dateline washington: the vicar vanquished

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Dateline Washington: The Vicar VanquishedAuthor(s): Tad SzulcSource: Foreign Policy, No. 43 (Summer, 1981), pp. 173-186Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148258 .

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DATELINE WASHINGTON: THE VICAR VANQUISHED

by Tad Szulc

At the conclusion of its first four months, the

Reagan administration has failed to make good on its campaign promise of cohesion and coherence in the conduct of international affairs. The new team has instead shown itself to be out of touch with international realities; still grasping for form and structure, to say nothing of style; torn by internal rivalries; and surprisingly in- sensitive to domestic realities as they affect

foreign policy. Although by mid-May a certain

procedural orderliness had emerged in day-to- day operations, in light of the international in- nocence of some of the top players and the

continuing ideological intransigence at the White House, it seems doubtful that substan-

tively Reagan's foreign policy will develop much differently from this point on.

Historically, administrations have established their foreign policy patterns, both in substance and in execution, during the first four months. For example, in 1969 the Nixon administration began by drawing the broad outlines of d6tente, and in 1977 the Carter administration unveiled its various and some- times inconsistent views on topics ranging from the SALT negotiations to human rights.

The Reagan administration began with a

public commitment to speak with one voice on

foreign policy issues. It was soon clear, however, that the requisite high degree of consensus and coordination did not exist. The ef- fort to achieve consensus on basic international

goals floundered on the well-publicized dis-

agreements between the various camps within

Reagan's conservative constituency. And coordination was shattered by the rise of a new rival power center, the Pentagon, whose top officials increasingly spoke out on foreign policy matters, only complicating the resolution of the traditional struggle between the State Department and the White House.

Originally, Reagan had affirmed that he

TAD SZULC is a Washington-based writer on foreign policy.

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would regard the secretary of state as his principal adviser on foreign policy, leading Alex- ander Haig, Jr. to assume, most mistakenly, that he would be the vicar of the Reagan realm.

Reagan had emphasized that no rivalry would exist between his secretary of state and the national security adviser, Richard Allen, in order to avoid a replay of past chaos.

By the end of the administration's fourth month, however, the undisputed foreign policy power center was not at the State Department or at the Pentagon, but at the White House. In a blatant contradiction of his earlier position, Reagan quickly and quietly vested immense foreign policy power not in Allen but in White House Counsellor Edwin Meese, a close personal friend with extensive de facto decision-

making power. Meese, for example, was the first to say publicly that the United States would "go to the source" of communist weapons flowing from Cuba to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador in order to stem deliveries. In a related move to eliminate one obvious ground for competition with Haig, Allen reported to Meese, rather than directly to the president. But the new White House system simply created another barrier to the secretary of state: Meese presented a formidable threat to Haig's influence as the administration entered its second hundred days. The unquestioned primacy the White House exercised over the State

Department in policy formation permitted Al- len, who has experience in foreign matters, to maintain a low profile while enhancing his

position as the eminence grise at Haig's expense. The national security adviser seemed quietly comfortable in that role.

Meese and Company After four months, the State Department

had drifted back to its role as Washington's second foreign policy center--an untenable situation for a forceful secretary of state. The blame belonged as much to the White House as it did to Haig, and this state of affairs threw considerable light on the politics of the Reagan administration as well as on the gap between Haig's perception of himself and the secretary's standing in the eyes of Meese and company. It also raised doubts about Reagan's wisdom in

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tolerating for far too long the systematic under-

mining of Haig, a phenomenon hardly helpful to the image of U.S. foreign policy.

Not the first choice for his post and selected

only after a long delay during the transition, Haig was an outsider in an administration con- trolled by Reagan's personal friends. Rightly or

wrongly, the White House suspected him of harboring presidential ambitions of his own. Moreover, his public self-description as the foreign policy vicar, his unsuccessful attempt on inauguration day to have the president sign a directive granting him, in effect, immense

policy powers (an attempt instantly leaked to the press by White House officials), his own leaks to prevent excessive foreign aid cuts by Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman, and his constant use of the vertical pronoun in discussing publicly the direction of international affairs reinforced the negative impressions that preceded his arrival at Foggy Bottom.

By mid-March, the senior staff at the White House concluded that Haig had not only over- reached himself but had also overshadowed the president-a cardinal sin for any cabinet member in any administration and one toler- ated only by Gerald Ford in the case of Henry Kissinger. It is a mystery why Haig, with his own considerable experience in the Nixon and Ford White Houses, failed to understand that this basic fact of political life in Washington applied to him as to others. Nor is it clear why he refused to accept another basic fact-that although the secretary of state has principal responsibility for conducting foreign policy, he remains an adviser, with real power resting in the White House. Haig's critics put it down to his arrogance and, even more damagingly, to an alleged lack of political judgment.

Of the available ways of handling the Haig problem, the White House oddly chose one of the least subtle: humiliation. While Reagan re- sisted assigning national security responsibilities-a matter still unsettled by the middle of May and leaving the Pentagon free to proceed with its foreign policy maneuvering-the White House decided to name Vice President Bush as the administration's crisis manager in case of international as well as domestic

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turmoil. The White House never adequately explained why it needed a crisis manager in the first place or what Bush would do. But the announcement was a calculated and probably gratuitous blow at Haig's prestige.

The notion is known to have originated with Meese and his immediate associates-again, Allen's role in the decision was unclear-but

Reagan evidently approved. The White House added pointless insult to unnecessary injury by leaking the decision that Bush and not Haig would become crisis manager to the Washington Post, putting Haig in the immensely embarrass-

ing position of admitting to a congressional committee that he had not been consulted and had learned of it from the newspaper that

morning. When the disoriented Haig informed the committee that he would have "problems" with the idea, the White House sandbagged him a few hours later by making it official.

It is startling, to say the least, that the president would weaken his secretary of state at an

unusually tense period in U.S.-Soviet relations, when the Soviets seemed certain to invade Poland. Although he denies it, Haig reportedly offered to resign even before the crisis manager incident, but a resignation so

early in the life of the new administration would have hurt the president more than the

secretary. No matter how unhappy with his vicar, Reagan could not have asked for or ac-

cepted Haig's resignation. A timely face-to- face talk with Haig might have solved the problem, but the president disliked confrontation and chose, in the end, the worst of all out- comes: a State Department led by a resentful and politically crippled secretary.

Overruling Haig

Unbelievably, Haig went on undercutting himself. First, he tried to take over negotiations with Japan in the automotive imports dispute and was again rebuked by the White House, which preferred to place the issue under the control of Special Trade Representative Wil- liam Brock and Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige. Then on March 30, 1981, the day of the presidential assassination attempt, Haig virtually ruined himself. Before television cam- eras in the White House pressroom, he stun-

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ningly announced that he was "in control" in the executive office and erroneously informed the world that "constitutionally" he was next in the line of succession after Bush.

Subsequently, the White House fed the public the line that the president had absolute con- fidence in the secretary. But on Haig's return from the Middle East in mid-April, White House gestures toward the secretary had ac-

quired a patronizing tone. Immediately after Bush was given the crisis-management role, Haig was invited to attend the daily morning briefings for the president. Previously, Allen had conducted the briefings with Meese, James Baker, White House chief of staff, Bush, and his chief of staff, Admiral Daniel Murphy, in attendance. The procedure stressed the power of the Meese group: Previous national security advisers had briefed presidents alone.

In the latter part of April, the president further humiliated Haig by overruling him on two key foreign policy issues: the lifting of the

partial embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union and the sale of airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft to Saudi Arabia along with F-15 jet fighter-bombers with enhanced offensive capabilities. Haig argued against lifting the grain embargo im-

posed by the Carter administration in January 1980 in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, believing the change in policy would send the wrong signal to Moscow and dilute the anti-Soviet stance that provided the basis for the entire Reagan foreign policy. Haig was skeptical of the White House justification, supplied by Meese, that lifting the embargo would result in Soviet assurances that the USSR would not invade Poland. In actual fact, the White House never sought such a specific assurance, and in the opinion of Soviet special- ists, it would never be given, the Kremlin

clearly being unlikely to trade its freedom to

protect its brand of communism for the priv- ilege of buying American grain.

On April 24, just three weeks after an invasion of Poland appeared imminent, Reagan acted against Haig's counsel, lifting the embargo-as he had promised American farmers during his campaign-in a way that could only encourage the Russians and lead

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U.S. allies to question the consistency of the administration's anti-Soviet policy. Domestic

politics prevailed, even though it was generally known that Moscow did not need the extra grain this year and would not rush to resume

purchases in the United States. And when

Haig said that a Soviet invasion of Poland would result in an "across the board" cutoff of trade, the White House publicly contradicted him by saying that a total embargo was only one of Reagan's many options.

The Pentagon had developed into a third, rival foreign policy power center under the direction of Weinberger.

Ironically, Defense Secretary Caspar Wein- berger and the Air Force made the AWACS commitment to Saudi Arabia without prop- erly consulting Haig-and got away with it-despite the fact that the AWACS sale was an integral part of the strategic consensus the secretary of state had been attempting to construct in the Middle East. The commitment created a fait accompli that the National Security Coun- cil (NSC) approved in principle on April 1, with Reagan away at the hospital. While the secretary of defense was pushing this view, Haig was trying to dissuade his Saudi hosts from

insisting on the AWACS- F-15 package, propos- ing that the two elements be separated. Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin had charged Haig with the responsibility for expressing the Israeli belief that the AWACS deeply threatened their country. Haig duly informed the president of Israeli and Saudi views.

Soon the White House discovered that not only the influential Jewish community but also a majority of both houses of Congress opposed the AWACS deal-a majority sufficient to block the sale. Symptomatic of the early bureaucratic chaos, the administration had failed to consult the Senate and House leadership. Caught between the fear of losing a crucial foreign policy vote in Congress and that qf antagonizing the oil-rich Saudis, Reagan went for a compromise unlikely to satisfy any of the parties fully. Over Haig's objection, the NSC agreed on April 21 to confirm the AWACS sale, but to delay the

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required notification of Congress, thus post- poning a political confrontation until at least

October; it was a transparent tactical retreat. Although the Pentagon had created the problem, the White House had no criticism for the defense secretary.

Defense Takes the Lead

The incident was only one of several indica- tions that the Pentagon had developed into a third, rival foreign policy power center under the direction of Weinberger. Like Meese, the defense secretary continually engaged in

foreign policy pronouncements that violated the secretary of state's turf and persisted in making end runs around the State Department. As a close personal friend of the president, Weinberger could evidently escape criticism.

Weinberger's statements regarding modernization of American tactical nuclear weapons in Western Europe also undermined Haig in the first months of the administration. Under a 1979 agreement, the West Europeans had ac- cepted the modernization on the understanding that negotiations with the Soviet Union on controlling theater nuclear forces (TNF) would

proceed simultaneously. Fully aware of the mounting antinuclear sentiment in Western Europe, the State Department let it be known that the United States was prepared to initiate

talks-although not actual negotiations-as long as Moscow refrained from hostile actions against Poland. Weinberger, however, discon- certed the allies by announcing that Washing- ton would deal with the Soviets diplomatically only if they both behaved correctly and showed no intention of behaving badly-obviously an impossible yardstick.

In the end, the White House allowed Haig to

place this whole matter in its proper perspective. With the belated realization that the TNF confusion was increasingly damaging the alliance, Haig informed his colleagues at the May North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ministerial session in Rome that Reagan had written Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev that talks could start before the end of 1981. This move led to a confirmation of the 1979

agreement-modernization coupled with negotiations-and Haig was able to bring home a

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tough NATO statement that the allies were will-

ing to work toward a "genuine d6tente" with the Russians "whenever Soviet behavior makes this possible." On his return, Reagan greeted Haig as a conquering hero. But, in reality, Haig had only undone some of the harm Wein-

berger had inflicted on the U.S. relationship with NATO.

Besides, the other condition of the 1979 NATO agreement-that TNF talks proceed in a SALT context-was not met inasmuch as the administration had ruled out the resumption of

strategic arms limitations talks with Moscow before next year, at the earliest. At best, all that the United States gave was the promise that

Haig and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei

Gromyko would discuss TNF talks when they meet at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York this fall. The resumption of the harsh anti-Soviet rhetoric after the Rome meet-

ing, with the Russians replying in kind, ren- dered the whole negotiating climate even more

unpromising. But Weinberger continued to enunciate

views and decisions on foreign policy issues.

Shortly before Japanese Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki visited Reagan in May, Weinberger publicly urged the Tokyo government to en- hance its defense posture-an extremely sensitive subject that the Washington meeting was to examine in maximum privacy and failed to resolve. Weinberger's comment came just as the White House, cutting the Treasury Department and other administrative oppo- nents of a protectionist quota system from the decision, succeeded in persuading Japan to re- duce automotive exports to the United States, also a vastly controversial issue. Again, the

Pentagon had taken the lead in addressing a

highly complex foreign policy theme. Weinberger's late April announcement of the

creation of a Persian Gulf command for U.S. forces (including the Rapid Deployment Force) may have appeared to be a purely military move, fully within the Pentagon's competence, to resolve an interservice command problem. It was, however, a major political decision as well, touching upon relations with countries in the Middle East where Haig, with very limited success, had sought to establish the anti-Soviet

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strategic consensus. As in the AWACS episode, it is unclear whether the Pentagon had fully consulted with other key actors in' Washington before unveiling a military command structure with immense political implications.

While Haig was concluding the early May NATO negotiations in Rome, Weinberger went to Chicago and stated in a speech there that under a new conventional-force strategy, the United States must "be prepared to launch counteroffensives in other regions and to ex- ploit the aggressors' weaknesses, wherever we might find them." Strategically, this idea might have been very useful--reflecting Rea- gan's overall stance toward the Soviet Union- but it raised fundamental military and political questions that presumably the president and the secretary of state should have addressed publicly. Did Weinberger mean that the United States would attack, say, Cuba, if the Russians went into Poland or the Persian Gulf? He had previously suggested that the United States would arm China if Poland were invaded-another high policy pronounce- ment-but he was quietly persuaded not to pursue this line on his own.

Weinberger's associates believed that the line between defense and foreign policy is so thin and blurred that it is unrealistic to expect an activist secretary of defense to deny himself the right of speaking out on problems concerning the activities of his department. While this ar- gument contains some truth, by the same token, the secretary of state cannot be deprived of primacy in making public statements about American policy, unless the president chooses to do so himself. What is lacking, then, is coordination among Washington's many foreign policy voices.

Terrorism and Human Rights

Semantic and ideological confusions also af- flicted the new administration's foreign policy. At the outset, the Reagan team announced it was abandoning a policy based on human rights for a campaign against "international terrorism," in Haig's words. Subsequently, administration officials stumbled to define the term, with officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investiga-

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tion unable to summon evidence to support Haig's view on alleged Soviet-sponsored terrorism.

But the discussion broached deeper questions of human rights. In an emotional speech on the Nazi Holocaust, Reagan himself stated that religious persecution was a human-rights violation that would prevent the United States from negotiating with an offending government. The White House, however, immediately diluted these remarks, leaving the world uncertain about what the United States meant by observance of human rights and where, if anywhere, it proposed to draw the line.

Much of the inspiration for the new policies came from Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who gained notorious attention for her expressed but obscure preference for authoritarian over totalitarian govern- ments. In her view, for example, Latin Ameri- can military regimes came under the rubric of acceptable authoritarian rule; the Carter administration had taken the view that rightist and communist oppression were equally evil.

After four months ... the Reagan administration's foreign policy was in serious disarray on all levels.

Inevitably, the concepts of antiterrorism and support of human rights lost all clarity. Ini- tially and startlingly proclaiming that the civil war in El Salvador would be the first test of East-West relations because of communist arms supplies to the left, the administration fed weapons and advisers to the Salvadoran junta to counter guerrilla terrorism. But it lacked enough leverage with its Salvadoran friends to bring to an end the terrorism by right-wing groups that clearly violated human rights and invited more and more people to join the left. Haig compounded the confusion with the re- mark that American nuns killed in El Salvador by government forces may have tried to run a roadblock, an undocumented suggestion that they were in cahoots with the rebels.

By early May, plans were prepared to supply arms to Guatemala where leftist and rightist "terrorisms" were equally intermixed and

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where human-rights violations abounded. The rhetoric about terrorism and human rights in-

creasingly seemed an empty cover for an administration decision to employ all means to

help Central American regimes smash leftist unheavals. And although the administration

may not have desired it, the new United States

policies were being interpreted as signals by right-wing elements everywhere in Latin America to unleash their power against all op- ponents. The administration portrayed Cuba as the chief culprit in Central American

upheavals, but it seemed to ignore the like- lihood that this attitude would push a great many uncommitted groups in Cuba's direction.

The decision to support the forces of Pol Pot, the executor of virtual genocide in Cambodia, against the Soviet- and Vietnamese-backed Cambodian regime seemed another aberration in the Reagan approach to human rights.

These confusions also penetrated policy toward Africa. First, administration officials an-

tagonized black Africans by appearing to tilt toward South Africa. The support given to South Africa's new proposal for granting inde-

pendence to Namibia was seen as an example of such a tilt. Kirkpatrick received top South Afri- can intelligence officers, who came to the United States under disguised identities, al-

though later she professed her ignorance of their real occupations. Then Chester Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs- designate, angered Pretoria by denying during a tour of the continent that the United States no

longer opposed apartheid. The administration in turn provoked additional black African ani- mosity by disclosing its intention to urge repeal of the Clark Amendment, which barred CIA covert operations in Angola. Although de- scribed by Reagan team members as a move to unfetter the executive branch from overly con-

straining restrictions, the black African leaders

interpreted the action as an indication that the United States was prepared to join South Africa in attempting to overthrow the regime in Angola, particularly since Reagan did not also seek repeal of legislation barring economic aid to Angola.

Taken together, the Reagan administration's actions suffered from deep flaws of perspec-

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tive. As defined by the president, the overall thrust of American foreign policy was to avert the Soviet threat, and in his first news confer- ence, Reagan accused Moscow of a pattern of

cheating and lying. But this policy had neither

shape nor vision. By ignoring West European fears, sensitivities, and interests, the administration wasted four months in resuming con- structive negotiations with other members of the Atlantic Alliance. Lifting the grain em-

bargo against the USSR, no matter what the

justification, brought the seriousness of the anti-Soviet approach into question. (The administration also failed to consult allies whom the United States had asked to support the em-

bargo.) Neither friend nor foe knew what

weight to assign to future anti-Soviet moves. In the Middle East, Haig launched the "stra-

tegic consensus" policy to bring as much of the

region as possible into a solid, anti-Soviet alliance. But no one seemed to have given thought to the fact that for such countries as Saudi Ara- bia and Jordan, the solution of the Palestinian conflict had more importance than the strategic consensus. Saudi Arabia said as much flatly and publicly, in spite of the promise of AWACS and F-15s. Even Israel was reluctant to join the consensus, aware that the policy meant arming its enemies. Middle Eastern realities quickly asserted themselves when Syria and Israel came to the brink of war over Lebanon. Facing its first major international crisis, the Reagan administration had to swallow its rhetoric and

appeal to Moscow to use Soviet influence with

Syria to avert a new Middle East war. The notion of making El Salvador the

Central American test of Soviet-American relations was quietly dropped when the absurdity of the proposition finally dawned on the most enthusiastic of policy makers. Reagan discovered that not only Mexico and Canada believed he had exaggerated the confrontation, but also a considerable proportion of the American

public opposed involvement in the region. The unstructured way in which the Reagan

administration ran American foreign policy during its initiation period was largely respon- sible for the confusion and inconsistency. The policy-making structure-such as it was- reposed on three Senior Inter-Departmental

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Groups (SIGs) chaired by the three principal government officials concerned with national

security, or their deputies. Haig chaired the SIG on foreign policy; Weinberger, the SIG on

military and defense affairs; and CIA Director William Casey, the SIG on intelligence. In addition, the respective assistant secretaries chaired lower-level inter-departmental groups.

Systematic Chaos

Unlike the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, however, the Reagan administration established no permanent structure for coordi-

nating policy planning. Reagan rejected the idea of coordination by the NSC, a system that seemed to have worked well in the past. Whereas the Nixon and Carter White Houses had a series of in-depth studies (national security memorandums under Nixon and presidential review memorandums under Carter) and a formal structure for decision making (national security decision memorandums under Nixon and presidential decisions under Carter), the

Reagan administration developed nothing. Previously, the departments involved in

foreign policy submitted their views to NSC committees, which developed options for sub- mission to the full NSC and the president, on the basis of in-depth studies available to them. Under Reagan, recommendations flowed to the top directly from the SIGs-often with dissents-or even from such principals as Haig and Weinberger, without the advantage of a review procedure. The recommendations from the council were usually approved by the president when he initialed the records of NSC dis- cussions and the options included in them. While, at least in theory, each agency received a hearing of its views before the NSC or the president himself, this system gave a very free rein to differences and rivalries.

The AWACS imbroglio was an example of the

consequences of such loose and inadequate arrangements. Even some senior White House officials began to think that policy coherence and comprehensiveness demanded an NSC staff screen between the SIGs on the one hand and the full NSC and the president on the other. But Reagan apparently preferred a more relaxed procedure, including superficial policy

185.



reviews by the cabinet and the newly created cabinet councils. This preference may have en- couraged the president to keep delaying precise definition of national security responsibilities.

Reagan added to the difficulty of conducting a coherent foreign policy by refusing for three months to send nominations for key State Department posts to the Senate. As a result, by the end of April the Senate had confirmed only one of the 14 assistant secretaries of state and only one of the two under secretaries. The delay resulted largely from Senator Jesse Helms's (R.-North Carolina) opposition to the candidates under consideration on the grounds that they were not staunchly conservative.

Deferring to his dislike of confrontation, Rea- gan chose to outwait Helms, at the expense of the State Department until the logjam finally broke at the beginning of May. Only on April 23 did the president decide to appoint Eugene Rostow as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Helms had long held out for the appointment of Edward Rowny, a retired Army general and former SALT negotiator, and was rewarded with another Reagan compromise: the appointment of Rowny as chief SALT negotiator, a position created by splitting Rostow's functions (and possibly weakening his authority).

After four months, then, the Reagan administration's foreign policy was in serious disarray on all levels. It lacked a guiding force as it lacked perspective. Given the free-wheeling ways of Weinberger and the ineffectiveness of the NSC structure, there was an urgent need for the president to take active charge. The first months demonstrated that Reagan could not run American foreign policy as a chairman of the board, delegating major responsibilities for policy preparation to the Meese group. He had to be the arbiter and initiator of policies himself. At this perilous juncture in world affairs, the United States cannot afford to continue act- ing with a crippled secretary of state, a defi- cient NSC machinery, and a president who is not himself fully attuned to foreign policy issues.

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