Waiting for the New Man

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

As Shultz crams to take over Haig's job, foreign policy problems pile up

The man of the hour made about the quietest entrance imaginable. Secretary of State-designate George Shultz last Monday slipped into temporary quarters at the State Department, down a seventh-floor corridor from the palatial office still occupied by the recently resigned Alexander Haig. Shultz was barely seen or heard from the rest of the week. At briefings on the crisis in Lebanon and other pressing troubles by his subordinates-to-be, Shultz confined himself to asking questions and ventured no opinions. His only words to reporters were: "These will be my days of silence."

Clearly Shultz felt that he had a great deal of studying to do before he could begin to manage U.S. foreign policy through a period of potentially perilous transition. But his preparation time will be brief. The Senators who will conduct his confirmation hearings next week are well aware of the dangers of a prolonged interregnum hi the Reagan Administration's already discordant foreign policy-making machinery. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, after conferring with Shultz, predicted "a searching inquiry into his attitude toward the Middle East," but added,

"I don't expect him to have any serious problems." Critics of the Reagan Administration in effect agreed. Said Massachusetts Democrat Paul Tsongas: "There is a need to get the new Secretary in place quickly."

Shultz will face close questioning by California Democrat Alan Cranston, a staunch supporter of Israel, on the operations of the Bechtel Group, the international engineering and construction corporation that the Secretary-designate has helped run for eight years at a six-figure salary. The Senator is particularly interested in charges that Bechtel, which has multimillion-dollar contracts with Saudi Arabia, forced its subcontractors to observe the Arab boycott of Israel. But even Cranston predicted that the hearings will be shorter than the five days devoted to Haig's confirmation 18 months ago.

Meanwhile symptoms of the tense problems that Shultz will confront are multiplying. The most potentially explosive is in Lebanon, where the U.S. was trying to prevent a final Shootout between Israeli forces and the Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas holed up in the wreckage of encircled West Beirut. At the direction of Haig, who stayed in office temporarily to manage the crisis, the Administration was pursuing a strategy that was at once complicated and somewhat contradictory. It was simultaneously urging Israel to avoid a final assault and pressing P.L.O. leaders to negotiate an agreement by which they and all their armed followers would leave the city, backed up by warnings that Washington cannot hold off the Israelis indefinitely (see WORLD).

If the U.S. can mediate a P.L.O. withdrawal and persuade the Israelis to lift their siege of West Beirut, Haig will be able to quit in fact as well as in name. (He left Washington last Thursday for a Fourth of July weekend in West Virginia, uncertain when, or if, he would be back.) But such a settlement will only bring a new set of problems to the fore. The U.S. will then have to work out some formula for an Israeli withdrawal from a neutralized Lebanon. The goal, after that, will be to revive the long-stalled negotiations on autonomy for the Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There was an uncomfortable reminder last week of the divisions that Shultz will face within the Administration over Israel. When Haig, at President Reagan's direct orders, met with Israeli Ambassador Moshe Arens, one White House source reported that the outgoing Secretary of State threatened a suspension of U.S. military and economic aid if Israel launched a final assault on West Beirut. Later, both the State Department and the White House denied that report, insisting that Haig had only warned against an assault in general terms. The conflicting reports appeared to mirror a split not only among Reagan's advisers but in the President's own views. He is torn between instinctive sympathy for Israel and increasing shock at the civilian casualties and worldwide alarm caused by Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Simultaneously, the most serious rift in years between the U.S. and its Western European allies continued to widen. At a summit meeting in Brussels, the ten-nation European Community expressed its dismay at Reagan's June order forbidding U.S. companies, their foreign subsidiaries and even foreign licensees from supplying equipment for the 3,500-mile pipeline that is to carry Soviet natural gas from Siberia to Western Europe. And the Brussels communique, toned down somewhat from a stinging initial draft, did not fully reflect the intensity of the Europeans' belief that the U.S. is waging economic war against the Soviet Union at their expense.

At first glance, Shultz would seem ideally suited to smooth over this conflict. Like Haig, he is a devoted believer in cooperation with European allies; the expertise in dealing with international economic problems that Shultz acquired as Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury is widely admired on both sides of the Atlantic. But Shultz is on record as opposed to the use of trade as a political weapon against the Soviets, and as a Bechtel executive he complained about the "light-switch diplomacy"--an on-again, off-again policy--preventing American companies from serving as reliable suppliers under international contracts. Those positions scarcely fit well with the stand President Reagan took at his news conference last Wednesday.

Seemingly nervous and speaking at times more haltingly than usual, Reagan tried to say as little as possible about foreign policy. He flatly refused to discuss the reasons that had led him to accept Haig's resignation before it had been formally offered. Said Reagan: "I don't think there's anything that in any way would benefit the people to know." He turned aside several questions about Israel and Lebanon, pleading, quite correctly, that "I have to walk a very narrow line" in view of "the delicacy of the negotiations."

On the pipeline, however, Reagan was explicit and unyielding. He argued again that the pipeline would enable Moscow to "engage in a kind of blackmail" against the Europeans by threatening a shutoff of energy supplies and would also enable the Soviets, who are "very hard-pressed financially and economically," to sell gas for $10 billion to $12 billion a year in cash, "which I assume ... would be used to arm further." At another point, the President declared blithely that at the beginning of his Administration, "there was some disarray with our European allies, [but] I think that has been largely eliminated." That statement indicated a distressing lack of appreciation of how strongly the Europeans resent the pipeline policy.

Whatever policy he may eventually urge in dealing with the Middle East, the pipeline or other specific issues, Shultz will have one advantage in pressing his views inside the Administration: he does not arouse the personal animosities that so embittered policy disputes during the tenure of the tempestuous Haig. Shultz is known for striving to mold a consensus among officials of differing views. He will argue strongly for his opinions in private but loyally support any decision that goes against him--while continuing to urge behind the scenes that it be modified.

In particular, Shultz has a good chance of avoiding the clashes that Haig so often had with the National Security Council staff. The head of that staff, National Security Adviser William Clark, unquestionably is a rising power within the Administration. But Clark, a former California judge, weighs and sifts foreign policy advice coming to the White House as if he were still presiding over a trial. He does not have the expertise to develop any broad policy designs of his own. His stress is on making sure that foreign policy reflects Reagan's predilections, which he knows well from an intimate association dating back to 1967; Clark's run-ins with Haig occurred primarily because he felt that the Secretary was going beyond the President's wishes. That is a mistake Shultz is unlikely to make.

There are some difficulties to overcome, however, if Shultz is to become the powerful Secretary of State that some White House aides freely predict he will be. Reagan pointed to one at his news conference. The President insisted that his procedure for charting policy will not change despite Haig's departure. "My system," he said, "has been one not of having a synthesis presented to me [under which] I get a single option to approve or disapprove... I debate all those who have an interest in a certain issue.. . and then I make my decision based on what I have heard in that discussion."

In theory, that sounds admirable. In practice, given the President's lack of foreign experience, it has been a formula for continuing conflicts that never get fully resolved. The compromising spirit for which Shultz is noted may tone down those differences. It probably will not eliminate them, because to a large extent they are institutional. "Foreign policy comes from the Oval Office," Reagan said last week. But in any Administration, and especially in this one, the State Department tends to stress relations with allies, the Pentagon thinks in terms of military muscle, and White House aides are concerned about the effects of a foreign decision on the President's image at home.

Shultz may also face problems in picking a new team for the State Department. He is likely to keep some of Haig's lieutenants, but Richard Burt, who has still not been confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, and Dean Fischer, chief State Department spokesman, may go. Both owe their posts largely to their friendship with Haig.

Several economic policy posts are vacant, including a top one, Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs; Robert Hormats turned in his resignation from that job three weeks ago. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina will have a true-blue conservative candidate for every position that Shultz has to fill, and the new Secretary may come under pressure to mollify rightists by accepting some of Helms' choices. If that happens, some Administration watchers are fearful that Shultz may find it difficult to stand up to the ideologues within his department and the Administration in general.

None of these problems are insurmountable. But Shultz will also have to cope with them while, in effect, taking a cram course on crises that will not stop boiling. The President observed last week that "there is no easy time for a Secretary of State to resign." Quite true. But Haig's imminent departure happens to come at a worse time than most. --By George J. Church. Reported by Johanna McGeary and John F. Stacks/Washington

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, John F. Stacks

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