Triumph of a Team Player

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Haig and the White House are now in accord, but will it last?

Anew spirit of detente blossomed last week, not between the U.S. and the Soviet Union but between the White House and Secretary of State Alexander Haig. "He comes home in triumph," President Reagan told reporters, as Haig returned from a NATO foreign ministers' meeting that had endorsed the American hard line blaming Soviet militarism for the breakdown of East-West relations. After two months of squabbling between Haig and the President's top aides, the Secretary had stopped trying to assert his prerogatives and had started pledging to be a team player. Reagan's enthusiastic welcome home, accompanied by a pointedly symbolic "photo opportunity" of the two men posing, was the clearest signal yet that Haig's new-found deference has probably saved his job.

Reagan called the NATO council "a most successful meeting in a situation that could have been critical for us in regard to our allies." If indeed the European endorsement holds, it was a genuine achievement; it took hard bargaining by Haig in both Washington and Rome. Haig wanted NATO to offer the Soviets both a carrot and a stick--an American pledge to reopen arms control talks, accompanied by a unified Alliance get-tough policy made credible by defense spending. The day before he left Washington, Haig won Reagan's agreement, despite resistance from some hardliners. Soon after he arrived in Rome he met with the key advocate of renewed arms control, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and displayed a five-page handwritten letter from Reagan to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. In it Reagan communicated his horror of war, his hopes for peace and his willingness this year to move a step toward resuming SALT by negotiating controls of European continental-range missiles. Haig later mentioned the letter to other foreign ministers, with evident effect.

The Secretary also advocated a policy of "linkage" involving all East-West relations, urged common policy outside the NATO area (for example, in the Persian Gulf), and emphasized the Administration's two selling points with the Third World: ties with the Soviets bring too close an embrace, alliance with the West can produce economic improvement.

Although the Dutch pushed for immediate arms talks and the Scandinavian nations wanted more positive mentions of detente, ultimately all accepted a toughly worded document attacking the Soviets for arms buildup and aggression. Haig agreed to a partial endorsement of detente, a policy still popular in most of Europe. The communique describes it as a NATO goal "whenever Soviet behavior makes this possible." The allies in turn agreed to defense spending at "necessary" but unspecified levels and reaffirmed U.S. plans to install 572 new land-based cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe while bargaining with Moscow is under way.

Haig, NATO Commander in Chief from 1974 to 1979, seemed much more confident than he was on his swing through the Middle East last month. He was on familiar ground. And his job was more secure. He was back to seeing Reagan about three times a week and often talking to him by telephone several times a day. The NATO ministers were apparently reassured by Haig's own confidence. They see him as an accessible pragmatist among Reagan's cold warriors.

After the NATO meeting ended, the Administration took the initiative on two other foreign policy fronts, both involving the Reagan-Haig principle of rewarding friendly governments, whatever their human rights policies, and of punishing hostile, leftist ones. The Administration is planning to reinstall an ambassador and offer new military aid to Guatemala, whose repressive military regime was recently accused by Amnesty International of complicity in 3,000 political murders since 1979. The State Department announced that it was closing Libya's embassy in Washington and expelling its diplomatic personnel because of well-substantiated charges that Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi was actively promoting international terrorism.

White House officials were taking considerable satisfaction from last week's smooth progress in Rome. "If we could just do it like this all the time," sighed one top presidential aide. Gone for the moment, although not entirely forgotten, were Haig's early tactical errors: trying to get Reagan to give him total control of foreign policy; threatening, all but publicly, to resign over the selection of Vice President George Bush as chief of crisis management; announcing, in a trembling, unsteady voice on the day President Reagan was shot, that he was "in control" at the White House.

Haig seems to have set aside his struggles for turf, for example, with Agriculture Secretary John Block over the grain embargo against the Soviet Union, and with Special Trade Representative Bill Brock over Japanese auto imports. In recent weeks he actively lobbied the White House for a fresh start. Peace apparently has been made.

But consistency and collaboration in an Administration are prerequisites, not a policy. On most issues, the Administration has not yet moved beyond a set of attitudes to specific, thought-out positions. Says one senior U.S. diplomat who is also a Reagan supporter: "The Administration's global view is clear. The concepts have been defined. But the regional objectives and policies have not received enough attention. Some of us doubt whether the system that has been set up can work. It has done poorly so far even though there has not been a real crisis yet."

Part of the problem is that even the newly chastened Haig still has not turned his full attention to making policy. Moreover, for most of his career he has been a tireless executor of policy rather than a creator, and he still appears to prefer working twelve-hour days to delegating authority.

Yet Haig's failings are less serious than chronic shortcomings at the White House. In an effort to keep the National Security Council from becoming an alternative State Department, a role it took on in the Carter and Nixon Administrations, the White House has denied National Security Adviser Richard Allen an adequately trained and able staff for his stripped-down duties of coordinating policy and briefing the President.

Partly because of White House disorganization and Haig's early grab for power, Allen has not demonstrated much authority in his job. He failed to persuade presidential aides that the proposed sale of the sophisticated AWACS airborne radar system to Saudi Arabia faced probable defeat in Congress. As a result, Reagan okayed the deal over Haig's objections.

For all that, Haig is known to believe that the press has unfairly concentrated on his, and the Administration's, troubles, and paid too little attention to foreign policy successes. Relations with the European allies, bumpy at best during the Carter years, are much improved. The Secretary believes that disagreements with Japan and China are being smoothed over. Thanks to U.S. military and economic assistance, he is overly eager to assert, leftists have been thwarted in El Salvador and the junta headed by Jose Napoleon Duarte appears stronger. Haig, and indeed White House aides, claim that they deserve more credit for the unglamorous but essential jobs of improving relations with Canada, Mexico and especially Jamaica, whose new moderate government is supposed to serve as a model of economic development for the restive Caribbean.

Haig is sensitive to the appearance of zigzag confusion in irreconcilable statements put out by various Administration spokesmen on such issues as a trade embargo if the Soviets invade Poland or potential U.S. construction of the neutron bomb. He is pushing hard for consistency. One major concern at the NATO meeting was what Weinberger -- regarded by Europeans as a loose cannon -- would do and say at a gathering this week of the Atlantic Alliance's defense ministers. Said one aide: "Haig wants Weinberger to sing from the same sheet music."

In the Middle East, Haig hopes to establish, he says, a "strategic consensus" among states from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf that can be persuaded to set aside antagonisms toward the U.S. and each other because they fear Soviet aggression. He foresees breakthroughs in Jordan and long-hostile Iraq, but so far there is little evidence of movement. In short the major "accomplishment" of Reagan-Haig foreign policy to date is the start of a strategic consensus from Foggy Bottom to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue .

-- By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Gregory H. Wierzynski

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