Welcome to an Impossible Job

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

What experts think it takes to succeed at State

The Secretary of State must deal with more than 140 countries around the world. He must manage a sprawling 15,000-person bureaucracy. He must justify his policies to a Congress that lately has seemed ever more inclined to put strings on his freedom of action. And he must do all this in a world of instant communications that flash events in far-off nations onto American TV screens as fullblown crises, moments after they occur.

It may sound like an impossible job --and in fact only a handful of the men who have held it in modern times are widely regarded as having been outstandingly successful (among them: George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger). Foreign policy experts in the U.S. and abroad are reluctant even to discuss the attributes of an "ideal" Secretary, contending that no such paragon could exist. But they do talk about the qualities needed to make a Secretary effective. The list is well worth the attention of Alexander Haig--and Ronald Reagan.

As most experts see it, a successful Secretary of State must: >Win the confidence of his President. This seems obvious, but it is often overlooked, usually with unhappy results. A Secretary who cannot persuade his President to make him the chief recommender, articulator and executor of foreign policy will quickly be upstaged, most likely by the President's National Security Adviser. U.S. policy will seem--and too often be--confused, vacillating, subject to sudden flip-flops.

Ideally, says Kissinger, the Secretary should talk to the President every day, and the two should "get into each other's heads" so that there are no misunderstandings about what policy is and should be (Acheson boasted that he did exactly that with Harry Truman). The President, of course, must make the final decisions, and he will not always agree with his Secretary. Kissinger has this advice for a Secretary who is often overruled: "You should leave."

> Use the bureaucracy capably. The department's career officers will know much more about specific countries than the Secretary ever can; he must draw on their expertise and give them a sense that their advice is taken into account in formulating policy. But he cannot tolerate endless squabbling and wars of newspaper leaks among his subordinates; he must run a tight ship, as Cyrus Vance, for one, did not. On Reagan's transition team, there is already quarreling between members who favor an ultratough policy toward the

Soviet Union -- ending all arms control negotiations, for example -- and others who want a more moderate approach. Haig will have to find some way of dampening the dissension if the disputants wind up in second- and third-echelon jobs at State.

>Be persuasive in dealing with Congress.

The independent legislators can hamstring foreign policy by voting detailed restrictions on its conduct. Haig himself wrote a few months ago in the Washington Quarterly that "Executive authority in dealing with other countries is diminished inevitably by the knowledge that our main lines of policy, our alliances, and our reputation for fidelity may be at the mercy of a constant struggle to establish a fleeting consensus" between the Administration and Congress. Richard Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, puts the point succinctly: "Congressional credibility is absolutely essential. A Secretary cannot work s without it."

>Possess a sophisticated understanding of world trends. In the wry words of Stan ley Hoffmann, professor of government at Harvard, the Secretary must appreciate "the foreignness of foreigners" -- that is, he must understand that they do not think like Americans. W. Anthony Lake, out going chief of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, elaborates: "The Secretary must understand the extraordinary diversity of trends in the world, be able to listen to other nations in calculating our own tactics, then make sure that the U.S. leads the coalitions that are formed."

No one without this ability will be likely to perform well what Acheson once defined as "the central task of a foreign office: to recognize emerging problems in time . . . and prepare to deal with them."

>Have a well-articulated world view, says Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as a professor and later Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser dealt with four Secretaries of State: "The Secretary must have the ability to integrate very complex and varied trends into patterns worldwide so that the U.S. can have definite priorities and be able to define its objectives clearly." Other experts like Hoffmann feel that the Secretary must not become prisoner of a rigid view to which he tries to make every world event conform. But unless the foreign policy chief can relate events in one part of the world to those in another, and shape a strategy that pursues the same goals in all, he is likely to be trapped in a series of ad hoc, inconsistent responses to breaking crises.

Some students of policy add other desirable qualities. Says former Secretary of State William P. Rogers: "It's important that the man have sufficient experience and prestige internationally so that he is respected by our allies, so that they will listen to him. And it's vitally important that he understand the signifigance of military.

By George J. Church. Reported by Christopher Ogden/ Washington

With reporting by Christoper Ogden

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