Alexander Haig: The Vicar Takes Charge

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such clients as Cuba, East Germany and Viet Nam, the Soviets have set out to exploit instability, with distressing success in Angola, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and Central America. Moreover, Soviet adventurism may well become more dangerous when the aging leaders of the Kremlin are succeeded by a new generation that has known only expanding power. At a private dinner celebrating his confirmation by the Senate as Secretary of State, Haig told friends, "Every night I pray that [Soviet President Leonid] Brezhnev stays healthy and alive for a good while to come—at least until we have caught up with the Soviet Union. Because if he goes suddenly, I believe that the young ones waiting in the wings will take over. They have never known war; to them, Stalingrad is the title of a movie. They have never known poverty such as the world experienced during the Great Depression. They are in a very expansive mood, and the longer they wait their turn the better off we all will be."

Even the present Soviet leaders, says Haig, "are never influenced by Western rhetoric ... They are influenced by Western deeds." So their drive to expand Communist power and influence must be checked by a U.S. policy bearing three prime characteristics: consistency ("Effective policy cannot be created anew daily, informed solely by immediate need"); reliability ("American power and prestige should not be lightly committed but once made, that commitment must be honored"); and balance. Haig defines balance as the ability to "reconcile a variety of pressures, often competing." For example, he believes that balance requires the U.S. both to negotiate for arms control and to build up its own military power.

A rapid expansion of American military might is fundamental to the foreign policy that Reagan and Haig are shaping. Some other fundamental principles: the U.S. must forge closer relations with its allies; in particular, it must persuade the NATO countries to cooperate with it in countering Soviet threats outside Europe. It must support friendly anti-Communist governments throughout the world, instead of publicly nagging them to observe U.S. standards of human rights.

The de-emphasis of human rights as a standard to determine which nations qualify for American assistance is one of the most striking changes in the Reagan Administration's approach to foreign policy. The Carter Administration had frequently threatened a cutoff of aid to foreign governments accused of trampling on human rights. But Reagan last month lifted economic sanctions, which had been imposed on Chile when the Pinochet regime refused to cooperate in an investigation into the outrageous assassination in Washington, B.C., of former Chilean Diplomat Orlando Letelier. Earlier Reagan welcomed to the White House Chun Doo Hwan, President of South Korea, a nation deservedly criticized by Carter policymakers for its human rights violations.

In the Reagan Administration's view, overemphasis on human rights only undermines "authoritarian" regimes that have a capacity for change, and increases the chance that they will be succeeded by "totalitarian" governments—specifically, Communist ones—that obliterate human rights altogether. Says Ernest W. Lefever, who has been selected as Haig's top assistant for human rights policy: "There