Soft Words-and a Big Stick

Vance lowers the U.S. voice, but Brown displays the muscle

Shades of T.R.! After weeks of tough talk, apparent inconsistency, and alarums about a revival of the cold war, the Administration last week seemed to have got its foreign policy act together. The policy, to put it in the simplest terms: speak a little more softly, but carry a big stick.

The soft talk came chiefly from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who seemed to be making speeches and appearances everywhere as the Administration pointedly thrust him forward as President Carter's chief foreign policy spokesman. Lest there be any confusion, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, the toughest talker of recent weeks, was keeping unusually quiet, turning down all requests for on-the-record interviews.

As for the big stick, it was carried by Defense Secretary Harold Brown--and quite a stick it was: an 18-ft. cruise missile that is capable, in Brown's words, of splitting the center line of a runway 800 miles from its launch site. Brown flew out to New Mexico's Tularosa Basin for a highly publicized demonstration of the U.S. Navy's sleek Tomahawk cruise missile. As big jack rabbits nibbled unconcernedly at the sagebrush in the blazing morning sun, a camouflage-painted, torpedo-shaped object whistled barely 100 ft. above the White Sands Missile Range at 500 m.p.h., headed dead on target. Brown listened to the whine of its turbofan for a few seconds, then put down his binoculars and turned to reporters near him, the first press group to witness the highly advanced missile. "I believe that it is important that the American public correctly perceive that the U.S. is not inferior to any country in military capability," said the Secretary. "It is important to get that message across." To the Soviets as well? "They are aware of it," said he. "I think perhaps they need to be reminded."

Brown's visit to White Sands and his major speech later in the week in San Francisco were not acts of saber rattling. His performance was part of the most carefully coordinated Administration attempt so far to articulate its defense strategy and its foreign policy goals. The Administration did seem, at least for now, to have harmonized its dissonant voices. The theme was clear: America is second to none in strength, but is nevertheless committed to long-term cooperation-with the Soviets wherever possible.

The need for clarification had become palpable as observers in Washington and Moscow puzzled over which voice was articulating U.S. foreign policy. Was it the tough, "chilly war" growl of Brzezinski? Or the milder, more conciliatory tone of Vance? Or the mixed signal that Carter seemed to be transmitting?

Brzezinski had set off the speculation late in May with a blistering attack on the Soviets. He accused them of behavior that was not "compatible with what was once called the code of detente." Moscow, charged Brzezinski, had maintained "a vitriolic worldwide propaganda campaign against the U.S." and tried to "encircle and penetrate the Middle East." Said the President's National Security Adviser: "I do not believe that sticking one's head into the sand is the best solution to difficult problems in the world."

The biting comment may well have been aimed at U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, who at one point dismissed the Cuban presence in Africa as "a stabilizing influence." Yet by implication, Brzezinski's harsh words could also have been aimed indirectly at Vance, whose expressions of Administration concern over Soviet and Cuban activity in Africa had been phrased with an almost Victorian gentility.

The striking difference between the Vance and Brzezinski approaches baffled observers both inside and outside Washington. Was this the result of genuine confusion and disorganization? Or was it a cunningly devised plan to keep Moscow --and domestic political critics--off balance? According to this theory, "bad cop" Brzezinski would be unleashed when the Soviets needed slapping down or conservatives in the U.S. needed placating; "good cop" Vance would speak out to keep detente alive and mollify anxious American liberals. Yet Carter himself, many noted, was not always a consistent referee of such "shuttlecock" diplomacy. The President left many wondering, even after his Annapolis speech on June 7, which "cop" he was speaking for. At Annapolis, he denounced the Soviets for their aggressive actions abroad and their abuse of human rights at home, yet he reaffirmed that detente was "central to world peace." The Soviets found Carter's words "strange," but so did quite a few Americans. Members of the House International Relations Committee had already complained of "confusion and doubt" in American foreign policy. "Who," Committee Member Dante Fascell demanded, "has got the President's right ear?" Both Vance and Carter tried to answer that question quite simply last week: Vance.

In two hours of thoughtful, carefully prepared public testimony on American foreign policy before the House committee, Vance stressed to the Representatives that he was speaking "for the President." The White House also let it be known that Vance's ten-page prepared statement had not only been cleared by Carter but also had been read by Brzezinski.

The Secretary ranged over U.S.-Soviet relations, NATO, detente, and Cuban troops in Africa, at no point backtracking on the harsh Moscow-aimed comments of Carter at Annapolis, but sometimes rephrasing them. For example, where Carter had bluntly offered the Soviets a choice of "confrontation or cooperation." Vance smoothly asserted that both sides would be "making choices between an emphasis on the divergent elements of our relationship and an emphasis on the cooperative ones." He referred to the tough Soviet reply in Pravda to Carter's Annapolis speech. Growled Pravda: "There is no end to attempts at interfering in our country's internal affairs. The ties and contacts between the two countries are being restricted by unilateral U.S. actions." Vance commented noncommitally: "We are studying [it] with careful attention." But he added that it would be best if the U.S. and the Soviets would jointly "concentrate on the concrete actions we both can take to reduce tensions and to reach agreement on the critical issues now under negotiation."

Vance's presentation did not satisfy everyone on the House committee that the Administration's diplomacy was on track, but it did impress upon them Vance's quiet re-emergence as the man Carter wants to be out front as articulator of American foreign policy. The impression was heightened the following day when Vance, at Carter's request, presented a major formulation of America's African policy at the 58th annual meeting of the Jaycees in Atlantic City, N.J.

The normally boisterous Jaycees listened attentively as Vance stressed that Washington would not "mirror Soviet and Cuban activities in Africa." Such a course, warned Vance, "would only escalate military conflict with great human suffering." The Secretary listed a series of "positive" U.S. responses to the Soviet and Cuban presence. Among them: commitment to social justice and economic development, respect for African nationalism, and the fostering of human rights. That evening, as 80 Representatives and Senators gathered for an off-the-record briefing by President Carter, Vance's star seemed to ascend even higher. Though both Brown and Brzezinski were also on hand, many observers reported that Carter seemed to be making a deliberate effort to ensure that the limelight stayed steadily on the Secretary of State.

In his various formulations of U.S. foreign policy, Vance barely mentioned an issue that only two weeks ago was threatening to create an irreparable rift between Carter and Cuba's Fidel Castro. The issue was whether Cuba could have acted to halt the Katangese rebel invasion of Zaire's Shaba region. In his congressional appearance, Vance blamed the press Is for "overblown" concern with the issue--even though it was the Administration, and especially Carter, that had done most to fan interest and alarm over Cuba's role. When he delivered his policy address to the Jaycees, Vance did not even mention the subject. Instead, he proposed increasing U.S. "consultations" with Agos-tinho Neto's Marxist Angolan government, and spoke of "working with it in more normal ways." (Only two months ago, CIA Chief Stansfield Turner was talking about the possibility of arming anti-Marxist rebels to challenge the Neto regime.) According to Vance, such cooperation might even lead to a "reconciliation" between Zaire and Angola, both of whose regimes have supported insurgent movements on the other's territory. And the Secretary moved almost as fast as he spoke. Within 24 hours, U.S. Diplomat Donald F. McHenry was en route to Luanda to search for a new modus vivendi with Neto.

Indeed, it was not Cuba that was continuing to worry the Administration last week but the Soviet Union. The Pravda commentary to which Vance had referred warned that the "present course" of U.S. foreign policy "is fraught with serious dangers." The article attacked Brzezinski by name, claimed that bilateral Soviet-U.S. negotiations were being "deliberately slowed down" by Washington and warned that U.S. support for human rights in the Soviet Union was "particularly disastrous for mutual confidence." Even as State Department officials were weighing Pravda's words, the Russians displayed a degree of disdain for international opinion unusual even for them, by sentencing Jewish Dissident Vladimir Slepak, 50, to five years' internal exile for "malicious hooliganism." Slepak's offense: he and his wife had unfurled a banner saying LET US GO TO OUR SON IN ISRAEL on the balcony of their apartment as part of their campaign to win per mission to emigrate. Another Jewish dissident, Ida Nudel, 47, was sentenced to a four-year exile for a similar demonstration the same day.

The blatant violations of human rights hardly helped the cause of "cooperation" between Washington and Moscow, particularly since Carter had singled out Slepak by name as a cause for personal concern during his 1976 election campaign. What is more, when Carter spoke last week to a Washington gathering of 26 foreign ministers from the Organization of American States, the issue of human rights took up one-fourth of his 20-minute address. Though Carter was obviously referring to violations in Latin America, his warning that "there are costs to the flagrant disregard of international standards" was presumably meant to be heard in Moscow as well.

So was the Secretary of Defense's restatement of the U.S. military posture before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Brown seemed determined to convince his audience--both in the U.S. and in Moscow--that the U.S. was still superior to the Soviets militarily, without appearing to sound bellicose and threatening. "There is no doubt in my mind," he said, "that the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world." He admitted "concern" about "vulnerabilities" in NATO, but said he felt the U.S. could "outthink, out-design and outperform the Soviets with the resources we have and the steady increases we are requesting."

Brown stressed that the U.S. has a strong second-strike capability in the event of a Soviet attack and, intriguingly, a strong ability to survive such an attack in the first place. Earlier in the week, Carter appeared to reverse a decade-old U.S. nuclear policy by placing new emphasis on civil defense, which has been thoroughly neglected since the bomb-shelter days of the 1960s. The President ordered all civil defense preparations brought under a new government body, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The move would upgrade preparedness to protect the civilian population in a nuclear attack; the Soviets have given high priority to civil defense for quite a while.

Brown, however, emphasized the need for a new SALT agreement, a theme that has run consistently through Administration speeches. "We are pursuing that goal with undiminished vigor," Brown stressed, even though the nation's "basic objectives of strategic deterrence, adequate stability and equivalence are overriding."

At week's end, as Carter headed to Texas to watch 2nd Armored Division maneuvers at Fort Hood along with Brown and Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander, he continued to emphasize the idea of harmony in his Administration's policymaking. At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Fort Worth the day before the maneuvers, Carter told an audience of 5,000: "There is overwhelming cooperation and compatibility between Secretary Vance, Dr. Brzezinski, Harold Brown and others who help me shape foreign policy."

Having gone out of his way earlier in the week to buttress Vance's position, he now came to Brzezinski's defense. "It is certainly not right," he told the Texans, "for the Soviet Union and Cuba to jump on Dr. Brzezinski when I am the one who shapes the policy after getting advice from him and others."

President Carter's audience listened attentively as he declared: "I am determined to have a SALT agreement with the Soviet Union without unwarranted delay." But he got his biggest hand when he turned to that other theme of the week: "We are determined to stay strong. We are not going to let the Soviet Union push us around. We are not going to be second."

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