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Poland. Haig has spent much tune in his early weeks working out a strategy to deter a possible Soviet invasion. He has won general agreement from the European allies that breaking political and economic ties with the Soviet Union would be the appropriate response. How to shore up Poland so that it can maintain a tenuous independence from the U.S.S.R. is another question. The country is on the verge of economic collapse and needs $11 billion in new hard-currency credits to stay afloat, but Haig is unwilling to organize a Western rescue effort unless the Warsaw government promises to institute economic reforms.
Africa. In his TV interview with CBS Correspondent Walter Cronkite last week, the President sounded astonishingly sympathetic to South Africa. He referred to it as "a country that has stood by us in every war we've ever fought, a country that, strategically, is essential to the free world in its production of minerals." European allies are already afraid that the U.S., in the name of antiCommunism, may forge closer relations with the apartheid regime. That might lead the Pretoria government to continue stalling on independence for Namibia, slow any liberalization of apartheid laws hi South Africa and stir substantial anti-U.S. sentiment throughout black Africa. Haig's aides insist that no policy has been set and that the Secretary fully understands that the issue is too complex to be seen in simple East-West terms. Says one: "This Administration will surprise you on the Third World."
Law of the Sea. Haig last week instructed the American delegation to a United Nations conference in New York not to finish drafting an international treaty at this session, because the Administration wanted to review its position. The move, coming just as the conference was about to open, was at least bad diplomatic manners: it startled and dismayed more than 1,000 delegates from 159 countries who lad hoped to wrap up at last a treaty that las been under negotiation for seven years. The treaty is not necessarily doomed. It is opposed by U.S. mining interests, which complain that it does not assure them access to seabed minerals, but favored by the Pentagon because it allows fleets to sail unhindered through narrow straits.
Haig's ability to define an effective policy for these tangled problems is untested. Though he has been involved in major national decisions for some 20 years, beginning as a Pentagon staffer in the Kennedy Administration, he has almost always been a No. 2 man, a brilliant executor of policy formulated by others rather than a setter of goals and priorities. He is pre-eminently a doer who has ascended to a post where he will also have to prove himself as a thinker.
He is not an easy man to judge; he sends out too many unexpected signals. Try as he may, he does not look like a diplomat. The stripes on his gray suit are a shade too bold, while his tassled loafers, the gold I.D. bracelet (A.M. HAIG) on his right wrist, his barrel chest and the piercing stare from his blue eyes all bespeak the general