COVER STORY
Shaping foreign policy for a decade of risks and challenges
The meeting in the Oval Office was private, but after it ended White House aides invited photographers to snap pictures of Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State. Explained one staffer: “We need to show that the Secretary has access to Reagan.” Replied another: “You’ve got it wrong. We need to show that the President has access to Al Haig.”
The gag has a point. Rarely has a new Secretary of State moved so swiftly to take control of foreign policy as Alexander Meigs Haig Jr., 56—former White House Chief of Staff in the darkest days of Watergate, former NATO commander, soldier-bureaucrat-diplomat whose self-assurance is matched only by his iron will.
Said liberal Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachussetts, toward the close of Haig’s confirmation hearings in January: “He will use this talent to dominate this Administration.”
If not, it will hardly be for lack of trying. Shortly after Reagan announced his nomination in December, Haig signaled his take-charge determination by dismissing members of the transition team that had been studying foreign policy; he consigned its uninspired reports to a shredder. Only hours after Reagan took the Inaugural oath, Haig handed Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese a memo proposing a reorganization of foreign policy decision-making machinery that would make the Secretary of State supreme; two weeks ago, Reagan approved a directive giving Haig most, though not quite all, of the power he wanted. Faster than any other Cabinet member, Haig picked a nearly complete team of subordinates. Reagan last week formally nominated several of them, despite objections from conservatives in Congress who consider the lieutenants—like Haig himself—too deeply rooted in the Kissinger era of detente.
But organization is only the opening skirmish. Now comes the true campaign: devising a foreign policy to meet the challenges of what Haig sees as the supremely risky world of the 1980s. Since the Administration has been preoccupied with the domestic economy, its foreign policy is more a set of attitudes than a series of thought-out positions. But if the specifics are still unclear, the overall approach is not. Haig began spelling it out in speeches while he was still NATO commander; his ideas dovetail so neatly with Reagan’s that the President hardly considered anyone else as his No. 1 foreign policymaker (or, as Haig calls it, the President’s “vicar” in this area). The essence of their combined view: the prime threat to peace and stability in the world is Soviet expansionism, and the U.S. must restore the confidence of its allies and the entire free world that it can and will contain such aggression.
In Haig’s eyes, U.S. policy since Viet Nam has often seemed—and been —”confused with respect to the priorities we should establish” and disposed “to abhor anything military.” Power in the world, to some extent, “has become diffused over 150 nations,” creating a climate of severe instability.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has transformed its military power “from a continental and largely defensive land army to a global offensive army, navy and air force fully capable of supporting an imperial foreign policy.” With the help of such clients as Cuba, East Germany and Viet Nam, the Soviets have set out to exploit instability, with distressing success in Angola, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Central America. Moreover, Soviet adventurism may well become more dangerous when the aging leaders of the Kremlin are succeeded by a new generation that has known only expanding power. At a private dinner celebrating his confirmation by the Senate as Secretary of State, Haig told friends, “Every night I pray that [Soviet President Leonid] Brezhnev stays healthy and alive for a good while to come—at least until we have caught up with the Soviet Union. Because if he goes suddenly, I believe that the young ones waiting in the wings will take over. They have never known war; to them, Stalingrad is the title of a movie. They have never known poverty such as the world experienced during the Great Depression. They are in a very expansive mood, and the longer they wait their turn the better off we all will be.”
Even the present Soviet leaders, says Haig, “are never influenced by Western rhetoric … They are influenced by Western deeds.” So their drive to expand Communist power and influence must be checked by a U.S. policy bearing three prime characteristics: consistency (“Effective policy cannot be created anew daily, informed solely by immediate need”); reliability (“American power and prestige should not be lightly committed but once made, that commitment must be honored”); and balance. Haig defines balance as the ability to “reconcile a variety of pressures, often competing.” For example, he believes that balance requires the U.S. both to negotiate for arms control and to build up its own military power.
A rapid expansion of American military might is fundamental to the foreign policy that Reagan and Haig are shaping. Some other fundamental principles: the U.S. must forge closer relations with its allies; in particular, it must persuade the NATO countries to cooperate with it in countering Soviet threats outside Europe. It must support friendly anti-Communist governments throughout the world, instead of publicly nagging them to observe U.S. standards of human rights.
The de-emphasis of human rights as a standard to determine which nations qualify for American assistance is one of the most striking changes in the Reagan Administration’s approach to foreign policy. The Carter Administration had frequently threatened a cutoff of aid to foreign governments accused of trampling on human rights. But Reagan last month lifted economic sanctions, which had been imposed on Chile when the Pinochet regime refused to cooperate in an investigation into the outrageous assassination in Washington, B.C., of former Chilean Diplomat Orlando Letelier. Earlier Reagan welcomed to the White House Chun Doo Hwan, President of South Korea, a nation deservedly criticized by Carter policymakers for its human rights violations.
In the Reagan Administration’s view, overemphasis on human rights only undermines “authoritarian” regimes that have a capacity for change, and increases the chance that they will be succeeded by “totalitarian” governments—specifically, Communist ones—that obliterate human rights altogether. Says Ernest W. Lefever, who has been selected as Haig’s top assistant for human rights policy: “There is, for example, more freedom and cultural vitality in Chile—even under its present state of siege—than in Cuba.”
Haig shares this view. The Administration’s principal human rights objective, he says, will be to combat “terrorism,” which very definitely includes Soviet support of guerrilla insurgencies in non-Communist states.* The new policy, however, runs a serious risk of committing the U.S. to the support of regimes that might lose their popular backing.
All the major themes of the new foreign policy come together in El Salvador.
Indeed, the decision to transform the guerrilla war in that country into a major trial of will was made in part to draw the sharpest contrast between the Carter and Reagan approaches to foreign affairs.
Carter and his advisers sought to play down American-Soviet rivalry in the Third World, and to adapt to revolutionary change rather than fight it. But to Reagan and Haig there is unmistakable evidence—and so far the evidence has not been disputed outside the Communist world—that Salvadoran guerrillas have been receiving arms smuggled in from Communist countries through Cuba and Nicaragua. Thus El Salvador became the test case of U.S. determination and ability to draw the line against Red subversion.
Moreover, the Administration chose not just to demand a cutoff of the arms flow. It also gave all-out support to the shaky military-civilian junta now ruling El Salvador, sending not only American weapons but military training personnel. If that help enables the junta to prevail, the U.S. would indeed have broken a string of American setbacks and Communist successes. But if the junta should fall, either to the leftist guerrillas or —equally bad—to a coup by rightists misusing American aid, Washington would suffer an unnecessary setback round the world. The European allies and several friendly Latin American regimes, which agree with the goal of stopping the arms flow, might be confirmed in a budding suspicion that Washington is being ineffectively militaristic. Why is the Administration taking the extra risk? Says one policymaker: “We feel strongly that we must not be, or seem, equivocal. We don’t want to stand up there and say: ‘Well, too bad if the government falls; let’s just roll with the punch.’ That would be Carteresque. We want to get out of the business of rolling with the punches, and if necessary start throwing some of our own.”
If U.S. policy is clear in El Salvador, it is much less so in other areas of the world. Nor has Haig yet prevailed on several all-important questions; the Administration is still subject to divided counsel. A roundup of positions, lack of positions, prospects and problems:
Negotiations with the Soviets. The Administration was clearly caught off guard by Brezhnev’s unexpected proposal for a summit conference with Reagan, and is uncertain how to respond. While no U.S. official is pressing for an early summit, Haig is receptive to the idea of some kind of talks aimed at defining a “code of conduct” that the superpowers should obey.
He knows that the European allies are especially eager for new talks on arms limitation, which would go hand in hand with a Western military buildup. At this point Haig would convey a far-from-specific message to the Soviets: If you want to enjoy the fruits of a relationship with the U.S. and its allies—trade, grain sales, arms control—you must modify your international behavior. But as he told TIME (see Interview), he feels it is in the interest of international stability not to “rush to summitry for summitry’s sake.”
Others in the Administration insist that no talks should be held until the U.S. is well launched into an arms buildup and the Soviets make conciliatory gestures. Some Reagan staffers even advocate breaking off the few links that now remain. Navy Secretary John Lehman last week argued that the U.S. should no longer honor the informal agreement whereby the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue to observe the terms of the SALT I treaty on control of strategic arms, which expired in 1977. The President seems uncertain: he said last week that the U.S. should not talk to the Soviets unless touchy subjects like Afghanistan are on the table. He also declined to make Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan a precondition for negotiations and indicated little hope of achieving such a withdrawal during negotiations. When to resume bargaining with the U.S.S.R., at what level, under what conditions and about which subjects is a matter on which the Administration simply has not made up its mind.
Relations with the Allies. They have improved markedly, thanks in no small part to the rapport Haig built up during his 4% years as NATO commander. He is personally friendly with virtually every European foreign and defense minister. The allies are genuinely pleased that Washington seems about to pursue a clear and direct policy, and are delighted with the Reagan-Haig pledge to consult with them carefully before taking any major steps —a pledge that may or may not ever be fulfilled to their outspoken satisfaction. In particular, Washington is achieving a notable rapprochement with Paris after years of estrangement. But several allies have already expressed fear that the U.S. will take too unbending and militaristic a line around the world.
The Middle East. The U.S. has no policy as yet for dealing with Arab-Israeli tension. Haig, who will visit Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia next month, is essentially stalling until the outcome of the Israeli elections June 30, which might well bring in a government more flexible than the one now headed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Some European allies are concerned about the stalemate in the talks between Egypt and Israel on autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza.
These allies are pressing their own initiative, involving negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which the U.S. has scorned as a terrorist organization. More important, Haig views that area of the world essentially in terms of Persian Gulf security. He would like to establish in the region a military force that could counter Soviet moves or come to the aid of a friendly Arab government threatened by Communist subversion.
There is a surprising amount of support for the idea among the allies, who have a vital interest in keeping the oil-shipping lanes open. But some worry about being trapped in Middle East conflicts.
China. Haig is a strong advocate of closer relations with Peking. As a military man he has gratefully noted the fact that a fourth of the Soviet Union’s troops are tied down guarding the Chinese frontier and thus unavailable for adventurism elsewhere. But he is getting flak from members of the White House staff who have deep sympathy for Taiwan, which is pushing the U.S. to sell it such advanced military equipment as F-16/79 fighters Peking is furiously opposed. It will take all of Haig’s bureaucratic and diplomatic skill to work out an equitable solution.
Poland. Haig has spent much tune in his early weeks working out a strategy to deter a possible Soviet invasion. He has won general agreement from the European allies that breaking political and economic ties with the Soviet Union would be the appropriate response. How to shore up Poland so that it can maintain a tenuous independence from the U.S.S.R. is another question. The country is on the verge of economic collapse and needs $11 billion in new hard-currency credits to stay afloat, but Haig is unwilling to organize a Western rescue effort unless the Warsaw government promises to institute economic reforms.
Africa. In his TV interview with CBS Correspondent Walter Cronkite last week, the President sounded astonishingly sympathetic to South Africa. He referred to it as “a country that has stood by us in every war we’ve ever fought, a country that, strategically, is essential to the free world in its production of minerals.” European allies are already afraid that the U.S., in the name of antiCommunism, may forge closer relations with the apartheid regime. That might lead the Pretoria government to continue stalling on independence for Namibia, slow any liberalization of apartheid laws hi South Africa and stir substantial anti-U.S. sentiment throughout black Africa. Haig’s aides insist that no policy has been set and that the Secretary fully understands that the issue is too complex to be seen in simple East-West terms. Says one: “This Administration will surprise you on the Third World.”
Law of the Sea. Haig last week instructed the American delegation to a United Nations conference in New York not to finish drafting an international treaty at this session, because the Administration wanted to review its position. The move, coming just as the conference was about to open, was at least bad diplomatic manners: it startled and dismayed more than 1,000 delegates from 159 countries who lad hoped to wrap up at last a treaty that las been under negotiation for seven years. The treaty is not necessarily doomed. It is opposed by U.S. mining interests, which complain that it does not assure them access to seabed minerals, but favored by the Pentagon because it allows fleets to sail unhindered through narrow straits.
Haig’s ability to define an effective policy for these tangled problems is untested. Though he has been involved in major national decisions for some 20 years, beginning as a Pentagon staffer in the Kennedy Administration, he has almost always been a No. 2 man, a brilliant executor of policy formulated by others rather than a setter of goals and priorities. He is pre-eminently a doer who has ascended to a post where he will also have to prove himself as a thinker.
He is not an easy man to judge; he sends out too many unexpected signals. Try as he may, he does not look like a diplomat. The stripes on his gray suit are a shade too bold, while his tassled loafers, the gold I.D. bracelet (A.M. HAIG) on his right wrist, his barrel chest and the piercing stare from his blue eyes all bespeak the general out of uniform. He can tick off an impressive list of philosophers—Hegel, Kant, Locke, Montesquieu—who he says have influenced his thought. But he recites their names with such a total lack of emotion as to give the impression that reading their books was a kind of boring homework.
In private Haig can talk with force and clarity. In public he mangles the English language worse than any other high official since Eisenhower. Yet there is a hint of method to his search-and-destroy operation on syntax. His sister Regina, 58, a lawyer whose family nickname is Jean, reproached him once for emitting a “polysyllabic fog” and asked, “Why don’t you speak in simple declarative sentences?” Haig replied with a smile, “Jean, did you ever think of the cost of making a mistake?”
Haig is a man of simple, clear ideas. His world view can be summed up in a phrase: the Russians are coming. A Roman Catholic upbringing and a long military career have bred in Haig a reverence for order, stability, playing by the rules; he speaks of those qualities with the passion other men reserve for romantic adventure. His ideas are a model of the consistency he urges in foreign policy. What he is saying today essentially is what tie said as NATO commander, and his private remarks follow the same line as his public comments.
Yet Haig is also a pragmatist. Associates say that he is flexible enough to abandon a policy that demonstrably is not working. Example: though no one has preached the need for a European military buildup louder or longer than Haig, he has conspicuously dropped the Carter Administration’s demand that NATO countries increase their defense budgets at least 3% each year after adjustment for inflation. Haig’s argument is that no single figure can measure the value of an ally’s contribution. From his experience as NATO commander, he knew that nagging about the 3% figure only irritated friendly governments.
Nor is there much fear that Haig, for all his stern anti-Sovietism, will rush into rash adventure. Throughout his career, Haig has insisted on careful planning, weighing of risks and above all getting all the facts before making a decision.
After his retirement from the Army in June 1979, Haig spent a year as president of United Technologies Corp. Harry J. Gray, chairman of the giant conglomerate, was impressed by Haig’s approach to business negotiations: “He immediately demanded everything factual on the case and did an intensive job of reading everything. Once he knew what the facts were, he made an assessment of the people involved. His approach was not to allow them to become polarized. He thought of something for the next meeting, anything that could be discussed. He was buying time, and I tell you Al Haig knows how to buy time and thus keep both parties interested in the negotiations.” Haig does not blink if the facts turn out to be unpleasant, either. A year ago he suffered pain that was first diagnosed as indigestion. Suspicious, he kept pressing for further tests that eventually disclosed he needed triple-bypass heart surgery, from which he seems to have recovered fully.
The greatest doubt about Haig is whether he possesses the subtlety to appreciate the fine shadings of international politics. European allies, who praise Haig without reservation, say that as NATO commander, he showed a sure grasp of the intricacies of their political, economic and social problems. But critics fear that Haig views the world in oversimplified, good guys-bad guys terms. Says a top State Department official who knows Haig well: “In bilateral negotiations he will have a clear objective and bargain for it effectively. But how he will deal with, say, Zimbabwe in the context of the Third World—well, the jury is still out.”
If Haig’s subtlety is in doubt, some other aspects of his character emphatically are not. His intensity is obvious.
Even in a town of workaholics, he puts in exceptionally long hours, starting normally at 6:30 a.m. His wife Patricia, 52, has a hard time recalling their vacations.
They have been few and far between. On weekends, Haig does get to see Son Alexander Patrick, 28, an attorney, and Daughter Barbara, 24, who works for a law firm; both live in Washington. Another son, Brian, 27, graduated from West Point in 1975 and is now stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado.
Such relaxation as Haig gets is hyperactive. He tries to play six or seven sets of tennis on Sunday, and rides an Exercycle while watching the morning TV news before going to his office. He blames his heart trouble on the endless succession of 17-hour days he worked as deputy to Henry Kissinger. A two-pack-a-day smoker then, he quit for a while after his operation, but has resumed smoking under the pressure of his new job at State.
To cut down his consumption, he keeps a pack of Merits in a desk drawer, so that he has to make an extra effort to get them.
Perhaps the most marked of all Haig’s characteristics is a self-assurance that even some admiring European allies say borders on arrogance, and a stern determination. These traits figure in almost every story told about him by family and friends, from childhood on.
The middle of three children of a lawyer, Haig grew up in Bala-Cynwyd, a suburb of Philadelphia. The neighborhood was respectably middle class, predominantly Catholic. Boys of the area formed secret gangs and Haig was the leader of one called the Musketeers. A good boxer himself, he kept out of fights by negotiating agreements under which rival gangs would stay off Bryn Mawr Avenue, the Musketeers’ turf. That testimony comes from his younger brother Frank, a Jesuit priest who is chairman of the physics and computer science department at Loyola College in Baltimore. One Christmas Eve Al, then nine, offered to prove to five-year-old Frank that there was no Santa Claus; he led his brother on a reconnaissance mission to watch their parents placing presents under the tree.
No one knows what first gave Haig the idea of a military career. Says his sister Regina: “It began when he was four years old. He just one day said he wanted to be a soldier. He had a bugle and he kept it with him all the time, marching around and tooting it; he took it to bed with him the way other kids take a stuffed animal.” Haig’s mother tried to talk the boy into becoming a lawyer, but, says Regina, “Al never batted an eyelid. He was constant about that one thing: he was going to West Point.” Haig’s principal at Lower Merion High School told the boy “you’ll never make it” because his marks were not good enough. Said Haig: “You’re wrong. I’m going to make it.”
A wealthy uncle, John H. Neeson, helped support the family after Haig’s father died of cancer when Al was ten. Neeson first got Haig into the University of Notre Dame and, after a year there, obtained a congressional appointment to the Military Academy in 1944, when Haig was 19. Surprisingly, says Regina, Haig found the discipline hard to endure, but he adjusted to it so well that in a later tour of duty at the Point, he was in charge of reprimanding cadets for infractions. The only time he apparently broke the rules was during his second year; he went over the hill for a few minutes to say farewell to Brother Frank, who was about to enter a seminary.
Haig was a dutiful student who graduated a poor 214th in the 310-member class of 1947. But he did show occasional flashes of intellect. One of his instructors recalls giving a class in which Haig was a middling student and seemed bored. Then he was given an assignment to read various studies about the peaceful control of atomic energy, and prepare a five-minute talk. Most of the cadets droned through dull remarks, says the instructor, but “all of a sudden this Cadet Haig got up and gave an absolutely stunning speech. He understood all the material and he had a gift of presentation”—a gift that Haig was to polish later as a briefing officer for numerous high-ranking bosses.
At West Point, Haig failed to make the varsity football team but played intramural football as a quarterback who, old friends recall, tended to select plays in which he ran the ball himself. He continued to play football on a Pacific League team as a young infantry officer serving postwar occupation duty in Japan. Patricia Fox, daughter of a general who was a senior aide to General MacArthur, watched one game in which Haig pulled off a series of dazzling runs. She remarked to a friend: “He’s like a Greek god.” They met and married. Haig soon after was posted to MacArthur’s staff.
From then on, Haig won the attention of a succession of powerful men. As a young staff major at the Pentagon in 1962, he was spotted by Fritz Kraemer, a former political analyst for the Army Chief of Staff and a legendary back-room strategist who gave an early boost to Kissinger’s career. Haig also became friendly with Joseph Califano, then counsel to the Army and a rising power in Washington. First as a result of Califano’s influence, and then on his own, Haig rose to a variety of important jobs; at one point he prepared briefings that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presented to the President and the National Security Council. Once the major U.S. involvement in Viet Nam began, Haig decided to heed the old maxim that no Army officer can rise to the top without experience in combat command, which he lacked despite some brief battle experience in Korea. He went to Viet Nam in 1966 and the next year led a battalion to victory in the battle of Ap Gu, one of the major engagements in the biggest American offensive of the time. It was a classic Viet Nam operation; Haig’s troops were helicoptered into an area thought to be infested with Viet Cong guerrillas, drew an enemy attack and held their ground in bloody hand-to-hand fighting, while Haig called in heavy artillery and air strikes.
Back from Viet Nam, Haig was again at West Point when he was recommended by Kraemer to Kissinger, then President Nixon’s National Security Adviser. Says Kissinger: “He was at first only a military assistant handling intelligence and Penta gon matters, but he made himself substantially indispensable.” Haig worked closely with Nixon during Kis singer’s many trips abroad. In May 1973 Nixon asked Haig to replace H.R. Haldeman, who had been forced to resign as White House Chief of Staff because of the Watergate scandal. Haig did not want the job; he feared that getting anywhere near Watergate would end his hopes of ever be coming Army Chief of Staff or even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — as in fact it did. But he accepted the President’s proposal out of a sense of duty.
For the next 14 months, Haig in effect held the White House together while Nixon battled to stave off impeachment.
Haig is widely credited with having persuaded Nixon in the end to resign. There are still charges that Haig defended Nixon altogether too zealously, but most of those who dealt with Haig then insist that he preserved his own integrity and balance. Says Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor, of the many legal battles between them: “Haig never raised his voice. He was never ugly, and I said some things that could have made him hit the ceiling. He believed in Nixon [but in the end] felt he had been lied to; it hurt him” Nixon recommended that Gerald Ford keep Haig on as White House Chief of Staff. Ford understandably wanted his own man. So in 1974 Ford appointed Haig as NATO commander. Europeans at first feared that a discarded political general was being dumped on them, but Haig won their respect. He increased the combat effectiveness of NATO troops, partly by scheduling more realistic maneuvers involving American soldiers flown in from the U.S., and did much effective diplomatic work. In particular, he is credited with behind-the-scenes negotiations that eventually brought Greece back into the alliance as a full member after it had severed relations because of a rift with Turkey.
By 1978 Haig was getting increasingly disenchanted with Carter Administration policies and in June 1979 he resigned. He came home to make speeches about the Soviet threat— and at least explore the idea of running for President. The self-confident Haig made no secret of his belief that he could handle the job. Concluding that he could not win enough support to the Republican nomination he dropped the idea and accepted Harry Gray’s offer of the presidency of United Technologies Corp. His salary and bonus totalled $1 million. Haig had been at United Technologies not quite a year when President-elect Reagan called him to be Secretary of State.
At the department, Haig has set a driving pace. He does not suffer fools gladly: he has been known to annotate papers with comments like “This is a lot of nonsense!” But he has won the respect of subordinates, as he has in all previous jobs, by hearing them out. Says one: “He listens, and the worst thing you can do is not give him a piece of information that he needs, even if it runs contrary to his own views.”
Morale certainly has been helped by Haig’s quick start in organizing the department. For the top jobs he has picked mostly moderate conservatives, men with long operating experience but little reputation for broad conceptual thinking. Some of the key names: Walter Stoessel, a senior ambassador in the Foreign Ser vice, as Under Secretary for Political Affairs; Myer Rashish, a free-trade economist, as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs; former Senator James Buckley, a staunch conservative, as Under Secretary for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. Several of Haig’s appointees are old colleagues. Lawrence Eagleburger, Chester Crocker, John H. Holdridge and Robert Hormats, slated to be important Assistant Secretaries, all worked with Haig on Kissinger’s staff. Right-wingers in Congress have held up some of the appointments even though Haig’s aides are all at work as if they had Senate approval. Meanwhile, Reagan last week formally nominated Eagleburger, Rashish, Crocker and Hormats.
The big exception to the level of expertise on Haig’s staff is William P. Clark, a former California judge, whom Reagan himself chose as Deputy Secretary of State, the Department’s No. 2 post. Clark, who showed an abysmal ignorance of foreign affairs at his confirmation was proposed for State by Californians on the White House staff to keep an eye on Haig, whom they did not know. Ironically, the selection has turned out Haig’s advantage. Clark has become admirer of the Secretary and something of a Haig envoy to the White House.
Not that Haig has needed much help in the bureaucratic wars; he has been doing just fine on his own. An eight-page, double-spaced order signed by Reagan last week gives the State Department authority to set up interagency groups to coordinate foreign policy planning and operations by the many departments with overseas interests; disputes are referred to a senior interdepartmental group headed by Clark. The most important impact of arrangement is that it insulates Haig’s department from the tendency of the National Security Council staff to become a kind of rival State Department, as it did under Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
National Security Adviser Richard Allen retains the power to review policy options for the President, and many in Washington think he will eventually make his voice heard. But Allen so far is honoring a pledge to make himself publicly invisible. What is more, he has been so slow to organize his own staff that he could not at this point rival Haig for power if he tried. In any case, Reagan has often vowed to make the Secretary of State pre-eminent in foreign policy, and he obviously retains his confidence in the man he picked for the job.
How good a Secretary of State will Haig turn out to be? Says Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who worked with Haig as Kissinger’s top Soviet specialist: “My guess is that he will do pretty well. He won’t see problems in isolation. He may connect them more than a lot of people’s taste would warrant.” Rejecting the view that Haig is an unimaginative technocrat, Sonnenfeldt says “he has a broad and creative vision and a special talent for recognizing the connection between issues.” Other observers, such as former White House staffers and senior State Department officials, note that even though Haig is not a grand strategist in the Kissinger manner, he compensates for that lack with his organizational skills, his realism and his sensitivity to other people.
Haig understandably is in an optimistic mood. For all his somber view of Soviet power, he believes that the historical tide is running against Marxism. He cites the poor performance of the Soviet economy and Soviet troubles with its client states. These trends, he believes, might tempt the Kremlin leaders to launch more foreign adventures out of frustration, but in the long run they can only be weakening. Haig’s hard anti-Soviet line is backed by a strong consensus in the U.S. All these trends give him a chance to be one of the most influential Secretaries of State in modern times.
So far, Haig has made almost all the right moves. At the department he heads, there are outlines of policy, there is organization, there is spirit. There is a clear, if risky, decision on El Salvador. But what about China? Or the Third World? The El Salvador crisis alerted the new Administration to the fact that the world will not wait forever. The preliminaries are over; the real test for Alexander Haig has just begun.
By George J. Church.
Reported by Dean Brelis/Philadelphia and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington
*Haig, as NATO commander, narrowly escaped death from a terrorist bomb in Belgium two years ago.
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