WHAT'S HAPPENED TO U.S. FOREIGN POLICY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900045-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 45
• Publication Date: September 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900045-3
READER'S DIGEST
September 1982
-What's Happened to
U.S. Foreign Policy?
'BY ROWLAND FNANs AND ROBFWF NoVAK
ATTHE BEGINNING of his Presi-
dency, Ronald Reagan
promised he would restore
lagging U.S. military strength, re-
sist Soviet expansionism and end
depredations in Latin America lw
Fidel Castro's Cuba. He described
President Jimmy Carter's foreign
policy as "weak, vacillating, ama-
teurish, indecisive and confused."
A revival of American activism
abroad seemed certain.
But by early this summer it was
painfully clear that Reagan's own
foreign policy had stumbled badly,
buffeted by one world crisis after
another. The sudden resignation of,
Secretary of State Alexander M.
Haig, Jr., in late June represented a
belated attempt by the President to
regain control of his foreign policy.
Haig's insistence that he alone was
the "vicar" of American foreign poli-
CV had not only exhausted Reagan's
patience but had led to a catalogue
of confusions and reverses that the
new Secretary of State, George P.
slitillt, mulct now aihiress:
The Soviet Union. !lacked by
conservatives in both the Republi-
can and Democratic parties, Rea-
gan had long argued that American
dealings with the Soviet Union in
such areas as grain sales, technology
exchange and strategic-arms con-
trol must be "linked" to Soviet
good conduct in other areas. The
logic of linkage: if the Russians
betrayed our trust in one sphere,
they should not be trusted in anoth-
er. But when the Soviets continued
to prosecute their war against Af-
ghanistan and engineered a mar-
tial-law crackdown in Poland,
tough talk from the President far
outran the Administration's per-
formance in generating economic
and financial reprisals. Although
Reagan could have declared these
Soviet actions a roadblock to much-
needed disarmament talks, he in-
stead called for "early- arms
negotiations without a quid pro
quo from the Kremlin. The con-
cept of linkage had disappeared
without a trace.
Lam America. 1 laig's warlike
rhetoric created expectations Of
foligh aCtionS to stop Cuba's
eNpoi i of revolution. But when
eonservative Senators protested the
basing of MiG fighter bombers in
Luba, the White I louse, hacked by
the Pentagon, chose caution. In
dealing with the increasingly re-
pressive Marxist regime in Nicara-
gua, the Administration did little to
encourage Nicaraguan resistance.
groups. The White I louse's lack of
strategy to meet the threat of a
(:ohan-armed Nicaragua disillu-
sioned many Latin Americans.
The Middle East. The Reagan
Administration made three major
blunders in this strategically crucial
area. After first seeming to accom-.
mtnlate Israel, it then reversed itself
so drastically that it alienated Prime
in slur 1\lenachem liegin's gov-
ernment. Ii dikal irritated our clos-
est Aral) friends by not pressing
Israel to fulfill the commitments
made at Camp I ).m vu! to negotiate
scir goVcriliDunt for Arabs it) the
kinds (-vim-cif west of the Jordan
River in the 1967 war. And by
failing to take a strong position on
Iraq's war with Ayatollah Khomei-
ni's Soviet-backed Iran, the Ad-
ministration exposed the oil-rich
Persian Gulf states to the threat of
religious wars and Soviet penetra-
tion'. When Israel's military inva-
sion of Lebanon shattered Palestine
Liberation Organization forces in
Jimmie. the Administration's hesita-
tion. then acquiescence, made the
United States appear impotent to
the world?and especially to die
Arab nations.
1.1T HAPPENED? Almost certainly,
there has been no change in Ronald
Reagan's world view. But as a nos'-
ice in international affairs, the new
President delegated the substance
of foreign policy to men who did
not share his basic instincts enough
to translate them into action. Chief
among these was the pragmatic.
1 laig, who had the freest hand of
any recent Secretary of State. With-
out interkrence from the White
1 louse, he staffed his department
with Foreign Service officers, hold-
overs from previous Administra-
tions and outsiders without visible
ideological connection to Ronald
Reagan. Policy-making power re-
mained in the hands of tem-
pom iting, business-as-usual State
)epartment professionals.
National Security Council (Ntic)
meetings were the scene of slugfests
between the deep-toned and ag-
gressive I laig and the soft-voiced,
lawyerly Defense Secretary Caspar
Pg/V77/1TVEP
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2
Weinberger. The styles of the two
men belied their substance. For all
his stentorian passion, Haig came
down on the side of a foreign policy
that was almost indistinguishable
from that of the previous Adminis-
tration, except in the human-rights
area. More ideologically in tune
with the President, Weinberger fa-
vors a tougher stance against the
Soviets. Two NSC meetings provide
crucial examples of the ideological
conflict that split Reagan's advisers.
On May 3, 1982, thc. President
held an NSC meeting to decide
what sort of arms-control program
the United States should submit to
the Russians. One question the
President had to decide was: flow
could the United States assure Sovi-
et compliance with new restrictions?
Weinberger argued for on-site
inspection to guard against Soviet
cheating. The technological limits
of satellite photography and elec-
tronic data collection would not
permit adequate verification of So-
viet compliance, he said.
When Weinberger finished,
I laig struck hard, saying the Presi-
dent must know that the Russians
would never accept on-site inspec-
tion. To demand it, he continued,
would doom any arms-reduction
proposal the President made. This,
in turn, would diminish the Presi-
dent's standing as a world leader
and inhibit his effort to reduce the
danger of nuclear war.
Reagan ended the meeting with-
out reaching a decision. Only later
did he, in effect, side with I iaig.
The United States would move im-
mediately toward arms talks, post-
poning the vital question of on-site
inspection to some later day.
Last December, when the NSC
met after the martial-law clamp-
down in Poland, Haig, the Euro-
peanist, had also counseled caution:
Don't interrupt the U.S.-Soviet-
European nuclear-arms talks just
begun in Geneva. Don't declare the
Poles in default of their almost $3o-
billion debt to the West. Don't
pressure our Western allies to get
out of billion-dollar contracts to
finance Moscow's trans-Siberian gas
pipeline to seven European coun-
tries, including five NAT() members.
Weinberger and Cl: Director
William Casey strongly opposed
Haig, arguing that playing to the
alliance would let the Soviets off
the hook. Reagan's own instinct
%%alb LU g all the way in punishing
the Russians. But in the end, Haig
played his ace, dealt ironically out
?
of Reagan's own hand: In early
1981 the President had fulfilled a
purely political campaign pledge to
end the anti-Soviet grain embargo
imposed by President Carter. That
left the United States without the
means to pressure the N.vro allies
into anti-Soviet sanctions that
might hurt their own economies.
The United States did nothing to
punish the Soviets for their Polish
putsch.
Many of Reagan's foreign-policy
problems have stemmed from an-
other ill-considered campaign
pledge. He promised not to allow
his NSC staff director to gain the
kind of power Henry Kissinger and
Zbigniew Brzezinski had in the
Nixon and Carter administrations.
By enforcing that pledge, Reagan
denied his NSC staff its most vital
functions: harmonizing differences
between the Departments of State
and Defense, and acting as the
President's eves and ears in his final
policy choices.
Reagan's pledge to downgrade
his NSC stall deprived his first NSC
director, hard-liner Richard V. Al-
len, of prestige and influence. Haig
moved at once to exphin Allen's
weakness and to claim tOr himself
the role of foreign-policy vicar.
Throughout I 98 , policy-making
bordered on the chaotic. Combat
between Haig and Allen, com-
pounded by an even deeper hostility
between Hai,, and lames Baker,
the White I louse Chief of Staff,
cost Reagan what he most needed:
credibility abroad as the leader of
the West.
Although dissension between a
Secreuiry of State and the White
I louse staff is routine in Washing-
ton, the extent of these feuds was
unprecedented. Moreover, their
comisnre effect on the President's
foreign policy was heightened by ;
the fact that Ronald Reagan is
haps the greatest delegater of pow-
et- among recent Presidents. This,
combined with his lack of experi-
ence In national security, has been
at the root of much that went
wrtng with our foreign policy:
I hig, was given tilt' burticii 01 the
blame for a becalmed Mideast poli-
cy that relegated the United States
to the sidelines while Israel took
command with its offensive into
Lebanon. Less than a month after
the Secretary of State announced "a
more active role" for the United
States in promoting a negotiated
settlement between Israel and the
Arabs, the Israeli armed services
destroyed Pin pockev in Lebanon
and achieved their own kind of
settlement?with American-sup-
plied tanks and warplanes. Soviet
President Leonid Brezhnev pro-
tested to Reagan, and the United
States demanded Israeli withdraw-
al from Lebanon. "We were telling
the world that we reacted only
under threat from Moscow,"
grumbled a high-ranking Penta-
gon official. Begin ignored Rea-
gan's demands, and the United
States eventually vetoed a U.N. reso-
lution requiring Israeli withdrawal.
Because of its passivity, the Rea-
gan Administration thus wound up
with its prestige low throughout
the Arab world, its ability to influ-
ence and moderate Israel obviously
impaired, and Soviet opportunists
ready and eager to re-enter the
lideast through any door left open
by the United States.
By no means has everything Rea-
gan tried in his foreign policy failed
or disappointed his ideological al-
lies. lie ended the Carter Adminis-
tritiouls debilitating "human
rights " policy and encouraged rela-
I u imps with friendly- --if --
tegiines. I le has followed a lairly
CONTEVUED
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consistent policy of rebuilding rela-
tionships with strategically vital
Turkey and Pakistan. Until the
Falkland Islands war, he had re-
newed important economic, diplo-
matic and military contacts with
Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other
non-democratic Latin American
states essential to hemispheric secu-
rity. lie strengthened the resources
behind. the Rapid Deployment
Force for the Persian Gulf. Most
important, Reagan followed
through on rebuilding America's
defenses.
But these moves, as significant
as they are, did not 'appear as part
of a coherent foreign policy?one
in which a strengthened America
wouId successfully contest the Sovi-
et attempt to dominate world af-
fairs. And it was to this conclusion
that Reagan himself came during
the Versailles economic summit
last June. Credit for this awak-
ening must go, in part, to Wil-
liam P. Clark, a long-time close
associate whom Reagan named Na-
tional Security Adviser earlier this
year.
Clark would not tolerate I laig's
insistence on overriding every-
body?even the President?on for-
eign-policy questions. At a National
Security Council meeting on June 18,
which Clark set up, Reagan gave
orders to tighten the screws against
the Siberian gas pipeline by deny-
ing export licenses to foreign. com-
panies providing equipment for the
project. Seeing that he would never
again be the undisputed vicar, I big
submitted his resignation and the
White House accepted it without
hesitation.
With George Shultz as his new
Secretary of State, Reagan now has
the opportunity to re-establish a
true American counterpoise to So-
viet power. If he does, he will revive
the hopes of those who believe that
only America's strength and will
can preserve freedom throughout
the world.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900045-3