Reagan's Foreign Policy Flip-Flops

...To simplify the tableau of their friendship for this "photo opportunity" the two men were without an interpreter, and neither understands the other's tongue...

...Today, bushes growing out of mounds of ivy-covered earth edge the front yard of the White House-effectively concealing the people who are lined up outside the black iron fence for tours-And the carefully clipped turf is artistically dotted with man-made hillocks and dales as well as high-branched hardwood trees...

...But it is difficult to know what is illusion and what is reality...

...Reagan explained: "Our intellectual and spiritual values are rooted in the source of all strength, a belief in a supreme Being, and a law higher than our own...

...responsibility for having embarrassed an important friend, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr...

...It's a pleasure to talk to a man who says what he means...

...Five minutes prior to his entering the House Chamber, more than 40 congressional employes slipped into empty seats on the Democratic side so that the absence of one-tenth of the members of Congress would not be apparent to the television audience...

...His evoking of Armageddon smacks more of Reagan's 1964 speeches on behalf of Barry Goldwater than of the calm, smiling grandpa of 1980...

...The movie, it may be recalled, has a fashion photographer accidentally discover what appears to be a murder taking place in the leafy background of one of his pictures, and ends with a stylized tennis game...

...For most people, the multi-causedemonstration-small by Vietnam standards, but nevertheless the largest inspired by Reagan since his days as governor of California-barely existed...

...polls then revealed that the move was highly unpopular, and we have heard nothing further about it from the President...

...My musings about reality and illusion were interrupted by the mosquito-like buzz of automatic film winders...

...That mattered little, though...

...I'm not going to talk about either...

...Indeed, this is somewhat traditional...

...Denying U.S...

...Yet does the President really say what he means...

...There are signs that he may not...

...He simply gave us slogans where four years ago at the same lectern President Carter explored the possibility of making human rights, rather than fear of the Soviet Union, the focus of our international concerns...

...Perhaps this is just a bunco player's patter, though, designed to clothe a velvet hand in an iron glove...

...After meeting with the President, he sharpened a speech at the National Press Club with Reaganesque anti-Soviet references...

...Did a generation steeled by hard war and a harsh peace forsake honor at the moment of great climactic struggle for the human spirit...

...denounce it, it will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages were even now being written" Why will We live to bury Them...

...For many reasons (including the release of their final communique before the two leaders even met, and the document's reference to the U.S.-Japan relationship as an "alliance"), Suzuki swiftly forced his Foreign Minister to resign...

...That brings this Administration around to the point its predecessor reached in September 1980, as former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie recently pointed out...

...After backing and filling over theater nuclear weapons, Secretary Haig finally agreed to talk with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko about the issue next September...

...Whatever the case, this ambiguity backfired in Japan...

...A week earlier, when the President triumphantly emerged from his postoperative seclusion to address a joint session of Congress, we witnessed something similar...

...Lately, I have been hearing Washingtonians speculate with a smirk that Reagan's foreign policy is to talk loudly and carry a small stick...

...On that May morning I was reminded of the English park in Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up...

...Two weeks after Suzuki's visit, Reagan flew into South Bend, Indiana, to become the fifth President to address an audience at the University of Notre Dame...

...At Notre Dame the President affirmed: "For the West, for America, the time has come to dare to show to the world that our civilized ideas, our traditions, our values, are not -like the ideology and war machine of totalitarian societies-just a facade of strength...

...Reagan pointed to one Rose Garden tulip, Suzuki to another...

...The cameras whirred and clicked...

...I get tired sometimes of fencing with intellectuals...

...They strolled slowly, falling into animated conversation...

...And the cautious response to the election of Francois Mitter and in France hardly seems consistent...

...In his foreign policy pronouncements, too, Reagan has exhibited the easy now-you-see-it, now-you-don't urbanity of a three-card monte player on a crowded city street...

...Helmut Schmidt, who also came to Washington last month, obviously was impressed by Reagan's rhetoric...

...that rambunctious and seasonally malarial tributary, once a route for supplies up from the Potomac, was long ago tamed by engineers and buried in concrete deep underground...

...Resumption of the Middle East shuttle diplomacy Reagan once mocked is another case where words and action have not meshed...

...The West won't contain Communism, it will transcend Communism," Reagan declared...

...greater efforts in the areas of defense, world economic improvement, economic cooperation with the third world, and mutually supportive diplomatic initiatives...

...Following their two days of talks, Reagan and Suzuki issued a joint communique...

...I didn't want us to be posing," he said, "talking to the audience rather than to each other, the way you have to do at state dinners and large conferences...

...It won't bother to...

...We see the players going through the motions of serving, returning, volleying, and hear the soft bip-ba-bip of the game-but no ball is visible...

...His prepared text, for instance, neutrally noted that the 170 per cent increase in oil prices since 1978 had "become a threat to social and political stability" in many lesser developed countries, but at the podium he added: "Social and political instabilities do provide in roads for Communist and Soviet influence...

...Last March, for example, the number of military advisers in El Salvador was increased to 54 with a great flourish of publicity...

...It surely sounds less messy than the uncertainties that would have resulted had Reagan been true to his ideology and continued the partial embargo on grain sales to the Soviet Union, imposed by Carter when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan...

...And his speech was for the most part reported as if it were merely a homey blend of Hollywood reminiscences and exhortations to "win one for the Gip-per" by closing ranks behind the Administration's economic program...

...The two 70-year-olds smiled...

...That is indeed comforting...

...In Washington, American officials claimed that Japan would resume the 7 per cent annual growth rate in defense spending that it abandoned this year for budget balancing reasons...

...On the other hand, the Reagan in office often sounds more jingoistic than the GOP candidate...

...I turned around to watch President Ronald Reagan and Japan's Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki emerge from the West Wing...

...Washington-USA REAGAN'S FOREIGN POLICY FLIP-FLOPS BY ANDREW MOLLISON Washington in the spring sun on a portable camera platform, my W^back to the windows of the Oval Office, I had a splendidly Presidential view of the South Lawn...

...declared that the flap was "an internal matter" for the Japanese...

...But Reagan did speak about foreign policy...

...History, he warned, will ask us: "Did a people forged by courage find courage wanting...

...At Notre Dame the President drew cheers when he announced: "The temptation is great to use this forum for an address on a great international or national issue that has nothing to do with this occasion...

...We could not overhear their words...

...Both remarks could be true, or they could prove contradictory...

...It stated: "In meeting these international challenges to their peace and security, the President and the Prime Minister recognized that all Western industrialized democracies need to make Andrew Mollison is the H'hite House correspondent for the Cox Newspapers...

...In a chat just before he spoke at the Press Club, Schmidt told me of asking that only one aide from each side be present during his talks with the President...

...The day before his arrival, football stands were positioned where they would prevent cameramen from getting, in a single frame, Reagan's armored limousine and 1,500-2,000 nearby protestors...

...But once back in Japan, now a "Western country" in diplo-speak, Suzuki assured angry critics on his Left that he had no intention of breaking his country's postwar tradition of holding defense spending at 1 per cent of its gross national product...

...Tiber Creek is no longer to be seen...

...Of the President himself he warmly commented: "He's a simple man with straightforward views, not an intellectual...