Changing the Subject

By George J. Church.

Reagan turns to foreign policy, meeting allies and helping a troubled junta

Preoccupied with domestic economic problems since the Inauguration, the Reagan Administration of necessity last week turned its attention to foreign policy. Important visitors--British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, French Foreign Minister Jean Franc,ois-Poncet and Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir--were in Washington to get acquainted with the new Administration. Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev was speaking out in Moscow, giving his first--and unexpectedly moderate--response to Ronald Reagan's tough anti-Communist talk. Congress, as well as some of America's allies, was beginning to ask troublesome questions about whether the Administration's desire to draw the line against Communist-aided subversion in El Salvador was a step on a slippery road toward another Viet Nam.

Brezhnev's speech to the Soviet Communist Party Congress (see WORLD) had been expected by some Administration foreign policy experts to be an anti-American diatribe. Instead, Brezhnev suggested a summit meeting between himself and Reagan, and expressed a willingness to talk further about arms control while retaining the SALT II treaty's "positive elements"--a phrase reminiscent of Reagan's speeches during last fall's campaign. Brezhnev also tossed out a variety of negotiating ideas that Secretary of State Alexander Haig judged "new and remarkable." Among them: a hint that the Soviets might consider expanding an existing agreement under which NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries have been notifying each other of major troop movements near the European zonal border, to cover military maneuvers within the U.S.S.R. as far east as the Urals.

The American response was cautious. Reagan, for example, stressed that the Soviet role in supplying arms to the leftist guerrillas in El Salvador "should be straightened out"--that is, eliminated--before any summit meeting. Still the Administration did not slam the door on a summit, although the President is clearly not interested in an early meeting. Instead it indicated that Reagan would see Brezhnev, but only after long and thorough consultation with U.S. allies. As the President told reporters at an impromptu press conference, "I have pledged to them that we're not going to act on things like this unilaterally."

Closer relations with the allies is one of the major foreign policy themes of the new Administration. The allies who visited Washington last week could hardly have responded more warmly to the U.S. overtures. Britain's Thatcher, the first head of a NATO government to call on Reagan at the White House, was greeted by a huge honor guard arrayed across the South Lawn. Battle streamers snapping in a brisk wind, the Marine Band passed in review, its bearskin-hatted drum major raising a brass baton in salute. Reagan in his welcoming remarks stressed watchfulness: "So long as our adversaries continue to arm themselves at a pace far beyond the needs of defense, so the free world must do whatever is necessary to safeguard its own security."

Thatcher was effusive in response. Said she: "America's successes will be our successes. Your problems will be our problems, and when you look for friends we will be there." Later in the White House, she and Reagan talked for nearly two hours--45 minutes alone, without aides--about everything from East-West relations to, yes, jelly beans. Seemingly impressed to learn that the beans in the two jars that Reagan keeps constantly available come in 35 flavors, the Prime Minister daintily dipped in. "They might not be good for the teeth," she mused, "but they will be good for sugar consumption in Britain." On more substantive matters, she applauded Reagan's caution in approaching any summit, urging the President to study Brezhnev's statement carefully "both for what it adds up to and what it does not add up to," in the words of one aide.

That evening Thatcher and her husband Denis were guests of honor at the Reagans' first state dinner. It was a glittering affair complete with strolling musicians and a postprandial ballet performance that illustrated Nancy Reagan's formal taste in entertainment. The guest list was kept relatively small (94 people) in line with the First Lady's desire that state dinners should not be mob gatherings of strangers.

The amity between Reagan and Thatcher, two leaders of conservative parties, was expected. More surprisingly, French officials described Franc,ois-Poncet's talks with Secretary of State Haig and Reagan as chaleureuses re-trouvailles (warm rediscoveries) of friendship. Relations between Washington and Paris cooled during the Carter years, and particularly so after President Valery Giscard d'Estaing proved notably slow and mild in condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

During his three-day visit to Washington, Franc,ois-Poncet promised Haig that France would join the U.S. in breaking political and economic ties to the Soviet Union if it invaded Poland. What has changed? Said Franc,ois-Poncet: "The new element is that there is a new Administration. For long the U.S. sought proteges in Europe. This Administration is looking for associates." Perhaps. But attitudes have shifted in Paris too. Giscard, who faces a tough battle for re-election in two months, is aware he is out of step with French public opinion, which has turned anti-Soviet in the past year.

Israel's Shamir, alone among Reagan's visitors, came away relatively disappointed, although Reagan had campaigned as an all-out champion of Israel. Haig turned down a request from Prime Minister Menachem Begin that the U.S. press for a quick resumption of Egyptian-Israeli negotiations over autonomy for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Haig's stated reason: the U.S. wants to give priority to checking Soviet interventionism in the Middle East. In fact, Haig would prefer not to draw attention to a situation that will probably remain deadlocked until the Israeli election on June 30, which is likely to bring in a new, more flexible government headed by Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres. Further, it seems probable that the Reagan Administration will agree to sell equipment to Saudi Arabia that would increase the range and bombing capacity of F-15 jets already purchased by that country, even though Israel opposes any military strengthening of its Arab neighbors.

Publicly, at least, the Israelis took those decisions with equanimity. Said Begin in Jerusalem: "If somebody decides that he has got some time to try to solve the problem of the special conflict between Israel and the Arabs, so what can Israel do about it?" As for the upgrading of the Saudi F-15s, Shamir rather mildly remarked, "If we cannot stop it, we are eager to maintain the balance, the qualitative balance, of forces between us and the Arab countries." What he meant was soon apparent: the Reagan Administration said it would sell Israel 15 more F-15s for its air force, on generous credit terms.

Reagan's first big foreign policy challenge, however, will probably come not in the Middle East but in Central America. The Administration views the guerrilla war in El Salvador as an all-important test of U.S. determination and ability to help a friendly government--in this case a shaky military-civilian junta--survive against "indirect armed aggression" by foreign Communists who are supplying weapons to local guerrillas. But the President's preparatory steps have already touched off a mild dispute with some allies and a loud, angry one with many members of Congress.

Early in the week, the State Department released a white paper, backed up by an 18-in.-high stack of documents reportedly captured from Salvadoran guerrillas. The white paper was designed to back up Administration charges that the guerrillas had been promised 800 tons of rifles, submachine guns and other arms from the Soviet Union, Cuba, Viet Nam and Hungary and had actually received 200 tons. The paper asserted that most of the weaponry had been smuggled from Cuba through Nicaragua. The evidence in it had already been presented to European and Latin American officials in private briefings. Hardly anyone outside the Communist world seemed to question the report, though Moscow called it "lies." Some U.S. allies, however, voiced concern that Reagan seems determined on a "military solution" for El Salvador instead of a "political solution," presumably some kind of compromise between the junta and the guerrillas. West Germany offered to mediate such a compromise between "representatives of democratic forces" on both sides.

That is emphatically what the U.S. does not want: its aim is to help the junta crush the guerrillas. To that end, the Administration is floating a variety of ideas, and Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese even hinted at a blockade of Cuba to stop the arms flow. The most likely moves are an added $30 million to $40 million in military aid to the junta, including patrol boats and helicopters--and the sending of U.S. military advisers to El Salvador. Six Navy training and maintenance advisers have already been ordered there. In an obvious attempt to test public opinion, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker remarked after a meeting with Reagan: "It is entirely appropriate for this country to dispatch noncombat advisers in small numbers--50, 100, 150--to tell these people how to defend themselves."

The advisers would be designated as "mobile training teams" and would instruct Salvadoran soldiers on how to handle weapons. Unlike the advisers sent to Viet Nam in the early 1960s, they would not go into combat alongside the Salvadorans, but they could become targets for guerrilla fire. In any case, the very word adviser triggers memories of how the U.S. first got involved in Viet Nam, as Reagan recognized. Asked at his press conference whether aid to El Salvador might plunge the U.S. into a situation from which it could not extricate itself, the President replied, "I know that this is a great concern. I think it's part of the Viet Nam syndrome. But we have no intention of that kind of involvement."

On Capitol Hill, the talk of advisers touched off a furious debate. Even some Republicans were worried. Said Jim Leach of Iowa, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "If we send advisers, and one or more are killed, we may well cause a nasty civil war to be come a Viet Nam in our own backyard." Said Maryland Democrat Clarence Long, chairman of a House subcommittee on foreign operations: "This Administration is making very much the same kind of mistakes that an Administration of my own party made 18 years ago." Long presided over hearings at which witnesses for and against aid to El Salvador turned the air electric with emotion.

The most passionate case against the Administration's developing policy was made by Robert E. White, former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, who was fired by Reagan a month ago. White accused the U.S. military of an "inexplicable" itch to get in on a war that the leftists already are losing. The real threat to the junta, said White, comes from extreme rightists who are opposed to land reform, and specifically from death squads that the junta has been unable to control (see following story). White argued that the junta had crushed the guerrillas' "final offensive" in January "without one cartridge coming from the U.S." The military aid, he said, would fall into the hands of the death squads and possibly embolden rightists to stage a coup, oust the junta and set up a regime of bloody repression.

The Administration and its allies in Congress were unmoved. State Department Spokesman William Dyess dismissed White as "emotional," one of the worst epithets a diplomat can use against another. John Bushnell, acting Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, asserted: "When the worldwide Communist network, aided by a super power, is making a determined effort, unless it is resisted by the other superpower, it succeeds." Bushnell coolly reminded the subcommittee that in the Administration's view no congressional approval is needed to send advisers to El Salvador.

Some legislators are already quarreling with that interpretation, and 46 Congressmen are co-sponsoring a bill to cut off all military aid to El Salvador, which now gets $10 million a year. But Congress, still under the spell of Reagan's landslide election victory, will probably approve aid in the end and not interfere with the dispatch of advisers, if the Administration finally decides on that step.

The Administration is in a feisty mood and thinks it will win, in El Salvador as well as in Congress. William Hyland, a Soviet-affairs specialist sympathetic to the Administration, notes that Brezhnev did not even mention El Salvador in his speech last week, and predicts: "They may let it go down the tubes. It was a minor gamble for them, and it's not paying off. They will always be able to blame the defeat of the Salvadoran Communists on Yankee imperialism." Still, Bushnell had the best one-word description of the Administration's course: "Risky."

--By George J. Church

Reported by Bonnie Angelo and Gregory H, Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Bonnie Angela, Gregory H. Wierzynski

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