The Shakeup at State

  • Share
  • Read Later

An experienced team player replaces a battle-weary vicar

"With great regret, I have accepted the resignation of Secretary of State Al Haig."

—President Reagan at the White House

"We agreed that consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose were essential, [but] in recent months it has become clear to me that the foreign policy on which we embarked together was shifting from that careful course."

—Haig, reading his letter of resignation at the State Department

It was a strange event, at once inevitable and shockingly abrupt. Alexander Meigs Haig, 57, had been out of tune with much of the rest of the Reagan Administration from the day he took office 17 months ago as the self-proclaimed "vicar" of American foreign policy. He had been worn down by incessant friction with colleagues—much of it self-created—in the unending battle for the President's ear, and he had said he would quit so many times that the threat of resignation had become a Washington joke. This time, however, Reagan was also worn down by the friction and was fully pre pared to let Haig go. Yet, until the very moment that an obviously strained and tense Reagan stepped before the TV cameras to make his terse (1 min. 11 sec.) announcement of Haig's resignation, there had been no hint that the President had not only agreed to his departure but had already chosen a successor. The nation, the world and even members of the National Security Council who had attended a luncheon meeting with Reagan and Haig that broke up only 1 hr. 45 min. before the President's announcement, reacted with stunned surprise.

The amazement was tinged with apprehension too. Not, to be sure, because of any misgivings about the ability of the man that Reagan chose as Haig's replacement. As Secretary of the Treasury and economic-policy coordinator in the Nixon Administration, George Pratt Shultz, 61, earned a reputation as a team player who could win cooperation from officials with strongly divergent views; he might be able to avoid the bureaucratic battles that gave Haig so much trouble in bringing "consistency, clarity and steadiness of purpose" to American foreign policy. Though Shultz has no formal diplomatic background, his negotiations with foreign leaders on trade and monetary matters during the Nixon Administration and his experience during the past eight years as a key executive of Bechtel, an engineering and construction firm with operations in more than 20 countries, have made him thoroughly familiar with the world outside the U.S. With the very notable exception of Israeli leaders and their more fervent American supporters, who are worried that Bechtel's extensive operations in Saudi Arabia have given Shultz an excessive sympathy for the Arab cause, foreign leaders who know Shultz —and a surprising number know him quite well—regard him as a cool, pragmatic professional.

  1. Previous Page
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9