Alexander Haig: The Vicar Takes Charge

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the Soviet economy and Soviet troubles with its client states. These trends, he believes, might tempt the Kremlin leaders to launch more foreign adventures out of frustration, but in the long run they can only be weakening. Haig's hard anti-Soviet line is backed by a strong consensus in the U.S. All these trends give him a chance to be one of the most influential Secretaries of State in modern times.

So far, Haig has made almost all the right moves. At the department he heads, there are outlines of policy, there is organization, there is spirit. There is a clear, if risky, decision on El Salvador. But what about China? Or the Third World? The El Salvador crisis alerted the new Administration to the fact that the world will not wait forever. The preliminaries are over; the real test for Alexander Haig has just begun.

By George J. Church.

Reported by Dean Brelis/Philadelphia and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

*Haig, as NATO commander, narrowly escaped death from a terrorist bomb in Belgium two years ago.