Advice for the New Man

Foreign policy analysts offer their list of priorities

What should the U.S. do next about Iran, the Middle East, its frigid relations with the Soviet Union, its uneasy dealings with its allies, its frictions with the Third World? TIME asked a number of foreign affairs specialists. Excerpts from their replies:

NO MONOPOLY ON WISDOM

George W. Ball, 70, served as Under Secretary of State, the No. 2 job in the department, from 1961 to 1966, under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Senator Muskie must quickly take control of our Iranian policy if we are to avoid setting in motion the same process of escalation that led us to disaster in Viet Nam. The measures we are now taking work against the achievement of our two objectives: to free the hostages and keep Iran out of the Soviet orbit. Their failure could start us down a dangerous road.

Economic sanctions are impairing whatever chance we might have to free the hostages by exploiting opportunities provided by the evolution of Iranian politics. Indeed, our escalating sanctions are less likely to free the hostages than get them killed. They will give the Ayatullah Khomeini a persuasive rallying point; they will assist Iranian Communist elements in the subversion they see as prelude to their ultimate takeover, and, finally, they will play into the hands of the Soviet Union, which is already promising to make up shortages created by our trade embargo. Imagine the propaganda dividends Moscow could reap through a massive airlift of food and supplies.

Since the President knows that the current sanctions will fail, he has already talked of moving toward some form of military action --presumably a naval blockade or, more likely, the mining of Iranian harbors. But what will we do when that fails? Will we bomb Qum and invade the oilfields? That was the Viet Nam pattern; each time an initiative fizzled out we raised the ante.

That is what terrifies our allies: they see the process of escalation gaining command, events taking over and the Administration losing its freedom of decision. Thus they have made clear that they will not support us in any form of military action. We should welcome their counsel and not resent it. If there is one humbling lesson to be derived from our misadventures in the past few years, it is that we have no monopoly on wisdom.

That does not mean, of course, that our allies cannot, or should not, help create conditions that may advance the release of the hostages. By breaking diplomatic relations with Tehran--particularly if joined by some Third World and Muslim countries--they could show the Iranian people that a government which violates the sanctity of an embassy becomes an international pariah. Not only would the resulting political isolation deeply upset such rational individuals as may exist within the Iranian hierarchy, it would, by taking the dispute out of a bilateral mode--America against Iran --blunt Iran's present sharp focus on hatred of our country.

So we should not leap to the easy and cynical conclusion that, in warning us against military action, European leaders are obsessed merely with their own narrow national interests. Though we may hate to admit it, they could in fact save us from ourselves.

A NEED FOR GLOBAL RESPONSES

Samuel P. Huntington, 53, is a professor of government at Harvard and a longtime friend and adviser to Zbigniew Brzezinski.

It is totally outrageous that 53 Americans should be held hostage in Iran. It would be totally calamitous if American foreign policy should also become the hostage of Iranian fanatics. Clearly the President must pursue every option possible to secure the release of the hostages: economic and, if necessary, military pressure on Iran; negotiations, where possible, with the various authorities that appear to abound in Tehran; and renewed rescue attempts if these seem to have even a modest probability of success. The primary impetus, however, for the seizure of the hostages originated in Iranian domestic politics, and voluntary release of the hostages will come only when there is a shift in power among the conflicting groups in Iran. The U.S. can do little to bring about that change. In the meantime, the hard truth is that release of the hostages is worth neither the disruption of the Western alliances nor the substantial increase of Soviet influence in Iran.

The Iranian crisis should not distract us from the more serious problems confronting us. First, there is the need to push forward with the reconstitution of U.S. military strength begun by the Carter Administration three years ago. The sustained Soviet military buildup, coupled with Soviet aggression in Afghanistan, makes this the No. 1 foreign policy priority. This will necessarily involve the following: the continued strengthening of NATO; pushing production and deployment of cruise missiles, the MX missile and Trident submarines to maintain nuclear parity; and the speedy development and production of weapons and equipment for the rapid deployment force.

Second, the Carter Administration has scored a number of notable diplomatic successes in resolving festering issues left over, in many cases, from the 1960s. These include the Panama Canal Treaty, normalization of relations with China, the multilateral trade agreement, the resolution, in support of the British, of the Rhodesia-Zimbabwe issue, the SALT II treaty and Huntington the Camp David agreements and Egypt-Israel peace treaty. In at least two of these cases, however, the process remains incomplete. The SALT II treaty is in the national security interest and should be ratified by the Senate, and the Administration also must press for movement toward autonomy for the Palestinians on the West Bank.

Third, there is a need to establish a new institutional framework for U.S. consultation and common action with its principal allies. Challenges to the industrialized democracies are now global in scope, and they require a global response. There is, however, no mechanism through which to develop such a response. At present the heads of government of the seven principal industrialized democracies do meet regularly to consult on economic issues. As a minimum first step, the formal agendas of these summits should be expanded to include the global political-security challenges these countries also face.

REAL TOADS, REAL TOADSTOOLS

Paul Seabury, 57, is a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley.

To every thing there is a season," according to Ecclesiastes. One season not mentioned is the one we are in: a tune of anger and frustration. Such a time is particularly dangerous when anger vents itself on objects peripheral to vital interests. We are obsessed by a single matter and forget strategy; we are hostage to hostages. Washington continues its graduated escalation against an implacable, irrational regime. That policy failed in Viet Nam. The primary problem is Soviet power; we risk an Iran and even a gulf under Soviet hegemony.

Ecclesiastes' other seasons include the time to build. We need to restrain our moralizing as much as we need to harness our anger. Recently American moralizers have tried to purify everything they could: foods, politicians, intelligence services, our foreign policy and even our imperfect friends abroad. Obsessed with individual rights and safety, we have added to our collective danger; the unreformed world beyond our reach contains real toads and real toadstools.

As a leading German newspaper has said, "The West is ruled by rather young and physically robust persons who, however, belong to a political gerontocracy . . . given to risk-reduction and a yearning for stability."

In rebuilding American confidence and strength we need a commonsensical understanding of the relativity of impurities. Which is dirtier--environmental pollution or dangers of vast unemployment? American covert action capabilities or more Khomeinis?

Concerning energy, we must develop every cost-effective resource in North America--nuclear, shale, strip mining, hydroelectric and oil--and strip away the layers of environmental and other constraints. With our intelligence services smashed, we must rebuild them to include even the dirty-tricks departments we recently reviled. We abandoned conscription; now we need a citizen army. During detente we allowed the Soviets to overtake us in nearly every category of arms; now we must seriously rebuild.

The Soviets must be given to understand that we perceive their aim of hegemony and find it unacceptable. They also must understand that a strong, confident America is preferable to an angry and frustrated one.

Outlandish as this may seem in an election year, we deserve a Government of national unity, of bipartisan leadership, as evidence of American continuity and resolve. We owe this mainly to ourselves, but also to a world bewildered by our previous inconstancy.

TOO MANY ADVISERS

Stanley Hoffmann, 51, is a professor of government and chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard.

The main task in foreign policy for President Carter and the new Secretary of State is not merely to repair the damage done to America's reputation by the failure of the rescue operation in Iran. It is nothing less than the definition --after almost four years marked by limited successes, overall inconsistency and drift--of a coherent political strategy.

A prerequisite is a reorganization of the foreign policy process. No other major power has, in effect, two ministries of foreign affairs. Even if the National Security Adviser were a saint, he would be tempted to use his office's proximity to the President to compete with the State Department. Not even a President more capable of devising and imposing his own course than Jimmy Carter can function well with two senior advisers.

The main substantive issue is not Iran, but the definition of a long-term policy toward the Soviet Union. The superpowers are on a collision course. If, to avoid a collision, we should fail to check Soviet power, we might--like Britain and France after Munich--have to resist later anyway, but in disastrous circumstances. However, if in our effort to contain Moscow we should react rashly, we might re-create 1914, when each camp believed that the time to seek a showdown had come because trends would be unfavorable to it later. Neither appeasement nor provocation should be our motto.

This requires a triple effort. One is already being undertaken: the preservation of the overall strategic balance, and the improvement of the regional balance of forces in Europe and the Middle East. But this is not enough. We need preventive diplomacy that can keep the Soviets from being able to exploit the weaknesses in Western positions. Decisive progress on the Palestinian issue, beyond the ambiguous Camp David formula, is indispensable in this respect. So is an Iranian policy that solves the hostage crisis without destroying the chances of cooperation between the U.S. and Iran once Iran's revolution moves, as it inevitably must, from fervor and ferment to reconstruction and management. The third effort should aim at achieving a detente without illusions. We need a framework for change through competition waged in ways acceptable to both sides. This entails a resumption of arms control negotiations, a coordinated Western policy on East-West trade and far greater communication between Washington and Moscow.

Only such a strategy has a chance of restoring solidarity between us and our allies in Western Europe and Japan. It is not separable from a domestic policy of reducing our energy dependence on OPEC and of curbing inflation without provoking a major recession. As for the poorer nations of the world, already hit hard by OPEC's oil prices and heavy debts, a further weakening would create more chaos, exploitable by Moscow.

Indeed, a major task for a new foreign policy is educational. Americans must understand that the biggest threat we face is not a classic military one but the conjunction of the superpowers' contest with an increasingly revolutionary world of exacerbated nationalisms and shaky nations, many of which could become fiercely anti-American unless we find ways of peacefully preventing, moderating or deflecting such explosions.

GROUND FORCES IN THE GULF

Robert W. Tucker, 55, is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins and co-director of studies of the Lehrman Institute.

Does the appointment of a new Secretary of State signal significant change in American foreign policy? There is little reason to believe that it does. Senator Edmund Muskie's known views on major issues of foreign policy are roughly in accord with those held by the President, else Mr. Carter evidently would not have appointed him. The new Secretary is not as committed as was his predecessor to policies that have now visibly failed. In the manner of the President, Senator Muskie experienced a sense of "betrayal" over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. His self-characterization indicates, however, the extent to which he was committed, along with President Carter and Secretary Vance, to detente with the Soviet Union.

In considering the Muskie appointment, we should not be diverted by whether Muskie will "stand up" to Zbigniew Brzezinski more effectively than did Vance. Even if he does, the consequences for policy are likely to be marginal. The question is whether he will assert views that differ significantly from the President's. The further question is whether the President would submit to his Secretary's views, should they differ markedly from his own. To both questions, the answer is probably no.

The present dangerous impasse we have reached--in our direct dealings with Iran, our vulnerability in the Persian Gulf, our overall relationship Tucker with the Soviet Union --gives every sign of persisting under a President so far unable to make a clear break from the recent and largely discredited past. Carter should now be concentrating on establishing a credible American military presence in and around the Persian Gulf. This presence cannot be restricted to elements of naval and air power. To be credible both to the states of the region and the Soviet Union, it must be quite visible and have the air of permanence. What is needed, and as soon as possible, are regular bases together with a substantial commitment of American ground forces. In the absence of bases and troops, the so-called Carter Doctrine may prove quite dangerous, for it implies a far greater capability than now exists. It also asserts a determination that if once seriously tested would have to be vindicated, as matters now stand, by falling back on the threat of nuclear war. These considerations should command our attention rather than the very few options that remain in dealing with the hostages problem.

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