The Dilemmas of Conservatism I
Rodman, Peter W.
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 15, NO. 3 / M ARCH 1982 Peter W. Rodman THE DILEMMAS OF CONSERVATISM I. Reagan the diplomat. America's intellectual adjustment to the world since 1945 has been full...
...The Administration sought a collective Alliance response, fearful of becoming itself the issue again in Western Europe if it acted unilaterally...
...The vigorous opposition had its effect...
...We must look to the security of our friends...
...But the pressures will soon mount again...
...If doubts grow about our willingness or ability to do so, the problems in the relationship will become much more serious...
...Guatemala borders on Mexico-whose social structure is about to go through the stresses of rapid economic growth fueled by oil wealth...
...Our long-term strategy must be to show that moderation is rewarded, that extremism is penalized, and that American policy is not driven by pressures, either domestic or international...
...The gathering was convened by Mexican President Lopez Portillo, who seems to find Ronald Reagan a considerable improvement over his predecessor (Montezuma's true revenge...
...A stronger and more self-assured America was in the overriding interest of the free world, but it was also bound to turn alliance relations into a matter of some delicacy...
...It must battle the Soviets in the hard slogging ground of the geopolitical contest in distant (and not so distant) lands, not only in the ideological enthusiasms of the Voice of America...
...The negotiation, not surprisingly, ran aground...
...On Poland, the President's instincts were right: The destruction of Solidarity was an outrage, and a S o v i e t outrage...
...This is not to deny that the world is wracked by countless other sources of tension, but only to acknowledge that Soviet involvement exacerbates every other problem and that containment of Soviet power is the precondition for the constructive solution of any of them...
...The classic example from recent history is Angola...
...It is profoundly disheartening when American conservatives have no stomach for meeting the challenge, either...
...the humiliation he inflicted on Helmut Schmidt did harm that now appears irretrievable...
...Our allies looked forward to an end of American amateurism and weakness...
...12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982...
...Conservatives, evolving out of an isolationist tradition, have proved to be the most steadfast supporters of American world leadership...
...It embraced SWAPO as a group of"progressives...
...Ardent defenders of the Panama Canal seemed uninterested in preventing the Communization of Central America...
...The Administration had more than sufficient reason to make an issue of El Salvador...
...the Soviets will encourage it as part of a new "peace o f f e n s i v e " precisely in order to make people forget Poland...
...We do not have the luxury of adopting positions for their short-term public relations value...
...The problem with the AWACS was diplomatic more than military...
...They are patriots dedicated to a strong defense and vigilant against the moral evil of Soviet Communism...
...The prospects are ominous...
...But, alas, it has no domestic constituency...
...The American people rejected the diplomacy of helplessness and the philosophy that spawned it...
...The West's priority must be to restore the military balance...
...In the end, the Western response fell far short of what was needed...
...This strong stand seems to have induced at least a pause in Communist gunrunning...
...Repeal would strengthen the Administration's hand considerably in southern Afri'can diplomacy...
...Pressure on the Cubans in Angola weakens SWAPO's coercive power in Namibia and increases the prospects for moderate solutions throughout southern A~:rica...
...Do we really want to see Communist pressures on (and in) Mexico later in this decade ? The Reagan Administration had many plausible reasons for its caution in Central America: the need to concentrate on the President's economic program...
...The bond has proven its durability through several shifts of leadership on both sides...
...The Reagan Administration set about the necessary rebuilding of American military strength...
...Black Africa expected the worst--and therefore the Administration got considerable mileage out of the reasonable positions it came up with...
...Whatever the historical antecedents, it bespoke a strange lack of self-confidence in an Administration that prides itself on its reaffirmation of America's will and strength...
...The Administration found itself for a time in the ~bsurd position that, in the era of a relentless Soviet military buildup, invasion of Afghanistan, and intimidation of Poland, the United States was coming to be regarded in Europe as the world's greatest menace to peace...
...The major issue outstanding now is who will rule it: whether a radical guerrilla group, SWAPO, will be placed in control of the terrkory by United Nations fiat, or whether a fairer political process, with opportunities for other indigenous groups and with guarantees of minority rights, will ensure a more hopeful future...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 7 Latin America: The Geopolitical Struggle Since it entered office, the Reagan Administration has been embarked on a campaign to counter Cuban and Nicaraguan military intervention in the hemisphere, particularly in El Salvador...
...Black Africans, encouraged by the United States, raised their demands...
...It is capable of great achievement...
...Nor is it in America's interest to accelerate the radicalization of southern Africa...
...Newspapers were filled with comments by Pentagon sources that military action was unwise or not feasible-as if Nicaragua had already become a nuclear superpower...
...This would have been a reasonable platform for a stronger military policy, but in the absence of the latter it was bound to be ineffectual...
...The United States did not give away the store...
...Then, strangely, hints of a possible U.S...
...mainly, it reflects China's perception of the international environment...
...The focus soon shifted to Nicaragua, Latin America's newest totalitarian state, which was in the process of tripling the size of its army and creating the biggest military machine in the history of Central America...
...Policymaking As 1982 began, the bureaucratic problems which had been such an embarrassment during the first year seemed to have been remedied...
...Even the Carter Administration--before January 20 --had decided to reinstate military assistance...
...A similar strategy was pursued successfully in another area of policy...
...Every President who wants to conduct a foreign policy learns that economic and military assistance is a vital instrument of his power in foreign affairs...
...the unpopularity of military action at home...
...El Salvador is a tiny country, in our own hemisphere, with a short coastline, a leader with democratic credentials, and a program of land reform and free elections that is worthy of broad support...
...Nevertheless, the new Administration in part created its own problem...
...The Administration's task is intellectual as well as administrative...
...It has shown its readiness to proffer military and economic aid to friendly countries menaced by the Soviet Union and its radical allies, from the Caribbean to Morocco to Thailand...
...The Administration has matured in office...
...Peking's threat to attack Taiwan has in fact been in abeyance ever since the Sino-American rapprochement began--which is not a coincidence...
...Concern for our friends in Taiwan is an expression of the sentiment of the American people...
...After the debacle in Iran, it was of no small importance in the Middle East to correct the impression of a United States fearful of using its power or ashamed of giving aid to its friends...
...and third, that they had more of a chance of South Africanacceptance...
...I n any case, the Administration is now hemmed in...
...In a less congenial global environment there would be a premium on cleverness, maneuver, the ability to set priorities, and decisive action...
...China is therefore free to burnish its militant Third World credentials and to indulge its taste for revolutionary rhetoric...
...If we cannot contain a Communist power grab there, we are in deep trouble...
...They seem more comfortable with arcane debates over strategic arms or minor-league battles over State Department personnek Unless they are willing to defend the global equilibrium on the ground where it is being threatened, even their support for rearmament seems more a throwback to the isolationist tradition of Fortress America than a true commitment to defend the West...
...As in all foreign policy, one sometimes has to make hard choices...
...To this day, Jimmy Carter thinks he lost through the bad luck of the Iranian hostage crisis...
...This shows the advantages a conservative President has if he wields his power cleverly...
...Therefore, history will not forgive them if disarray prevents the purposeful and effective foreign policy that they, better than anyone, know is needed more than ever...
...it, too, strengthens African moderates who share our abhorrence of Communist adventurism...
...Gratuitous American comments on the dangers of pacifism or about limited nuclear war, even though analytically sound, only intensified the pressures from the Left...
...This will be a tricky path to tread...
...Ironically, "North-South" policy is providing a hint of what might have been accomplished in East-West policy (before Poland) with an analogous strategy...
...It dropped the dangerous proSWAPO bias of the Carter diplomacy and offered proposals that had three inducements for black Africa: first, that further excessive demands were now clearly unrealistic...
...the Israelis must learn that th~ey can have either territory or peace, but not both...
...the Right despises the very thought of giving away money to foreigners...
...Too much depends on its success for it to allow itself to fail...
...The national traumas of Vietnam and Watergate had subsided...
...At the same time, Poland is bound to be unnerving to the Chinese...
...that anti-Western radicals were simply frustrated idealists to be won over by American goodwill...
...A major strategic objective of our policy should be to show that Egypt, having turned toward us and toward peace, is vindicated by demonstrations of American backing...
...They elected a President who was not ashamed of American power, who was not afraid to stand by our friends and oppose our enemies, and who also had the moral perception to distinguish who our friends and enemies were...
...Eventually the President acted correctly on his own convictions, forthrightly condemning the Soviet Union, declaring a few unilateral economic sanctions, and exerting moral pressure on European governments, particularly West Germany...
...It had some possibility of bipartisan support: The AFL-CIO backed the land reform that the Duarte government had instituted...
...We could do little or nothing to save Polish freedom...
...the one element that a President ought to be able to ensure is the cohesion of the Executive Branch...
...It was also inevitable that nuclear strategy in Europe would be a troublesome problem: Now that there is no longer an American strategic superiority m offset the Soviet theater superiority in Europe, which NATO relied upon for a generation, the obvious necessity is to build up NATO's conventional forces...
...It seemed almost f r i g h t e n e d by the prospect of negotiation...
...Until the President's speech of November 18--a sweeping offer to refrain from deploying U.S..intermediate-range nuclear weapons in exchange for the dismantling of Soviet SS-20s--the United States was under assault by " p e a c e " demonstrations all over Europe and, more importantly, by incessant importunings from allied governments to negotiate with the Soviets...
...But when it came to East-West diplomacy, the Administration took a while to get its bearings...
...It was not a change in his position, only a recognition that the American people relished n e i t h e r weakness nor war and wanted to hear a positive s t a t e m e n t of American goals...
...In America, the time was clearly right for a more self-confident, vigorous, and assertive foreign policy...
...Poland has provided the Administration a brief respite from pressures to jump into bed with the Soviet Union...
...The effort to settle Namibia gives the United States a positive platform in Africa in the name of which to resist Soviet and Cuban intervention...
...The Administration's free-market philosophy must be tempered by some political management of East-West economic relations if we are to have any effective strategy against Soviet expansionism...
...A conservative President, if he is clever, also has opportunities for creative diplomacy that a President discounted as weak usually lacks...
...The Reagan Administration inherited a negotiation and had the good sense to seek to shape it, not abandon it...
...Or else Ronald Reagan, like Jimmy Carter, could end up the victim rather than the master of events...
...Problems with menacing adversaries, obstreperous allies, and a recalcitrant Congress cannot always be avoided...
...The Soviets, for the first time intervening successfully by force thousands of miles from their borders, could only conclude that in the absence of effective resistance there was no reason Senators Jesse Helms, Jake Garn, and William Scott were among the 15 Republicans voting agamst the President...
...The autonomy talks should be given a chance to succeed...
...The United States, however, has responsibility for the negotiating process...
...The Reagan team was bound to come up against hard choices that would pull it in different directions, between its mind and its heart...
...Any Third World leaders who came to Cancun expecting (or seeking) confronta, tion with the arch-capitalist were disarmed by an American policy that spoke positively of global economic growth, expanding and liberalized trade, continuation of foreign aid, and resumption of a dialogue on world economic problems...
...Bringing the PLO into the game would be both a symptom of failure and a guarantee of it...
...If we fail, the West will have proved instead that the dependency works the other way: that regardless of Soviet brutality, the democracies are now hooked on aiding the technological development of the Soviet war machine...
...With patience and a steady hand, the United States must nurture the .conditions for future progress, leading all parties toward the realization that conciliation is the only route to achievement of their objectives...
...The real tragedy is how little conservative support there was in this country when the Administration desperately needed it...
...it has wisely resisted Taiwan's requests for advanced fighter aircraft...
...But the new Administration's sophistication would be tested...
...In July the Administration announced a program for a political compromise...
...The Reagan team is in accord on a view of the world which tells them--correctly--that America is entering a decade of international danger...
...Interestingly enough, the 1980 presidential election hinged on the very choice between these two classical American philosophies of foreign policy...
...Allied evasions that it was an "internal Polish affair" were as honest as the notion that Vichy was a spontaneous French decision...
...Our friends in Peking may someday have a stake in our adherence to this principle in other contexts...
...In December 1975 the Ford Administration fought a fierce battle in the Congress to maintain a program of military aid to anti-Communist black nationalists fighting against Cuban troops and Soviet arms in Angola...
...however, and it is one of the historic tragedies of our time...
...In October, a "North-South" summit meeting in Cancun brought together leaders from rich and poor countries to discuss the problems of economic development...
...without this there is not even any prospect of realistic arms control...
...the Western Alliance is still in disarray...
...American firmness discouraged excessive demands...
...America's intellectual adjustment to the world since 1945 has been full of ironies...
...The Soviets have just reimposed the unity of their empire...
...It need not compete with the Soviet Union for America's favor as it did in periods of closer U.S.-Soviet relations...
...this has been evaded by Western governments for two decades...
...It should continue to do so...
...We could hardly dissuade the West Germans from the gas pipeline deal with the Soviet Union once we had been so casual over grain...
...Arab moderates endorse the PLO partly to protect their flanks against the radicals...
...And much of the hypersensitivity in Europe on the subject of nuclear weapons deployment is the price we are still paying for Jimmy Carter's absurd waffling over the neutron bomb...
...It was clearly a learning process, at least for some of the Administration's more conservative adherents...
...Loyalty to friends is a valuable quality in a great power...
...8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 not to do the same in Ethiopia, then in South Yemen, then in Afghanistan, beginning a pattern of aggressive interventionism that also continues to this day...
...In the middle 1960s, Lyndon Johnson sent American troops to prevent a Communist takeover in the Dominican Republic...
...The Administration let itself be trapped...
...The result is a negotiation that seems to be succeeding...
...The considerable power that the United States still possessed would have to be wielded with some finesse, and courage...
...The debate over intermediate-range nuclear weapons is no mere tactical squabble...
...and the Polish crisis found the crisis management mechanism headed by the Vice President (renamed the '.'Special Situations Group") working smoothly...
...Liberal Presidents, on the other hand, seem to have an uncanny knack for getting into dangerous crises: They start out eagerly trying to reassure the USSR of our desire to conciliate, which seems only to tempt the Soviets to overreach and ultimately forces the United States to put its foot down when things are on the verge of getting out of control--the Cuban-missile-crisis / Afghanistan syndrome...
...This was the Carter Administration's mistake...
...The voters of 1980 elected a President who represented the best in Americam conviction, self-confidence, courage, realism...
...Liberals, who had been the most devoted internationalists through most of the century, collapsed under the psychological strain of Vietnam and turned sharply isolationist...
...At the same time, as noted, the Administration has sought repeal of the Clark Amendment, which bars American support for anti-Communist nationalists in neighboring Angola--SWAPO's guerrilla base...
...the upgrading of the office of the national security adviser should improve coordination in day-to-day policymaking...
...Aside from the economic benefit to the Soviet Union, the grain sales forfeited much of our influence over our West European allies, whose hunger for trade with the USSR has always been unconstrained by political judgment...
...In the early 1980s, if the Right joins tacitly with the Left in its unwillingness to confront the radicalization of Central America, then it is depressingly clear we have not yet recovered from the Vietnam syndrome...
...Part of the price one must pay for a successful strategy such as that pursued at Cancdn, for example, is foreign aid...
...According to several accounts, White House pollsters concluded that involvement in El Salvador was politically a loser...
...it must learn the virtues of maneuver as well as of the frontal assault...
...Carter was overwhelmed at home, in short, because he had so clearly lost control of events abroad...
...it has learned from experience and confounded skeptics on one issue after another...
...Senators Goldwater and Laxalt did not vote...
...While this forthrightness was beneficial in helping to raise the consciousness of the American people, it was bound to collide with a more precarious European political situation...
...The result turned out to be an endless series of Peter W. Rodman served on the National Security Council s t a f f in the Nixon and Ford Administrations...
...It devoted new effort t0 the informational battle, pouring out State Department white papers on Cuban interventionism and Soviet disinformation, and Defense Department brochures on Soviet military power...
...that America itself was guilty of having misused its power...
...It is an opportunity for leadership that must not be squandered through bureaucratic-confusion in Washington or hesitations that cause it to lose control of events abroad...
...But the challenge remains, and the most imminent challenge is close to home...
...I r o n i c a l l y , having played the bull in the china shop too long on arms control, the Administration then bent over backward more than it had to in December and January to avoid acting on its true convictions over Poland...
...second, that the new proposals were, at bottom, fair (and commanded European support...
...The Namibia diplomacy and repeal of Clark are thus Complementary...
...blockade to contain Nicaraguan interventionism in El Salvador were shot down by--of all people--the Defense Department...
...The AWACS decision had merit in this context...
...It must harness strength to strategy...
...On the merits, the Administration was far more correct than the Europeans...
...The United States is thus positioned in southern Africa exactly as it should be: in favor of equitable settlements of the racial conflict, and in a strong moral position to act against Soviet and Cuban imperialism by whatever means necessary...
...Europeans endorse the PLO because of their dependence on oil...
...And as Israel prepares to relinquish the last of its security buffer in the Sinai, overloading the plate of demands on it is hardly the way to promote negotiating progress...
...Therefore, the White House reined in the Department of State and shifted El Salvador to the back burner...
...Then the Administration lost its nerve...
...The Reagan Administration is making a valiant effort to repeal the Clark Amend...
...The egregious French-Mexican intervention-their joint statement boosting the status of the guerrillas in El Salvador--could only be read as an assessment on Mexico's part that our policy in El Salvador was not succeeding...
...In foreign policy terms, our economic leverage is one of our most important weapons...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 9 The misjudgment lay not so much in substance as in an inability to maneuver through the minefield...
...To its credit, the Administration has resisted the blandishments of Arab friends, European governments, and American " e x p e r t s " to embrace the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO...
...Egypt's prestige is heavily invested in Camp David, whose premature obituary Prince Fahd seemed to be announcing...
...Pressures.are growing, particularly as Camp David seems to falter, and to many it may seem a tempting way to buy Arab goodwill...
...Instead of formulating our own terms and seeking to dominate a process we could not avoid, we lost the initiative...
...It is the lesson of the 1980 campaign when candidate Reagan, in the debate with Jimmy Carter, spoke thoughtfully of his abhorrence of war and his eagerness to advance arms control beyond the stage of the flawed SALT II...
...For foreign policy, properly conceived, is the art of shaping events...
...Liberals have managed over the last decade to pass restrictive legislation forcing aid to be given increasingly through multilateral channels and for eleemosynary purposes only...
...China In China policy, too, the Administration has been torn between its head and its heart...
...American resistance to the Communist geopolitical challenge, of course, meets fierce objection from the Left on the usual grounds: that Vietnam taught us our limits, that military aid is immoral, that the regimes facing an assault probably deserve to be overthrown, and so on...
...The United States is taking charge of the process, shaping the negotiating agenda, and producing results that serve our objectives...
...Unlike a previous conservative President, Richard Nixon, who adopted the rhetoric of a n " e r a of negotiations" as a kind of protective coloration, the Reagan Administration came into office dubious about arms control as a matter of principle and convinced that leaving any ambiguity about its anti-Communist fervor would be a form of moral disarmament...
...It would be a serious tactical and strategic mistake...
...and an imaginative diplomacy shaped an outcome that even the Washington Post, eager to find fiasco, was obliged to acknowledge as a presidential success...
...That crisis, of course, was not an accident...
...if the end result were to be, in effect, that Soviet missiles aimed at Europe are permitted while NATO missiles to deter them are deemed unacceptable, this would raise the most profound questions about what is left of our military alliance...
...It must show its self-assurance in the diplomatic arena and its fortitude in its willingness to risk short-term unpopularity at home...
...For a superpower, at least, diplomacy should mean foreseeing trends, capturing the initiative, and advancing our purposes, whether in the fluid conditions of a crisis or in the day-to-day conduct of affairs...
...It was not entirely the Administration's fault...
...It was not a great moment in the history of American world leadership...
...Angola fell to a minority Communist government propped up to this day by Cuban troops...
...It should go without saying that the United States has a negotiating position--some view of a p r e f e r r e d outcome, some vision of o u r objectives...
...Inevitably, the United States no longer enjoyed the overwhelming preponderance of power that it had immediately after the Second World War...
...what it did was show itself to be forthcoming with ideas and programs consistent with its own principles...
...Senate liberals assaulted it for the usual reasons, seeing American involvement as the world's major security problem...
...Neither liberals nor conservatives are by tradition comfortable with the notion of defending a global balance of power against encroachments that cumulatively can endanger our security, of permanent involvement in a struggle with no terminal date and no definitive showdowns...
...Sniping between the White House and the Department of State subsided...
...The Administration has reasonably enough continued to sell defensive spare parts to Taiwan...
...The summit meeting with Brezhnev later this year, to which the Administration has virtually committed itself, will be a trap unless the United States has done something to establish its, mastery over the trend of events...
...We have shown that we stand by our friends when they are threatened by Soviet clients or radicals of the strit~e of Qaddafi: THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 t l Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan, Oman, and, of course, Egypt and Israel have been given the wherewithal to defend themselves...
...The most charitable interpretation of the lifting of the grain embargo is that it was not a foreign policy move at all: The President had his domestic imperatives and his campaign promises to fulfill...
...In the absence of possibilities for maneuver, the Administration should stick to the basics...
...The prognosis is not good...
...The causes lie deeper than sensitivities over Taiwan: Partly, it reflects basic domestic divisions in China...
...In the 1980s it would require not only dynamism and philosophical coherence, which the new Administration possessed in good measure, but also a sense of strategy...
...there was broad support for not only a strong defense but also a reassertion of presidential authority in foreign affairs...
...At the same time, the relationship with Peking is one of our most important strategic assets in a world endangered by Soviet expansionism...
...The objective had to be to make the Soviets pay some price, to demonstrate that Western economic relations with the East are conditioned on some standards of civilized behavior...
...Third World Diplomacy In the Third World, meanwhile, the Reagan Administration has been more successful in its diplomacy than its liberal critics imagined possible...
...It is not simply a matter of issuing eloquent declarations or striking poses...
...Middle East In the Middle East, with the time not ripe for stunning breakthroughs, the Administration is finding that sticking to its principles is the wisest policy...
...ment, the legislation that turned the Tunney Amendment into a permanent ban on American aid to resistance forces in Angola...
...Whether intended or not, the emotional largesse bestowed on Saudl Arabia was probably more than the Kingdom should be asked to bear, and was also demeaning to Egypt, the pivotal Arab country as far as the peace process is concerned...
...The Soviet Union and Europe Conservative Presidents usually have an advantage in dealing with the Soviet Union...
...their most difficult diplomatic problem is to figure out which group of Arabs they should grovel before at any given moment...
...Intense pressures on the Administration from the Left were predictable--if not from domestic opinion as during the Vietnam war, then from our allies...
...The Arabs must learn to be willing to enter negotiations without a guarantee of the final outcome...
...When the Tunney Amendment was passed 54-22, conservatives were conspicuous by their lack of concern...
...There is no b e t t e r antidote to anti-Reagan paranoia than Ronald Reagan himself stating a positive program...
...The United States found its balance with the President's successful speech of November 18--which illustrated precisely what should have been done earlier...
...If we fail in El Salvador, the next Communist targets are Honduras and Guatemala--with more unsavory regimes, topographically and politically much harder places to draw the line...
...Liberal voices will be heard declaring that the breach of European peace makes arms control "all the more urgent...
...it was never the intention of the United States, at any time since the rapprochement with China began, to turn Taiwan over to forcible incorporation into the mainland...
...The Communist guerrillas forfeited much appeal in the United States by their (revealing) opposition to free elections and by the voluminous evidence of clandestine external arms supply from the Soviet bloc...
...humiliations for the United States...
...The Democrats held the bill hostage, insisting that the President fight for his own foreign policy--which he eventually did...
...But their world view has been more ideological than geopolitical...
...the media sent camera crews to El Salvador eager to "bring the war home...
...Whether the rest of the world would respond similarly to a more forceful American leadership was an open question...
...American and Chinese foreign policies have been parallel in many (not all) parts of the world and on most major issues of the global balance of power...
...This Administration is philosophically united to an unusual degree, in stark contrast to the Brzezinski/Vance/Andy Young feuds of the Carter period...
...It is not in our interest to provoke the very danger that we seek to prevent...
...The Left organized itself rapidly in this country...
...It is absurd to imagine that South Africa can be tricked into putting into power armed radicals who may turn the territory into a base for guerrilla operations against it...
...Our democratic allies are no different...
...The Reagan Administration in November and December found itself for a time in the ludicrous position of wanting a foreign aid bill but not wanting to lobby Republicans to vote for it...
...In the peace diplomacy, the United States has no good options to choose from...
...It must educate the American public--and American conservatives--in the necessity of combatting Soviet aggression in the small challenges, lest we soon be faced with a major one...
...With the United States conducting a more explicit policy of opposition to the Soviet Union, what China wants from us--reassurance that we will not give the USSR a free hand to turn on China--it is now getting without cost...
...A more vigorous and self-confident American policy was bound to cause frictions with European allies who have spent the last several decades growing prosperous, evading defense necessities, and chasing the mirage of Soviet reasonableness...
...The Left abhors military aid as immoral and wants economic aid to be purely humanitarian, uncontaminated by political objectives...
...The Sino-American relationship will endure as long as we do our job of maintaining the global balance of power...
...Months went by with the Administration increasingly on the defensive...
...recalcitrant foreign affairs committees in the Congress...
...A lot of capital was expended in a rearguard struggle over whether or not to e n t e r t a l k s - - a s if the mere fact of a negotiation were contaminating...
...Senator Henry Jackson opposed the President on preliminary votes and was paired against on the final vote...
...From the beginning, it was the occasion for repeated expositions of the Carter philosophy that "deep social, political, religious, and economic factors" were at work which the United States', alas, could not control...
...The kind words about Prince Fahd's peace plan, S ~ soon after the AWACS vote and Sadat's murder, were bound to be unnerving to both Egypt and Israel...
...The Administration correctly perceived the Communist geopolitical challenge-Soviet weapons, Cuban proxy troops and military advisers, East German intelligence specialists, East European training of terrorists, Soviet friendship treaties that encourage aggression--as one of the principal dangers to peace in our time...
...But history will judge its policy not by the excuses but by the results...
...South Africa agreed several years ago (long before the Carter Administration, in fact) to grant independence to Namibia, the former League of Nations mandate of South-West Africa...
...If the present government in Israel is unwi!ling to discuss a territorial settlement even with Jordan, how is thrusting the PLO forward going to make a negotiation easier...
...As for nuclear arms control, the United States was caught off-balance because it had not yet decided on a negotiating position with respect to either strategic arms or intermediate-range nuclear forces...
...Indeed, a presidential trip to Europe early in his term would have been a perfect opportunity for considered, reasonable statements of Reagan's position on all issues of concern to Europe and might well have headed off or dampened the budding anti-Americanism...
...It seemed inordinately proud of such small gestures as making the Soviet Ambassador drive to the front door of the State Department (instead of a more private entrance...
...Conservatives, unfortunately, have not been willing to help defend an adequate program of bilateral aid for friendly countries conceived as a tool of diplomacy...
...It should be wielded with some political calculation and never handed over unconditionally...
...Its forswearing of military counteraction against Nicaragua helps gain diplomatic support in the Organization of American States but guarantees that such diplomatic support is worthless...
...the President had a Republican Senate and a conservative Congress...
...A bigger problem with our European allies arose, of course, over arms control negotiations...
...The a t t i t u d e toward negotiation was puzzling...
...It has begun to learn that doctrine is not the same as policy, that success depends not only on the mobilization of American power but on the imaginative use of it...
...Out of guilt at what they had wrought, they regressed to a naive humanitarianism and faith in the efficacy of good intentions...
...We have always been profoundly uncomf o r t a b l e with the entanglements and complications of negotiation (even negotiation from strength), as if fearful of being subjected to temptations we have not the willpower to resist...
...The President's ferocious reputation made his moderation more impressive...
...The Reagan Administration pushed through a modest package of increased aid and sent some 50 military advisers...
...There seems to survive in American conservatism another vestige of the isolationist past, a grassroots fear that we decent, honest Americans are always being taken in by crafty f o r e i g n e r s . "America never lost a war and never won a conference," Will Rogers used to crack...
...And our grain policy proved an embarrassing anomaly when in December we attempted to mobilize economic sanctions against the USSR and Poland...
...They come into office with a hard-line reputation that gives the Soviets an incentive for caution...
...The campaign to sell it seemed to catapult Saudi Arabia into the position of America's key friend in the Arab world--which I am not sure was even intended...
...The Reagan Admini s t r a t i o n will have to show both the fortitude to stick to its positions and the surefootedness not to get caught again on the defensive...
...that any government friendly to us was ipso facto unworthy of our support...
...A President known in advance to be tough and strongly anti-Soviet seems to have better luck avoiding such cataclysms...
...For one's gestures of flexibility are more meaningful--and more compelling of reciprocity--if one is thought to have an alternative...
...It stepped up pressure on South Africa over its internal policy of apartheid at the same time that it was asking for South African cooperation in a Namibia settlement...
...Toward the end of the year, a sour anti-American tone crept into P e k i n g ' s 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 rhetoric, which began to denounce us together with the USSR as the "two superpowers...
...But the road has been rocky for them, too...
...While Peking has the sovereign right to make its own decisions, it knows that the relationship with the United States would not survive an invasion of Taiwan...
...This was harmless, but not worth trumpeting about--especially when the Administration's first major policy decision in this area was to lift the grain embargo against the Soviet Union...
Vol. 15 • March 1982 • No. 3
