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Haig shares this view. The Administration's principal human rights objective, he says, will be to combat "terrorism," which very definitely includes Soviet support of guerrilla insurgencies in non-Communist states.* The new policy, however, runs a serious risk of committing the U.S. to the support of regimes that might lose their popular backing.
All the major themes of the new foreign policy come together in El Salvador.
Indeed, the decision to transform the guerrilla war in that country into a major trial of will was made in part to draw the sharpest contrast between the Carter and Reagan approaches to foreign affairs.
Carter and his advisers sought to play down American-Soviet rivalry in the Third World, and to adapt to revolutionary change rather than fight it. But to Reagan and Haig there is unmistakable evidence—and so far the evidence has not been disputed outside the Communist world—that Salvadoran guerrillas have been receiving arms smuggled in from Communist countries through Cuba and Nicaragua. Thus El Salvador became the test case of U.S. determination and ability to draw the line against Red subversion.
Moreover, the Administration chose not just to demand a cutoff of the arms flow. It also gave all-out support to the shaky military-civilian junta now ruling El Salvador, sending not only American weapons but military training personnel. If that help enables the junta to prevail, the U.S. would indeed have broken a string of American setbacks and Communist successes. But if the junta should fall, either to the leftist guerrillas or —equally bad—to a coup by rightists misusing American aid, Washington would suffer an unnecessary setback round the world. The European allies and several friendly Latin American regimes, which agree with the goal of stopping the arms flow, might be confirmed in a budding suspicion that Washington is being ineffectively militaristic. Why is the Administration taking the extra risk? Says one policymaker: "We feel strongly that we must not be, or seem, equivocal. We don't want to stand up there and say: 'Well, too bad if the government falls; let's just roll with the punch.' That would be Carteresque. We want to get out of the business of rolling with the punches, and if necessary start throwing some of our own."
If U.S. policy is clear in El Salvador, it is much less so in other areas of the world. Nor has Haig yet prevailed on several all-important questions; the Administration is still subject to divided counsel. A roundup of positions, lack of positions, prospects and problems:
Negotiations with the Soviets. The Administration was clearly caught off guard by Brezhnev's unexpected proposal for a summit conference with Reagan, and is uncertain how to respond. While no U.S. official is pressing for an early summit, Haig is receptive to the idea of some kind of talks aimed at defining a "code of conduct" that the superpowers should obey.
He knows that the European allies are especially eager for new talks on arms limitation, which would go hand in hand with a Western military buildup. At this point Haig would convey a far-from-specific message to the Soviets: If you want to enjoy the fruits of