ONCE AGAIN, AN AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL

An extraordinary conjunction of forces shook the world last week -- a historic seven days in March that saw the decline of old hopes and the rise of new dangers. The world had not witnessed such a week of more or less simultaneous shocks since early November 1956, when a British-French-Israeli force was invading Egypt and the Soviets were crushing the Hungarian revolt, or since mid-October 1964, when the Soviet Central Committee deposed Nikita Khrushchev, the Chinese exploded their first atom bomb and Britain elected a Labor government in a remarkable upset.

Surveying the current scenes, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger discerned "a moment of potentially grave danger." For two years the U.S. public has been preoccupied with Watergate, the economy and other domestic problems. Beyond the Middle East, Americans paid little attention to what was happening overseas. Now, suddenly, they were forced to look to the troubled world outside and their own relationship with it. They saw that U.S. foreign policy was suffering setbacks on several key fronts:

INDOCHINA. The swift and almost uncontested Communist offensive in South Viet Nam raised an unsettling question: Had 50,000 American lives and $150 billion in U.S. aid been spent in vain? The government of Nguyen Van Thieu was proving much weaker than had been thought, and the fast fallback of his forces approached an all-out rout. Obviously, U.S. intelligence about Thieu and his powers had been grievously faulty. First, the former imperial capital of Hue fell to the Communists; then so did five more provinces, bringing the total under their control to 13 (out of 44). But the real shocker was the swiftness of the fall of Danang, South Viet Nam's second largest city and the onetime center of U.S. Marine operations in Viet Nam. The weekend announcement by Saigon officials that the city had been overrun by the Communists marked the South's greatest single defeat of the war. The Thieu government had now abandoned or been forced from more than half of the country's territory.

Half a million frightened refugees had streamed into the government enclave of Danang, where they searched frantically for a way to escape south. The trapped refugees put the Ford Administration in a painful quandary: whether or not to mount a massive U.S. evacuation effort. Over the weekend Ford ordered U.S. ships to the coast off Danang to take aboard refugees, and requested international help with the evacuation. Before anything could be done, however, the city fell.

At a press conference, Henry Kissinger used biting language, more befitting an opposition leader than an Administration policymaker. The question was, he said, whether the U.S. would "deliberately destroy an ally by withholding aid from it in its moment of extremity." His aim was to press Congress to approve Ford's request for an immediate $300 million in additional military aid for South Viet Nam. He also revived an offer to end military aid in three years if Congress comes through until then. But onrushing events may well make that proposed cutoff date academic. At any rate, most Congressmen were not swayed by Kissinger's argument. They recessed without taking up the subject of aid to either South Viet Nam or Cambodia, which was also collapsing fast.

THE MIDDLE EAST. In an area far more vital to U.S. strategic interests than is Indochina, the failure of Kissinger's mission dashed high U.S. hopes for the beginning of peace. For 17 days he had tried to persuade Israel and Egypt to accept further disengagement in the Sinai. Now the Geneva Conference on the Middle East will probably be reconvened, but it is likely to bog down and cause a stalemate that could lead to yet another war.

The collapse of Kissinger's latest efforts, which the Administration blamed more on the Israelis than on the Egyptians, may provoke a debate over the Middle East. Ford ordered a complete review of U.S. foreign policy, with special attention to that region. One target will be Israel's request for $2.5 billion in aid, which the Administration plans to scrutinize closely and may well scale down before making a recommendation late this month to Congress. The Israelis are confident that their congressional supporters will be more generous. But at this point, they seem likely to be proved wrong. Said House Republican Conference Leader John Anderson of Illinois: "The prospects of Israel receiving the full amount of aid requested are now far shakier than they were before Kissinger's peace mission."

To further aggravate the situation, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal was assassinated last week by a disaffected nephew. Faisal had been a friend of the U.S. and a moderating influence on other Arab leaders, though zealously anti-Israel. His successor, King Khalid, and the powerful Crown Prince Fahd, however, seemed unlikely to make abrupt changes in Saudi policies on oil, Israel and other matters.

SOUTHERN EUROPE. Communists have made gains in Italy, Greece and, most significantly, in Portugal, a strategically vital NATO ally. Last week radical Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves chose a new 21-member Cabinet, including Communist Party Leader Alvaro Cunhal, who is the most rigidly Marxist boss in Western Europe. The further lurch to the left increased fears that Portugal would eventually become a Communist dictatorship. In Washington, Kissinger spoke of "an evolution in which there is a danger that the democratic process may become a sham, and in which parties are getting into a dominant position whose interests we would not have thought were necessarily friendly to the U.S."

The State Department directed U.S. Ambassador Frank Carlucci to raise these concerns with President Francisco da Costa Gomes and inform him that the leftward tilt was inimical to U.S. and NATO interests. Five other NATO countries officially voiced similar complaints. The Administration was consulting its European allies about means of imposing a kind of quarantine within the alliance. As Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger put it, "It will have to take some symbolic form -- making them outcasts without casting them out." Explained another official: "We would deny access to classified documents that circulate in the alliance and disinvite them to NATO meetings." At the same time, hoping to influence Lisbon favorably, the U.S. made a friendly gesture. Congress approved $25 million in economic assistance. So far, the U.S. is the only Western country to offer the Portuguese financial help.

Although they did not dominate last week's headlines, many other nagging problems confront U.S. foreign policy. In the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, all parties to the Cyprus dispute remain antagonistic toward the U.S. The Greeks are angered because the U.S. long supported the deposed right-wing junta and did not act to stop the Turkish invasion of Cyprus; in protest, the new Greek government pulled out of the NATO military command. The Turks are furious because the U.S. cut off military aid after they invaded Cyprus; they have threatened to close U.S. bases in Turkey. At the Ford Administration's urging, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted by a margin of 9 to 7 last week to recommend a resumption of aid to Turkey. Chances for congressional passage are uncertain. Restoration of aid would mend relations with Turkey but would further offend the Greeks. On Cyprus, both the Turkish and Greek communities are angered at the U.S. for not supporting their side in the war.

U.S. relations with India soured in 1971 when the Nixon Administration "tilted" toward Pakistan during their war. The Indians' attitude toward the U.S. hardened again recently when the State Department lifted an embargo on arms shipments to Pakistan.

U.S. ties with Latin America may mildly improve after Kissinger finally visits the hemisphere in April. It should be quite a trip, with Argentina near chaos, Brazil's right-wing government showing some signs of loosening up, Chile under the heel of a regime that replaced Allende (whom the CIA is widely accused of helping to overthrow) and Venezuela angry about a new U.S. law that denies preferential trade treatment to members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Among other recent problems: Ecuador has renewed its sniping at U.S. tuna fishermen, and Colombia and Venezuela restored relations with Cuba despite U.S. opposition.

The Administration fears that last week's setbacks will weaken future U.S. diplomatic efforts. China, which Ford plans to visit this fall, appears to be growing somewhat skeptical of American power and resolve; when Kissinger privately asked the Chinese for assistance in getting Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk to help negotiate an end to the war in Cambodia, the Chinese did not even reply. On the other hand, the Soviets appear eager to move ahead with detente and nuclear-arms negotiations. Ford plans to hold a summit in Washington with Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev this summer.

Does all or most of this represent "failures" of U.S. policy?

Not to the extent that some lacerating critics suggest. The U.S. has committed major errors and tactical blunders, but it also scarcely had the power to contain some of the recent upheavals. John Tuthill, director of the Atlantic Institute in Paris, notes that "there is a good old typical American reaction that we are responsible for all that goes wrong in every country."

Yet Ford and Kissinger, Viet Nam aside, are right in their concern about the present U.S. role in the world. It does need redefinition -- and reaffirmation. Kissinger argues that ten years of domestic turmoil are taking their toll and that attacks on the "central authority" of the U.S. are weakening its foreign policy. The attack he seems to have in mind consists of Congress's refusing to go along with the Executive. Up to a point this is normal in the American system, but if carried too far, this disaffection between Congress and the White House on foreign policy will clearly be unhealthy, and efforts must be made on both sides to overcome it.

The President seems ready to make a move in that direction. He will address a joint session of Congress on foreign policy next Wednesday or Thursday. By that time, he will have received the reassessments that he ordered of U.S. policy in Indochina and the Middle East. He also plans to talk about policy in Europe, Latin America, China and the Soviet Union. One purpose of Ford's speech will be to demonstrate that the U.S. is certainly not "resigning from the world" (as he put it earlier). Another will be to show to the world that he is in command of U.S. foreign policy. Unlike Nixon, Ford came to office with little experience in foreign affairs, and has had to rely on Kissinger for impetus and direction. Yet, as one high U.S. official puts it, "only the President can provide leadership," particularly the kind that will reassure U.S. allies that there is no "loss of will in the American body politic."

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