COVER STORY
Shaping foreign policy for a decade of risks and challenges
The meeting in the Oval Office was private, but after it ended White House aides invited photographers to snap pictures of Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State. Explained one staffer: "We need to show that the Secretary has access to Reagan." Replied another: "You've got it wrong. We need to show that the President has access to Al Haig."
The gag has a point. Rarely has a new Secretary of State moved so swiftly to take control of foreign policy as Alexander Meigs Haig Jr., 56—former White House Chief of Staff in the darkest days of Watergate, former NATO commander, soldier-bureaucrat-diplomat whose self-assurance is matched only by his iron will.
Said liberal Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachussetts, toward the close of Haig's confirmation hearings in January: "He will use this talent to dominate this Administration."
If not, it will hardly be for lack of trying. Shortly after Reagan announced his nomination in December, Haig signaled his take-charge determination by dismissing members of the transition team that had been studying foreign policy; he consigned its uninspired reports to a shredder. Only hours after Reagan took the Inaugural oath, Haig handed Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese a memo proposing a reorganization of foreign policy decision-making machinery that would make the Secretary of State supreme; two weeks ago, Reagan approved a directive giving Haig most, though not quite all, of the power he wanted. Faster than any other Cabinet member, Haig picked a nearly complete team of subordinates. Reagan last week formally nominated several of them, despite objections from conservatives in Congress who consider the lieutenants—like Haig himself—too deeply rooted in the Kissinger era of detente.
But organization is only the opening skirmish. Now comes the true campaign: devising a foreign policy to meet the challenges of what Haig sees as the supremely risky world of the 1980s. Since the Administration has been preoccupied with the domestic economy, its foreign policy is more a set of attitudes than a series of thought-out positions. But if the specifics are still unclear, the overall approach is not. Haig began spelling it out in speeches while he was still NATO commander; his ideas dovetail so neatly with Reagan's that the President hardly considered anyone else as his No. 1 foreign policymaker (or, as Haig calls it, the President's "vicar" in this area). The essence of their combined view: the prime threat to peace and stability in the world is Soviet expansionism, and the U.S. must restore the confidence of its allies and the entire free world that it can and will contain such aggression.
In Haig's eyes, U.S. policy since Viet Nam has often seemed—and been —"confused with respect to the priorities we should establish" and disposed "to abhor anything military." Power in the world, to some extent, "has become diffused over 150 nations," creating a climate of severe instability.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union has transformed its military power "from a continental and largely defensive land army to a global offensive army, navy and air force fully capable of supporting an imperial foreign policy." With the help of