The New Multi-Ring Spectacle

The one-man show of Henry Kissinger was gone, and U.S. foreign policy was once again a multi-ring spectacle. Vice President Walter Mondale was back from his successful mission of reassurance to Western Europe and Japan. Late in the spring, Jimmy Carter plans to fly to Europe to attend the summit conferences of NATO and the industrialized democracies. In the meantime, the new President was busy sending aides and emissaries off to the corners of the world on diplomatic forays.

United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young took off on a ten-day visit to black Africa. Next week Secretary of State Cyrus Vance leaves for a quick trip to the Middle East--a fact-finding tour, essentially, but with the aim of finding ways to nudge the confrontation states back to the conference table at Geneva. Next month Vance goes to Moscow for talks on arms limitation. After that, he hinted, will come a variety of other meetings--possibly including direct negotiations with Cuba. Later this month the President will send Washington Lawyer (and former Defense Secretary) Clark Clifford to Cyprus, to explore the possibilities for a settlement between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

Ill-Considered Remarks. The Administration also faces the tactical problem of translating its campaign goal of a more "moral" foreign policy into practice. A week earlier, the State Department had harshly condemned Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union for their treatment of dissidents--a type of public criticism that Kissinger resisted because he felt it would not produce the desired result--and could damage detente as well. Last week the Soviets arrested a prominent dissident and expelled an American correspondent. Would the State Department maintain a sort of running commentary on such incidents as they occurred? Vance tried to blunt the issue by declaring that U.S. criticism of foreign governments should be neither "polemical" nor "strident," but would occur "from time to time when we see a threat to human rights."

U.N. Ambassador Young's trip to Tanzania and Nigeria was a case in point of both the Administration's diplomatic exploration and of its early mistakes through inexperience. In his talks with black African leaders, Young hoped to find a common ground toward achieving a transfer to black majority rule in Rhodesia. But he undercut the seriousness of his mission by some ill-considered comments on a CBS interview show a few days earlier.

Young was stressing his view that racism, not Communism, is the chief problem in southern Africa. Under prodding by CBS Newsman Dan Rather, he declared that "in a sense the Cubans bring a certain stability and order" to Angola. Henry Kissinger had always insisted that the Cuban presence was Soviet "adventurism," and that it must be withdrawn before U.S.-Cuban relations could improve.

Presumably Young meant to say simply that he thought it would be easier to negotiate the Cubans out of Angola than to negotiate the white minority regimes out of power in southern Africa --but that is not what he said. Later, in a series of awkward clarifications, Secretary Vance declared that the Cuban presence in Angola was "not helpful to a peaceful solution." In other bloopers. Young jumped the gun on the Administration by saying that he hoped the U.S. would be able to begin bilateral talks with Viet Nam within 90 days--a timetable that may prove unacceptable to either or both sides--and declared that the white Rhodesian regime would have to negotiate if South Africa insisted upon it. Again, Vance was obliged to intervene. The situation in southern Africa, declared the Secretary, was "not quite that simple."

Before leaving for Africa, Young said he told Vance that to preserve "the right to say what I really believe, I'd be willing to take whatever flak came, and I'd be willing to be repudiated by him whenever it was officially necessary." Whatever the merits of this unorthodox approach to diplomacy, it drew anger and ridicule from white leaders in southern Africa. "The new boy is getting his lumps early," said an official in Pretoria. In Salisbury, the Rhodesia Herald called Young a "strolling player for the theater of the absurd" who had "cast himself in the role of bridge builder between Washington and black Africa."

Once under way, however, Young proved skillful. In London, he quickly confirmed that the Carter Administration substantially agreed with the British government on Rhodesia. Both Britain and the U.S. supported a plan under which Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith would relinquish effective power during a two-year transitional period. Both agreed, moreover, that Smith could not save himself with an "internal solution" under which he would exclude the chief black guerrilla organizations, notably the Patriotic Front led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe.

Then Young flew on to East Africa for talks with Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere, Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda and other black leaders. At a national celebration on Zanzibar, he joined islanders and mainland Tanzanians in dancing what was described as a modified version of the hustle.

Far Apart. But Young's main goal was a hustle of a different sort: an effort to probe for a Rhodesian settlement. In most respects, the black-white stalemate in Rhodesia prevails, with the two sides as far apart as ever. But at least the issues are becoming clearer. Most black African states have now rallied behind the Nkomo-Mugabe Patriotic Front, at the expense of other guerrilla groups. Smith, on the other hand, is preparing to negotiate with moderate black groups --but not with the Patriotic Front. Last week he called for U.S. help to prevent terrorists from seizing Rhodesia "on behalf of Russian imperialism." Andrew Young, speaking more carefully now, was quick to warn Smith that his efforts to gain U.S. support by invoking the "Red menace" would not succeed.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.