foreign military threats; in our case, this reads the Soviet Union. It therefore comes as no surprise that budget comparisons between the competing superpowers are made. However, such comparisons are commonly overdrawn and, indeed, may be very misleading.

Official estimates place Soviet military spending at about $160 billion today, anywhere from 25-45% above our own efforts, depending on whether U.S. military retirement costs are included. But this figure betrays the difficult methodology involved in arriving at such a comparison. The Soviets publish a much lower budget figure, generally considered to underestimate their military effort. The U.S. therefore prices the Soviet budget by estimating what it would cost us to field the same army and equipment, but often overlooks disparity in the quality of troops and equipment.

Such pricing problems are compounded by the variability in ruble-dollar exchange rates, leading economists to make estimates varying as much as 50%. Such difficulties give little confidence in Soviet defense budget estimates.

In addition, the U.S. undervalues its own military effort. Including nuclear weapons development, veterans' affairs, and military foreign aid, all of which fall under budgets other than that of the Department of Defense, U.S. military spending estimates may well approach or even surpass those of the Soviets.

Several years ago, Henry Kissinger exclaimed: "In God's name, what is military superiority?" He was pointing out the inadequacy of presuming Soviet "superiority" from budgetary comparisons. Such conclusions overlook not only methodological problems, but also two other important issues: perceived foreign threats and past military spending.

Threats to Soviet security have been, and still remain, much greater than those to U.S. security. The U.S. faces a non-defensible nuclear threat from the Soviets, yet no direct conventional threat by land, sea, or air; we face the Canadians to the north, the Mexicans to the south, and Cuba and the Bahamas to the east. In comparison, the Soviet Union similarly faces a non-defensible nuclear threat from the U.S. as well as from France, Britain, and China. The perceived non-nuclear threats are also considerable: the Germans in the west, having marched through Soviet territory twice in this century, killing 20 million Russians in World War II; the Chinese in the east with the world's largest standing army, most of it amassed along the Sino-Soviet frontier; and several unstable regimes to the south, two on the verge of becoming nuclear powers.

Also, cumulative over time, the U.S. has far outspent the Soviets.

Myth 3: U.S. defense spending represents the minimum necessary to retain adequate defense.

Every year the defense budget is presented to Congress as a "bare bones" program for American defense; Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued this point last month before several Senate committees. Yet two major issues lead one to wonder if the proposed budget is just the bare minimum. First, with regard to the nuclear deterrent, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara determined that an adequate nuclear deterrent was 200-400 megaton equivalents, enough explosive to destroy about 30% of Soviet population and 70% of industry in a second strike. Today the U.S. deploys over 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads, many times the McNamara deterrent, as well as 20,000 "tactical" nuclear warheads. Thus the nuclear weapons load grows, but the target list is quite finite. Even granting some problems of vulnerability and reliability with strategic systems, as well as the necessity of limited, flexible response options, the need for continued growth in the nuclear arsenal appears quite questionable.