Alexander Haig

“Above everything else,” writes Alexander Haig, “a servant of the President owes his chief the truth.” In his forthcoming book, Caveat: Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy, to be published this month by Macmillan, the former Secretary of State serves up the truth, at least as he sees it, with the bark off. He describes an Executive Branch marked by guerrilla warfare and backbiting, and portrays himself as an “outsider” up against “an Administration of chums.”

This week, in its second and final excerpt from Caveat, TIME presents Haig’s account of how the Administration handled a potentially cataclysmic trouble spot, Poland. In the debate within the Administration over Central America, Haig advocated the toughest policies to counter Soviet interventionism. But on Poland, his position in the intramural debate was reversed: he was the principal advocate of American caution and restraint. Where Haig viewed Poland as part of the Soviet sphere, some of his chief rivals—Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese, now the embattled Attorney General-designate; William Clark, who initially served Haig as Deputy Secretary of State but later squabbled with him as National Security Adviser; and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger—saw it as an opportunity for the Administration to score propaganda points abroad and political gains at home. They urged standing up to the U.S.S.R., perhaps even bringing the Soviet empire “to its knees.” On Poland, Haig was not the hardliner.

While Haig sees his failure to deliver a settlement in the Falklands crisis as his Waterloo, others have pointed to the Lebanon crisis of June 1982 as his undoing. A book published in Israel has claimed, on the basis of secret diplomatic cables and transcripts of meetings, that Haig gave a “green light” to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. A number of Administration officials, speaking in the nonattributive way that Haig so often rails against in Caveat, have confirmed that charge. Haig has denied it, and here he presents his own version of his unavailing efforts to restrain Israel.

Poland: Evolution Or Explosion?

The very first communication addressed to the Soviets by the Reagan Administration, a letter from me to Andrei Gromyko on the day after the Inauguration, expressed American concern over the possibility of Soviet intervention in Poland. “We will stay out,” I told Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin in the early spring of 1981, “and we want you to do the same.” Dobrynin’s somber reply: the Soviet Union would do what it had to do.

For the Soviet Union, Poland is a casus belli, a question on which she would go to war with the Western alliance. It has always been my belief that the U.S. can influence Soviet behavior toward Poland, but it cannot break the political and strategic connection between these two unequal neighbors without taking up arms. For the moment, that is the melancholy reality. Almost surely, it will not obtain over the long course. Where the indomitable spirit of a nation is involved, there is always the potential for evolution and for explosive change. As President Reagan came to office, nobody knew whether evolution or explosion would be the result, but it was clear that the Poles had decided to make history. A dynamic popular movement had arisen under the banners of the trade union Solidarity and ignited the political imagination of the Polish people.

Moscow knew that if the reforms in Poland survived, a contagion of democracy could sweep through the satellites and finally threaten the Soviet Union itself. The Soviet leaders could not permit this to happen. In the Polish crisis, we were not seeing the collapse of the Soviet empire. Moscow’s difficulties with the Poles were a sign of trouble and decay, but the situation was not irreversible. Solidarity could be snuffed out. There was never any question that the popular movement in Poland would be crushed by the U.S.S.R. The only questions were: When would this happen, and with what degree of brutality?

In the councils of the Administration, I spoke of postponing the day and of minimizing the brutality by discouraging direct intervention by Soviet troops. To some of the President’s other advisers, these policies were not sufficiently redblooded, despite the fact that the U.S. alone hadn’t the military power or the interrelated diplomatic influence to go further. It was clear that some of my colleagues on the National Security Council were prepared to look beyond Poland, as if it were not in itself an issue of war and peace, and regard it as an opportunity to inflict mortal political, economic and propaganda damage on the U.S.S.R.

The Polish situation was heavy with the possibility of death and repression on a horrifying scale. Ever since the hand of Russia fell on Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, many have predicted that the satellites would one day rise up and “roll back Communism.” In 1956, the freedom fighters of Hungary had battled Soviet tanks in the streets, but the U.S. had not rescued them. This memory was a stark warning to us. If the Poles were to rise in response to what they took to be a signal of encouragement from Washington and fight their own government or the Soviet army or both, the outcome could be no different.

I detected no willingness on the part of the hard-liners around the Cabinet table or in the NSC to risk international conflict or shed American blood over Poland, nor would any rational official have advocated such a policy. Rather, these men seemed to imagine that the U.S. could control Soviet behavior toward Poland, or even defeat her purposes, through the application of economic and trade sanctions that would “bring her to her knees.”

This was questionable. Total American trade with the U.S.S.R. amounts to much less than 1% of the Soviet gross national product. Nor had the U.S. displayed the willingness and ability to use very effectively what economic leverage it had. In April 1981, the Administration misplayed the strongest card it held when President Reagan lifted the grain embargo against the Soviet Union. President Carter had embargoed the sale of U.S. agricultural products to the U.S.S.R. in January 1980 in reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During the campaign, Reagan had promised to lift it. Secretary of Agriculture John Block reminded him of that promise at the very first Cabinet meeting. With the support of Ed Meese, Block continued to press his case.

I would have opposed imposing the embargo in the first place. To use food as a weapon is bad policy. But now that the embargo was in place, lifting it involved worldwide consequences. Warsaw Pact troops were maneuvering along the Polish frontiers and the regime installed in Warsaw by the Soviet Politburo was assuming an increasingly threatening posture toward Solidarity. This moment, pregnant with the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Poland, was not one to choose to resume selling the Soviets foodstuffs that we had denied to them because they had invaded Afghanistan.

On March 23, in the Oval Office, I counseled the President to go slow. “Hold off, there’s no rush,” I said. “Let me meet with Dobrynin and feel the vibes. If we can’t get a concession, then we can go ahead.” It is an enduring truth that you can never negotiate successfully by making concessions that your negotiating partner knows about in advance.

But my attempts to persuade Block and Meese, and ultimately Reagan, that the embargo was a very important foreign policy issue did not succeed. It was viewed almost exclusively as a domestic issue. When, finally, the embargo was lifted, it came as a sudden action. On April 21, Meese summoned me to the White House and informed me that the embargo would be lifted on Friday, April 24. This left virtually no time to consult with other governments. There was no provision for a decent interval in which our friends and allies could do all the things that are necessary to minimize the political and economic shock. I said we needed more time; to act in such rude haste would undermine the Administration’s reputation as a responsible partner. Meese replied that the decision had been made.

Speaking to Dobrynin on this issue was the most distasteful thing I had to do since coming to Washington. After I notified him that the embargo would be lifted as a gesture of good will because the Soviets had restrained themselves so far in Poland, Dobrynin asked, “Are there any restrictions at all?”

“The decision could be affected by any surprise move on the part of your government,” I replied. I nearly choked on the words.

Punishing Friends, Not Foes

Against the backdrop of that episode, it was supremely ironic that when the hammer of American economic power finally smashed down, it did not strike the Russians or the military government of Poland, as the hard-liners in the Administration had wanted, but instead battered our friends and allies, started the most serious squabble within NATO in recent memory and placed self-generated strains on the alliance at the very time when Western unity was essential to deal with a whole range of politically explosive issues.

In its anxiety to conduct an exemplary public punishment of the Soviet Union, Washington first demanded that its European allies stop supplying American technology for the trans-Siberian pipeline designed to carry natural gas to Western Europe, and when the allies demurred on grounds of legality, economics and sovereignty, the Administration applied sanctions to them.

In every meeting with Soviet officials, I continued to stress that all hope of progress on every question involving our countries depended on Soviet behavior toward Poland. When Foreign Minister Gromyko and I met in New York City on Sept. 23, 1981—my first encounter with him as Secretary of State—I seized the occasion to tell him that the Polish situation was a matter of great concern to the U.S. He made no reply.

Of Gromyko, the inimitable Nikita Khrushchev said, “He will sit on a block of ice with his pants down until he’s told to get up—or lose his job.” Lord Home of the Hirsel, the former Prime Minister of Britain, tells of a conversation about sporting guns with Mrs. Gromyko. She said, “If you buy a gun for my son, buy a better one than you buy for my husband, because my son lets the ducks rise off the water.”

The Germans say that Gromyko has “an Anglo-Saxon sense of melancholy.” If this is so, it may be explained by the fact that he knows that he works for men who will blame him if he permits himself to be tricked by the Americans.

My talks with him went on to the end of a gray and overcast afternoon. At the time, Gromyko was 72. At the beginning of the meeting, he had seemed fit and younger than his years, but at the end he looked aged and tired, and wiped his brow with his bare hand in apparent fatigue and relief. Perhaps he was glad that nothing worse had been said about Poland. He may also have realized that when he and I met again, the subject in all its danger for the world and shame for the Soviet Union would not be so easy to avoid.

As 1981 approached its end, a deceptive calm settled over the question. Then, during a visit to Brussels, at 3 a.m. on Dec. 13, I received the news that General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, had declared a “military government of national salvation,” suspended the operations of Solidarity, closed the borders, broken communications with the outside world and arrested a large number of citizens. We recognized at once that, for the time being at least, martial law, rather than something worse, had been imposed upon Poland. We had known for many months what we would do in case of direct Soviet intervention—and indeed there had been a good deal of speculation in public about a variety of sanctions—but there was no certain plan of action in the more ambiguous case of an internal crackdown.

Over a secure telephone that had been placed in my hotel room in Brussels, I spoke with William Clark, still my deputy at the State Department, who would soon replace Allen at the NSC; he told me that the President’s staff was thinking of calling Reagan back to the White House from Camp David for a special NSC meeting on Poland. I advised against this. A hurried return by helicopter, followed by a crisis-style meeting, might prematurely raise international temperatures. Our objective was to remain calm and steady.

Caspar Weinberger was somewhere above the Atlantic, returning to Washington from one of his many missions abroad. I took the opportunity to call him aboard his aircraft and mention that it behooved us all to speak cautiously in public, and especially to the press, on this issue. Weinberger’s tendency to blurt out locker-room opinions in the guise of policy was one that I prayed he might overcome. If God heard, He did not answer in any way understandable to me. The arduous duty of construing the meaning of Cap Weinberger’s public sayings was a steady drain on time and patience.

At White House meetings, the hard-liners spoke of draconian measures. I kept telling the President to remember Hungary. Vice President Bush and Weinberger and their supporters urged tough talk to the Russians in private and to the world. It was suggested that the President publicly demand the release of Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, and internal reforms in Poland.

What happens, I asked, if the President makes such a demand and Walesa remains in prison and the reforms do not occur? The President had already sent a strongly worded letter to Brezhnev over the hot line. Jeane Kirkpatrick, not unnaturally, wished to take the Polish question into the United Nations. I urged the President not to render Western action subject to a Soviet veto in the Security Council, and he accepted my advice. Sanctions against the Soviet Union and the Jaruzelski government, even a total embargo by the West, were discussed. “If Defense has its way,” I told my staff, “we’ll have the U.S. in a war scare and the Europeans off the bridge by Christmas.” Christmas was three days in the future.

The question before the President was not: What is the most we can realistically do? It was: Shall we be Like Carter and waffle or shall we lead the world? I doubted greatly that the world would follow any President in some of the actions that were being proposed—and yet only through unified action could we achieve results within the range of reactions rationally available to us. Although some of Reagan’s advisers clearly did not think he was being tough enough, he took a balanced Line, even speaking at one point about offering the East a Marshall Plan for the ’80s and suggesting to the Soviets a new era of world cooperation.

I suggested that the President articulate first principles: nothing for the Polish government, a cutoff of Polish imports into the U.S., a policy of providing food for the Polish people if we were guaranteed that it would reach them. The Defense Department and most of the President’s staff, out of genuine outrage but also because of a reflexive belief in the power of the public relations gesture, urged sanctions. To the advocates of this policy, the trans-Siberian pipeline—designed to carry up to 20 billion cubic meters a year of natural gas 3,300 miles from Siberia to Western Europe—was just the sort of highly visible issue that would focus and dramatize Western reaction.

From the beginning of the Administration, Weinberger had been alarmed by the pipeline, arguing that it would make Western Europe dependent on a potential adversary for a significant part of its energy supplies and provide the Soviet Union with a bonanza in hard currency with which to finance a continued arms buildup. In this he was correct, and as NATO commander I had opposed construction of the pipeline. But President Carter had chosen not to oppose it, and the Europeans had made massive financial and political investments in it. It was, quite simply, too late to say no.

I was unable to persuade the President and his staff that this was so. On Dec. 29, the President announced a List of sanctions against the U.S.S.R. and suspended the issuance of licenses for “an expanded List of gas and oil equipment.” An official of the Commerce Department went beyond the Letter and intent of the President’s policy, interpreting it as being retroactive. Inexplicably, the Administration accepted this bureaucratic fiat. This meant that the sanctions applied equally to items manufactured abroad by subsidiaries of American companies or under American License.

The Europeans reacted with aLL the bewilderment and vexation that such an invasion of their sovereignty might have been expected to produce. A month later, when I stopped in London, I met with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She is a most intelligent and courageous and politically gifted leader, utterly devoted to the West and to her country’s friendship with the U.S. She is also among the Reagan Administration’s best friends. I had to tell her that the President was thinking of going beyond the pipeline sanctions. It was possible he would impose a total embargo on the Soviet Union, even call the Polish debt into default.

Mrs. Thatcher gasped: there would be nothing left to do were we to go the whole hog at once; the Soviets might as well go into Poland. Britain, and the other members of the alliance, wanted desperately to follow the American lead on Poland in a policy that would protect the Polish people and discomfit the Soviets and the regime in Warsaw. But it was too much to ask that they punish their own economies and their own interests in support of policies that would inflict no noticeable wound on Moscow.

In June 1982 the NSC considered pipeline sanctions. The Administration had come under heavy pressure from our European allies during the summit meeting of its leaders in Versailles earlier that month. I was fearful of the worst, but determined that the historical record would show that the State Department had fought for a rational course by opposing the extension of sanctions to overseas manufacturers. At the NSC meeting, which I did not attend, Clark placed only the strongest option paper before Reagan, who uncharacteristically approved it on the spot. There had been little discussion and virtually no participation by the President before this decision was formalized.

I was holding two days of meetings in New York with Gromyko at that time. Inasmuch as sanctions were directed primarily against the Soviet Union—a point that tended to be lost as analysis concentrated on the damage to the British, German and Italian economies—the President’s decision was a matter of no small interest to the Soviet Foreign Minister. But at our first session, I did not raise the pipeline with him; though I foresaw the outcome of the NSC meeting, it would have been wrong to tell the Soviets of such an action before telling our allies and before the decision had been formalized.

All my experience with the White House public relations machinery notwithstanding, I trusted that the decision would not be announced before the flash cables the department would send to our allies had been delivered. But when I returned to the hotel from my meeting with Gromyko, I learned that Clark had already informed the press. Next day, Gromyko angrily suggested that I had either withheld the truth from him or did not speak for the U.S. Government.

“Mr. Foreign Minister,” I replied in my weariness, “I’m afraid it is the latter.”

The Falklands: “My Waterloo”

On March 28, 1982, a Sunday, the brilliant and studiously rumpled British Ambassador, Sir Nicholas (“Nikko”) Henderson, brought me a letter from Lord Carrington. A party of Argentines, wrote the Foreign Secretary, had landed nine days earlier on the island of South Georgia, a British possession in the South Atlantic, some 800 miles southeast of the Falkland Islands, a British crown colony. “I should be grateful if you would consider taking up the matter with the Argentines, stressing the need to defuse the situation,” Lord Carrington wrote. “If we do not find a solution soon, I fear the gravest consequences.”

The Falklands crisis was perceived by some, before the killing started, as an amusing anachronism. At the State Department, in the early hours of the crisis, most of the staff shared the amusement of the press and public over what was perceived as a Gilbert and Sullivan battle over a sheep pasture between a choleric old John Bull and a comic dictator in a gaudy uniform. Among the White House staff, there was little sense of urgency.

Though I was virtually alone in this, I viewed the situation from the very beginning with the utmost seriousness and urged the bureaucrats of the department to do the same. The Falklands was not an isolated problem. Among other things, it involved the credibility of the already strained Western alliance, the survival or failure of a British government that was a staunch friend of the U.S., the future of American policy and relations in the Western Hemisphere as well as in Europe, the possibility of yet another dangerous strategic incursion by the Soviet Union into South America and, most important of all, an unambiguous test of America’s belief in the rule of law.

On March 31, three days after his first call, Henderson returned to the State Department. “They are invading,” he said in astonished tones, and placed before me information that indeed suggested that an Argentine military operation against the islands was imminent. By late afternoon, our own intelligence community confirmed that it was probable that an Argentine task force would strike the Falklands in days or hours.

I urged President Reagan to phone General Leopoldo Galtieri, head of the ruling military junta in Buenos Aires, and issue a strong personal warning. Galtieri’s aide stated that his chief was “unavailable” to speak to the President of the U.S. After a two-hour delay, however, Galtieri consented to come on the line. “I must have your assurance that there will be no landing tomorrow,” Reagan said during a conversation that lasted for no less than 50 minutes. Galtieri responded with a portentous silence. At that very moment, the invasion was being launched.

In the NSC, I argued that the U.S. must do whatever it could to bring the crisis to a negotiated solution, but if this was not possible, it must support Britain and the rule of law. To our ambassador in Buenos Aires, Galtieri had suggested that Washington should acquiesce in the invasion as a quid pro quo for Argentine support for the U.S. in the hemisphere. Galtieri never really understood that the U.S., as a nation of laws, could not have one rule on the use of force for its friends and another for the Soviet Union and its proxies. In this view, I enjoyed the enthusiastic, if uncharacteristic, support of Caspar Weinberger.

Ambassador Kirkpatrick, a specialist in Latin America, vehemently opposed an approach that condemned Argentina and supported Britain. Such a policy, she told the President, would buy the U.S. a hundred years of animosity in Latin America. In general, I held the same views as Mrs. Kirkpatrick on broad issues and most specific ones. In the Falklands crisis, however, our positions were irreconcilable—not because of any personal issue or special taste in allies, but because each of us believed that the other’s position was contrary to the interests of the U.S.

Ordinarily, when a President, after hearing the arguments on both sides in a contested issue, adopts a policy, an adviser who disagrees has the choice of closing ranks or resigning. That Mrs. Kirkpatrick chose to keep on pushing her own view should not be taken to suggest that she had departed from honorable practice, because the concept of closing ranks had no meaning to the President’s aides. The necessity of speaking with one voice on foreign policy simply never took hold among Reagan’s advisers.

In a series of conversations with the British and the Argentines, it became clear that both sides hoped I would serve as intermediary. By now the State Department had produced the bones of a solution. It involved diverting the British task force—28,000 strong, aboard more than 100 ships—withdrawing Argentine military forces from the Falklands and interposing on the islands a peace-keeping force consisting of personnel from Canada and the U.S. and two Latin American countries. Negotiations would follow.

The Argentine ambassador, when I shared this paper with him, told me that he thought it was at the extreme of what the junta might be able to accept. Ambassador Henderson was unequivocal: Argentina must withdraw; anything less would mean the fall of the Thatcher government. Britain would prefer to see the U.S. alone, rather than a consortium of nations, as the guarantor of the security of the Falklands.

As evening fell on April 6,1 called the President and suggested that I go to Buenos Aires and London in an attempt to find a solution. “If you order me to try, and if we prevent more bloodshed, it will be worthwhile,” I said. “It involves a high risk for you, but I don’t think we can sidestep the issue. If we fail, all we have worked for in Latin America will be up in the air.” Reagan agreed I should try.

I was under no illusions as to my chances of success. It was clear to me also that if I undertook this mission and did not find a way to stop the hostilities, I might have to resign. By now it was clear enough that there were men and women around the President who would urge my departure. “If the situation cannot be saved, and this is very possible,” I told my wife, “then whatever I do will be seen as a failure, even if it is a success in larger terms than the conflict itself. I’m going to take this on because I have to, but it may turn out to be my Waterloo.”

On April 8, the day of my arrival in London, Britain imposed a blockade of the Falklands. Our excellent deputy chief of mission in London, E.J. Streator, told me Britain was in a bellicose mood, more high-strung and unpredictable than we had ever known it. In the drawing room at No. 10 Downing Street, Mrs. Thatcher rapped sharply on the table top and recalled that this was the table at which Neville Chamberlain sat in 1938 and spoke of the Czechs as a faraway people about whom we know so little. She begged us to remember this: do not urge Britain to reward aggression, to give Argentina something taken by force that it could not attain by peaceful means; that would send a signal round the world with devastating consequences. It was evident, as I afterward reported to the President, that the Prime Minister “had the bit in her teeth.”

In Buenos Aires, while the British fleet moved down the South Atlantic like the weight on a clock, Galtieri told me, “The Argentine government is willing to find an honorable solution that will save Mrs. Thatcher’s government. But we cannot sacrifice our honor.” Then he lowered his voice, looked around the table at his colleagues, and added, “You will understand that the Argentine government has to look good too.”

He was caught in the difficult position of trying to save a situation he did not create. The Falklands adventure was a navy operation, conceived and urged upon the junta by that service. The air force, realizing it must bear the brunt of any battle with the British navy and air force, was unenthusiastic. So, to a lesser degree, was the army. On at least three occasions, Galtieri prevented offensive operations from taking place, and there is reason to speculate that when the invasion finally was put in train, in deepest secrecy and employing only naval forces, the air force, and perhaps the army, may not have known exactly what was happening until it was too late to stop it.

With heavy meaning, Galtieri then told me, “I cannot fail to express to you that I have received offers of aircraft, pilots and armaments from countries not of the West. Last night at midnight, a Cuban plane arrived in Buenos Aires carrying Emilio Aragones Navarro, the Cuban Ambassador to Argentina, who brought an urgent letter to me from Fidel Castro.” That the Soviets, despite their preoccupations in Poland and Afghanistan, should have sent the Cubans to scout a target of opportunity as tempting as Argentina was hardly astonishing. At one point, Galtieri confided that the Russians had insinuated that they might be prepared to have one of their submarines sink the British carrier Invincible with Prince Andrew aboard and let Argentina take credit for the action. I was incredulous, but when imaginations begin to skid out of control, so do events.

Machismo appeared to be the style of the Argentine leadership. This would mix dangerously with the icy scorn and iron will of Mrs. Thatcher. Even when the determination of the British was pointed out in crystal-clear terms, Galtieri replied, “Why are you telling me this? The British won’t fight.” In this judgment, I believe, he had the agreement if not the tutelage of Nicanor Costa Méndez, the Foreign Minister, who was reportedly the main opponent of my advice. On a number of occasions after Galtieri had showed some movement in the negotiations, Costa Mendez met with me privately and amended what his President had said, hardening the Argentine position and making resolution impossible.

From Washington, I learned that the indiscipline that had vexed other diplomatic efforts was intensified. Mrs. Kirkpatrick was describing the progress and the meaning of the talks, about which she knew little, in a variety of public forums. She was acting out of a deep loyalty to her own principles and very intelligent opinions. The populist instincts of the White House staff, quick to adjust appearances to shifts in public mood and opinion, were the real cause of the problem.

On my return to Argentina, I found its leaders still incredulous at Britain’s resolve. “I am truly surprised,” said Costa Méndez, “that the British will go to war for such a small problem as these few rocky islands.” Galtieri complained that people in the American embassy were asking for visas to go to Uruguay; this made Argentina look like Iran instead of a civilized Christian nation. “You must seek a peaceful solution,” he said in a tone of urgent appeal. Then he suggested I meet with the full junta.

That meeting, too, led to an impasse. When it seemed that progress had become impossible, I played a wild card. Although the British in fact told us nothing of their military plans, the Argentines plainly believed that we knew everything the British did. Possibly this misconception could be useful. I called Bill Clark at the White House on an open line, knowing that the Argentinians would monitor the call, and told him in a tone of confidentiality that British military action was imminent.

At 2 a.m., new proposals were delivered to me at the hotel. We met the following afternoon, but after eight hours of haggling, Galtieri drew me aside and said, “If I lay it all on the line, I won’t be here.” I asked him how long he thought he would survive if he lost a war to the British. Gradually, it became apparent what the difficulty had been. If Galtieri did not hold the power of decision, neither did the junta. On every decision, the government apparently had to secure the unanimous consent of every corps commander in the army and their equivalents in the navy and air force. Progress was made by syllables and centimeters, then vetoed by men who had never been part of the negotiations.

Just before midnight, Galtieri reconvened the junta, and by 2:40 a.m. on April 19, we had a draft providing for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal offerees, an Argentine presence under a U.S. guarantee, and negotiations leading to a resolution of the question by the end of 1982.

The engines of my jet were already turning when Costa Mendez arrived. He drew an envelope from his pocket, advising me to open it after I was airborne. As the wheels lifted off the runway, I read Costa Méndez’s words: “It is absolutely essential and conditio sine qua non that negotiations will have to conclude with a result on Dec. 31, 1982. This result must include a recognition of Argentine sovereignty over the islands.” Once again, in an exercise of bad faith unique in my experience as a negotiator, the Argentines had gone back on their word and returned to their original, impossible terms. War was now inevitable.

On May 2, the submarine H.M.S. Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano; at least 300 men were lost in a crew of some 1,000. Two days later, an Argentine Exocet missile struck the British destroyer Sheffield, which was abandoned with the loss of 20 men. British troops stormed the Falklands on May 21, and the badly overmatched Argentine force surrendered 3½ weeks later.

Mrs. Thatcher was by far the strongest, the shrewdest and the most clear-sighted player in the game. A statesman is a leader who, knowing where the true interests of the nation lie, resists counsel that .clashes with conviction. Margaret Thatcher belongs in that company. But when I say that in the Falklands, the West was given a great victory by Britain, I do not mean the defeat of Argentinian soldiers by British soldiers. British arms prevailed, but principle triumphed. The will of the West was tested and found to be equal to the task. The rule of law was upheld.

The mixture of history, passion, miscalculation, national pride and personal egotism that produced a “little” war that everyone knew was senseless and avoidable also contains the ingredients for a much larger conflict. Last and first, the Falklands war was caused by the original miscalculation on the part of the Argentinian military junta that a Western democracy was too soft, too decadent to defend itself. This delusion on the part of undemocratic governments has been, and remains, the greatest danger to peace in this century. The cacophonous self-criticism of the democracies and the unwavering insistence of their people that peace must be the paramount goal of their elected governments are signs of great strength, but autocrats persist in mistaking them for signs of weakness. The British demonstrated that a free people have not only kept a sinewy grip on the values they seem to take for granted but are willing to fight for them, and to fight supremely well against considerable odds. The cost was great, but not as great as the cost of a miscalculation by Moscow should it forget these truths. The Falklands crisis was the most useful and timely reminder of the true character of the West in many years. Indeed, Britain’s action in the Falklands may have marked a historic turning point in what has been the long and dangerous night of Western passivity.

As for my own role in the crisis, however, I did not come home with peace. Nor was there peace for me at home. The episode let loose the leakers again. Even after all the months I had spent in the trenches with the President’s aides, I was startled to hear reports emerging from the White House that I had undertaken the Falklands mission as a means of upstaging Ronald Reagan in his visits to Jamaica and Barbados. The White House term for my peace mission, I was told, was “grandstanding.” This was a charge that might better have been leveled at Leopoldo Galtieri and his comrades in Argentina, but I saw no point in bringing this to the attention of the President’s ruffled aides.

The intensity of the gossip reported in the press increased steadily. Because of the collapse of my effort to mediate in the Falklands, I was now more vulnerable than ever. A lifelong friend who is in a position to know called to say that there had been a meeting in the White House at which my future had been discussed. “Haig is going to go, and go quickly,” James Baker was quoted by my friend as saying, “and we are going to make it happen.”

Lurching Toward War in Lebanon

Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House than Ronald Reagan. Yet in the early months of Reagan’s presidency, Israel administered a series of violent shocks to the Administration and to public opinion—its expanded policy of building settlements in the West Bank, its attack on June 7,1981, on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, its vigorous opposition to the sale of American AWACS to Saudi Arabia. As a result, the assumption that the U.S. would always unreservedly support Israel in a contest of interests with its Arab neighbors ceased to apply.

Israel came under unprecedented and sometimes exasperated public criticism from officials of the Administration. The power of Israel and its friends to influence American policy in the Middle East weakened. All this happened not because American policy, as a matter of conscious choice, suddenly changed to Israel’s disadvantage. Rather, it happened because events long in the making and policies compelled by those events suddenly became visible.

For more than a year, Israel, goaded by the bombardment of her northern settlements by Palestinian gunners from fortified sanctuaries in southern Lebanon and by terrorist attacks on her citizens at home and abroad, had wanted to send her forces into Lebanon and destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.). On June 6, 1982, despite the strongest possible warnings by the U.S., Israel launched her offensive at last.

Dangerous and tragic though this turn of events was, it provided a historic opportunity to deal with the problem of Lebanon by removing the causes of a national crisis that had long threatened to be mortal. The primary obstacle to peace in Lebanon had been the presence of two foreign armies—the Syrian “peacekeeping” force and the military arms of the P.L.O.—each in its own right stronger than the Lebanese army. This de facto occupation had stripped the central government of its authority and created the conditions for strife among the religious and ethnic communities of Lebanon. The Israeli invasion added a third foreign army and, in the worst case, threatened to create, in southern Lebanon, a new zone of occupation.

But Israel’s military incursion also created circumstances in which it was possible, during the fleeting moments in which the former equation of power had been overturned, to remove all foreign troops from Lebanon and restore the powers of government to the Lebanese.

In the final hours of my incumbency as Secretary of State, even after my resignation, this opportunity was seized. Peace was within our grasp. Then, in a series of miscalculations that divided American diplomacy and dissipated American influence, peace was thrown away. The situation we now face in Lebanon is the result.

How did this happen and why? In January 1982, President Reagan had written to Menachem Begin, urging restraint in Israel’s support for the Lebanese Christian Phalange in its bitter struggle against Syria. In his lawyerly fashion, Begin sought to redefine the conditions under which the U.S. would consider an Israeli attack justified. Pointedly, I repeated my formula: only in strictly proportional response to “an internationally recognized provocation.” Begin agreed, then changed his mind, and in one of his exercises in creative nuance, told Reagan Israel would take no major action “unless attacked in clear provocation.”

There had been a cessation of hostilities between the P.L.O. and Israel under an agreement brokered by our special Middle East envoy, Philip Habib, and Saudi Arabia. Begin interpreted the cessation of hostilities as universal and regarded any terrorist attack anywhere in the world, as well as the violation of any Israeli frontier, as a breach of the agreement meriting retaliation.

In late January, Israeli forces captured a team of six heavily armed terrorists who had infiltrated from Lebanon through Jordan. Word reached me that Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had recommended heavy attacks on P.L.O. bases in retaliation, followed by an invasion if the P.L.O. escalated in reaction.

We had already heard that Sharon had visited Israel’s Phalangist allies in Beirut. War seemed very near. Our duty to attempt to prevent it was obvious; our ability to do so, questionable. After informing the President of this latest development, I sent our Ambassador to Israel, Samuel Lewis, to Begin with instructions to tell him that an Israeli operation along the lines described to us would have far-reaching consequences for our relationship. The Israelis should not misjudge American public opinion; it would not tolerate such an operation in current circumstances. Begin interrupted. “Don’t use those words, Sam!” he pleaded. But after he had consulted the Cabinet, Begin said he and his colleagues had decided to accept my request for restraint. At this delicate juncture, Caspar Weinberger, on a tour of Saudi Arabia, Oman and Jordan, was reported to have stated that the U.S. needed more than one I friend in the Middle East and that the Administration might provide F-16 fighters and mobile Hawk antiaircraft missiles to Jordan. The Israelis were outraged. Begin wrote to the President: “I do not understand why it was necessary for the Secretary of Defense to make his worrying statements [while] visiting Arab countries that . . . but for one, are in a state of war with us.” Neither did I.

The peace treaty between Egypt and Israel signed on March 26, 1979, had obligated Israel to return the Sinai to Egypt. True to its word, Israel did so on April 25, 1982. This was, as I wrote to Begin, “an act of the utmost courage, statesmanship and vision . . . an inspiring example of the commitment of you and your government to the future.” The Sinai issue settled, Israeli fixation on the threat from southern Lebanon intensified. On May 7, 1982, Begin sent us an oral message warning that it might well become “imperative and inevitable” to remove the threat.

The Administration was already divided over its policy toward Israel. The foreign policy bureaucracy, overwhelmingly Arabist in its approach to the Middle East and in its sympathies, saw the crisis as an opportunity to open direct negotiations between the U.S. and the P.L.O.

Now the cessation of hostilities itself was threatened. As tensions mounted, I repeatedly warned the President that we must act or face the consequences of war in the Middle East. On May 21, I sent the President a detailed plan of action and asked for an NSC meeting to discuss the plan before we left for a tour of Europe and the summit of industrialized democracies in Versailles eleven days later. But my efforts came to nothing—memoranda, telephone calls, confrontations with Bill Clark all failed to drive the message through the incoherent NSC system.

Late in May, while on an official visit to Washington, General Sharon shocked a roomful of State Department bureaucrats by sketching out two possible military campaigns: one that would pacify southern Lebanon, and a second that would rewrite the political map of Beirut in favor of the Christian Phalange. Sharon was putting the U.S. on notice: one more provocation and Israel would deliver a knockout blow to the P.L.O.

In a strenuous argument with Sharon in the presence of my staff, I challenged these plans, and after the meeting, so that there could be no question that I was playing to an audience, I invited Sharon into my office and told him privately, in the plainest possible language, what I had repeated to him and Begin and their colleagues many times before: unless there was an internationally recognized provocation, and unless Israeli retaliation was proportionate to any such provocation, an attack by Israel into Lebanon would have a devastating effect in the U.S. “No one,” Sharon replied, in his truculent way, “has the right to tell Israel what decision it should take in defense of its people.”

On May 28, I wrote to Begin and said, in so many words, that I hoped there was no ambiguity on the extent of our concern about possible future Israeli military actions in Lebanon. The President and I wanted to make it very clear that we sincerely hoped that Israel would continue to exercise complete restraint and refrain from any action that would further damage the understanding underlying the cessation of hostilities. Israeli military actions, regardless of size, could have consequences none of us could foresee.

Begin’s reply testified to the depth of his feelings: “You advise us to exercise complete restraint and refrain from any action . . . Mr. Secretary, my dear friend, the man has not been born who will ever obtain from me consent to let Jews be killed by a bloodthirsty enemy and allow those who are responsible for the shedding of this blood to enjoy immunity.” Reading these phrases, I understood that the U.S. would probably not be able to stop Israel from attacking.

“Dear Al . . .”

On June 1, 1982, aboard Air Force One en route to Europe for a ten-day diplomatic visit, President Reagan broke his reading glasses. I lent him a pair of my own, and he discovered that he could see perfectly well with them. “That proves it, Mr. President—we have the same vision.” We laughed, but by the end of the trip I saw with final clarity that however similar our views might be on certain issues, we were hopelessly divided on others, and the confident personal relationship that might have bridged this difference would always be denied to Reagan and me.

In Europe, it became plain that the effort to “write my character out of the script” was under way with a vengeance. As always, all roads led through the press. A telling sign of quarantine was that at Versailles, photographs were banned at my meeting with Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki of Japan. Last-minute changes in seating and other curious breaches of protocol, engineered by Baker, Deaver and their apparat, baffled our European hosts, many of whom had not previously had the experience of a guest’s, as it were, shuffling the place cards of other guests.

As the trip started, it appeared certain Israel would invade Lebanon in a matter of hours, days or weeks. On June 3, the casus belli the Israelis had been waiting for materialized. In London, Arab terrorists shot and grievously wounded Shlomo Argov, the Israeli Ambassador to Britain. Israel bombed a P.L.O. ammunition dump in Beirut, and the P.L.O. struck back against northern Israel. On June 5, the Israeli Cabinet approved a large-scale invasion of Lebanon. Begin informed us that the objective was to drive the P.L.O. back 40 km from the Israeli border.

On June 8, Habib was asked by Begin to carry a message to President Hafez Assad of Syria: if P.L.O. artillery in the Syrian lines was pulled back to the 40-km mark, there would be no need for Syria and Israel to fight. The next day, while Habib was in Damascus waiting to deliver this message, a second message arrived from Begin to Assad, warning that the Syrians should withdraw the additional surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries that the Israelis claimed were being brought in to reinforce Syrian positions. Habib had delivered the Israeli warnings to the Syrian government but was still waiting to see Assad when the Israeli air force attacked the Syrian SAM sites in the Beka’a Valley, destroying them all and shooting down 23 Syrian MiGs while losing no Israeli aircraft. This sudden attack changed the whole character of the conflict.

The handling of Lebanon and other problems during the trip was complicated by the fact that William Clark, as National Security Adviser, seemed to be conducting a second foreign policy, using separate channels of communication. In Washington, George Bush’s crisis-management group went into session over the Lebanon situation and established communications with Clark, bypassing the State Department altogether. Such a system was bound to produce confusion, and it soon did.

There were conflicts over votes in the United Nations, differences over communications to heads of state, mixed signals to the combatants in Lebanon. Some of these, in my judgment, represented a danger to the nation and put the President into the position of reversing decisions already made.

During a dinner given by the Queen in Windsor Castle on June 8, Bill Clark passed me a note informing me that a resolution had been introduced in the U.N. condemning Israel for its invasion and threatening sanctions, and suggesting that the U.S. might vote in favor of the resolution. This would have been an unprecedented step for the U.S. and also entirely out of character for the President. I asked Clark who had made the decision. “The President of the United States, Al; we’ve got the decision, and there is no more discussion.”

I doubted that the President fully understood the implications of the vote—then only minutes away—and asked for a meeting with him. As we went into the President’s rooms, Clark told me that Reagan had acted on the basis of a recommendation from Vice President Bush’s group. In my conversation with the President it seemed clear that he had been under the impression that this recommendation reflected the unanimous judgment of his advisers. After telling him that his Secretary of State had not been consulted, I advised him that the U.S. must veto the resolution. Reagan, listening intently, agreed.

Yet confusion persisted. The State Department back in Washington was still getting conflicting instructions from the NSC. This required another meeting with Clark. Acquiescence if not agreement was reached after a stormy exchange of words. With only minutes to spare, I telephoned Mrs. Kirkpatrick and instructed her to veto the resolution, regardless of any other instructions she may have received.

Clark had advised me, in the course of our first confrontation that evening, that it would be “best to go to bed, and maybe it will all blow over in the morning.” When I did go to bed, a long time afterward, my thoughts were deeply disturbed by the dangerous implications of a situation in which a presidential assistant, especially one of limited experience and limited understanding of the volatile nature of an international conflict, should assume the powers of the presidency.

After several such rattling incidents, I asked Clark, who had been such an agreeable deputy to me at the State Department, what was going on. Clark, drained of his old good fellowship, gave me a cryptic answer. “You’ve won a lot of battles in this Administration, Al,” he said, “but you’d better understand that from now on it’s going to be the President’s foreign policy.”

By the time we returned to Washington from Europe on Friday, June 11, Habib was shuttling between Damascus, Tel Aviv and Beirut, and urgently needed new instructions. I called Clark and told him that I would draft Habib’s instructions and send them over the next day for the President’s approval. Clark then told me he would immediately “Datafax” the paper to Camp David, where the President was resting. That evening Clark phoned and reported that the President had seen the draft instructions but had not approved them, judging that the issues were of such import that there should be a formal NSC meeting two days later.

It hardly seemed possible to me that the President really meant to delay for two days, inasmuch as the point at issue involved a war that was daily claiming hundreds of lives. Clark assured me that this was, hi fact, the President’s decision. Astonished, I phoned Reagan at Camp David and explained that Habib was already en route to Damascus to keep an appointment with Syrian President Assad; he simply could not wait. When Reagan responded, I detected a note of puzzlement in his voice. He knew nothing about the instructions to Habib, and I gained the impression that he had not even received them.

There was nothing in the instructions, I reiterated, that departed substantively from the positions prepared for him while we were in Europe. Reagan remained detached, friendly and still clearly a bit puzzled by my call. “That’s all right, Al, don’t worry,” he said at last. I hung up and sent Habib his instructions without the President’s formal approval. I tried to call Clark to inform him but was informed that he had retired for the night.

Next morning, Clark, with vexation in his voice, told me he would have to report my actions to the President. I invited him to do so and asked for an appointment with Reagan. I felt that the end had come. When we met on Monday, June 14, in the Oval Office, Reagan was hi a troubled mood, his usual sunny countenance drawn into a worried frown. We were alone. “Al,” he asked, “what would you do if you were a general and one of your lower commanders went around you and acted on his own?”

“I’d fire him, Mr. President,” I replied. “No, no, I didn’t mean that,” Reagan said. “But this mustn’t happen again. We just can’t have a situation where you send messages on your own that are a matter for my decision.”

I related the details of my encounter with Clark. I told Reagan that I believed the cease-fire he had proposed in Lebanon had been delayed, and loss of life needlessly continued, as a result of the petty maneuvering by his staff. As he listened, the President’s frown deepened. “Mr. President,” I said, “I want you to understand what’s going on around you. I simply can no longer operate in this atmosphere. It’s too dangerous. It doesn’t serve your purposes; it doesn’t serve the American people.” Then I told him that while I could not desert him in the middle of a crisis, under the present arrangements I could not continue as his Secretary of State nor could his policies survive for four years. If the President could not make the necessary changes to restore unity and coherence to his foreign policy, then it would be in the country’s interests to have another Secretary. I suggested that the best time for my departure would be after the mid-term elections in November, to minimize the political impact.

Ten days later, on Thursday, June 24, Clark told me that the President wanted to see me. The lack of warmth that had characterized Reagan’s behavior during our last meeting had vanished. In its place, as we greeted each other in the Oval Office, was a mixture of apprehension and what seemed to me to be almost fatherly concern. I asked the President if he had thought over what I had said to him on June 14.

“Yes, I have,” he said. “You know, Al, it’s awfully hard for me to give you what you’re asking for.”

In preparation for this meeting, a member of my staff had drawn up a bill of particulars, listing the occasions on which the cacophony of voices from the Administration and the seeming incoherence of American foreign policy had created dangerous uncertainties. To this I had added a second memorandum, detailing mixed signals during the Falklands crisis. These documents, though more forthright hi tone than communications to Presidents usually are, had the virtue of being an accurate reflection of the frustrations produced by these events. Reagan glanced at the papers. “I’m going to keep this, Al,” he said. “This situation is very disturbing.”

“It has been very disturbing from the first, Mr. President,” I replied. “If it can’t be straightened out, then surely you would be better served by another Secretary of State.” The President made no reply. It may have been that he was still struggling with his decision.

Next day, after a working NSC lunch, I was asked to step into the Oval Office to see the President. He was standing at his desk. “On that matter we discussed yesterday, Al,” he said, “I have reached a conclusion.”

He then handed me an unsealed envelope. I opened it and read the single typed page it contained. “Dear Al,” it began, “It is with the most profound regret that I accept your letter of resignation.” The President was accepting a letter of resignation that I had not submitted.

“May Frankness May Startle”

On July 2, after my resignation, a breakthrough finally came in the crisis over Lebanon. After intensive negotiations, the Syrians, the P.L.O. and the Israelis were prepared to leave Lebanon at the same time. Lebanon’s security would have been internationalized. The Lebanese government was ready to function on behalf of all the factions in Lebanon.

I had gone to the Greenbrier, an isolated resort in West Virginia, to escape the postresignation curiosity of Washington, but continued, minute by minute, to manage the Middle East crisis. The President had decided that I should remain Secretary of State until my successor was sworn in, or until the President wanted me to do otherwise.

To all parties I spoke of a total withdrawal of the P.L.O. The linchpin of the arrangement was the international peace-keeping force in Beirut. Lebanese confidence had been battered. Neutral military forces would be needed to give confidence and time to rebuild. In the greatest secrecy, I began to discuss with the French inserting an international force, in which France and the U.S. might participate. Two weeks earlier, Reagan had agreed in principle to the inclusion of American troops.

By July 5, all the pieces were falling into place. I believed that by July 9, four days hence, the P.L.O. withdrawal could commence and the conditions for peace in Lebanon would have been established. At that moment, George Shultz, my nominated successor, who was with the President in California, called to discuss “future arrangements.” He said he wanted me to become a “consultant.” I told Shultz that I was prepared to step aside whenever the President wanted, but I could not accept the role he was describing.

Shultz said he took his hat off to me—a great deal had been accomplished in the past week. About an hour later, he phoned again. The President had decided that I should leave. My resignation was accepted, effective immediately. Shultz had been given an uncomfortable duty, one that I had performed myself for other Presidents, and I sympathized. But in the circumstances, with this message coming when we were on the verge of achieving peace in Lebanon, I felt that I must hear the words from the President himself. I could not abandon the negotiations on lesser authority.

My wife Pat and I went to dinner in the hotel dining room. At 9:45, a messenger summoned me to the telephone. The President was calling. I took the call in an empty room off the lobby. The strains of orchestra music floated in from the dining room. Reagan’s voice was warm, his manner affable. “Al, George Shultz tells me he’s had a discussion with you,” Reagan said. “I just wanted to tell you that what he told you had my approval.” The entire conversation lasted for less than one minute. The two of us said goodbye and I went in and finished my dinner.

The next day, July 6, in response to press reports from Jerusalem, Reagan announced that he had agreed to commit U.S. troops to a peace-keeping force in Lebanon. With this ill-conceived announcement, attention was diverted for several vital days from the peace effort and focused instead on the meaning of committing American troops. Superpower rivalry was reawakened. The breach between Syria and the Soviet Union was mended by huge new shipments of Soviet arms to Syria; Syria announced that under present circumstances, it could not accept the P.L.O.; the P.L.O. reneged on its agreement to withdraw from Lebanon; the Israelis announced that they were making logistical preparations to spend the winter in Lebanon; Shultz, during his confirmation hearings before the Senate, put special emphasis on the “legitimate needs and problems of the Palestinian people”; American policy seemed to be changing again. And again the P.L.O. decided to play for time.

All that we had labored so hard to grasp, and had come so close to grasping, slipped away, with consequences not yet wholly revealed.

As the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term approaches, it is possible to say that he has contributed greatly to the revival of America’s confidence and pride in itself, and in the restoration of the economy and in beginning the process of rebuilding the nation’s military strength. These accomplishments abundantly justify the second term that as now seems almost certain, the American people will bestow on their 40th President.

There is nothing lacking in President Reagan’s vision. Where Ronald Reagan’s instincts have been thwarted, where his policies have not succeeded, the problem has lain elsewhere. The problem, almost unspeakably complicated in its consequences, is very simple in its essential nature. It lies in an absence of discipline on the part of some of his advisers; there is no adequate structure to enforce discipline upon the system.

In the absence of such a structure, the Chief Executive must exercise a lonely and nearly superhuman monitorship of the whole system—an undertaking that is beyond the limits of individual knowledge and energy. Vision without discipline is a daydream.

The result has sometimes been that the President has accepted flawed results in the conduct of foreign policy. The impulse to view the presidency as a public relations opportunity and to regard Government as a campaign for re-election (which, of course, it is, but within limits) distorts balance, frustrates consistency and destroys credibility. This very mischievous force need never have been let loose.

I have looked back into my experiences in an attempt to illustrate the lessons they contained while those lessons are still relevant to the current situation. My frankness may startle, and, at moments, it has been painful to write the truth as I saw it. But in my regard for President Reagan and in my duty to my country I could not do otherwise, and those who read what I have written will make their own judgments according to their own lights.