Mixed Signals from America's Team

By Evan Thomas

When Ronald Reagan goes to Geneva next week, he will not sally forth alone to meet his Kremlin rival like some ancient warrior king seeking to settle the disputes of nation states in single combat. By his side as he spars and reasons with Mikhail Gorbachev will be three top aides: Secretary of State George Shultz, National Security Adviser Robert ("Bud") McFarlane and White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan. The President will depend heavily on the wisdom and counsel of this small coterie of advisers and a larger supporting cast both in Geneva and in Washington. Any deal the U.S. might conceivably work out with the Soviets will be as much their product as the President's.

At the table, America's team in Geneva will present a united front. Like their leader, Reagan's men want to reach some kind of accommodation on arms control, one that could ultimately serve as the foundation for a nuts-and-bolts agreement but not one that would sacrifice the President's dream of a foolproof space shield against nuclear missiles.

Yet behind this fac,ade, the President's larger team is badly divided. Ever since Reagan took office in 1981, the search for a realistic arms-control package has been seriously hampered by incessant bureaucratic infighting. Philosophical disputes have also muddied the Administration's broader Soviet policy. The President, airily detached from the daily power struggles within his Administration, has been unwilling to step in to resolve the arguments. His advisers, fiercely turf conscious and suspicious of each other, have been unable to settle their differences among themselves.

In Geneva, any deal between the U.S. and the Soviets will be shaped by geopolitical factors, from the arcane abacus of nuclear armaments to the broader themes of superpower rivalry and coexistence. But inevitably policies are made by people, whose force of character and personalities can count for as much as their policy views. The zero-sum qualities of Reagan's top advisers have nearly paralyzed the tortuous process of hammering out an arms-control proposal that is acceptable to both Reagan and the Soviet Union. The man charged with shaping a consensus, National Security Adviser McFarlane, has great expertise in arms control and the will to move quarreling partisans, but he has failed to sway his chief client. Chief of Staff Regan has his boss's ear, but little substantive experience in geopolitics. No-nonsense Secretary of State Shultz is the workhorse of U.S. diplomacy, but he does not always seem entirely sure to what end. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger knows precisely what he wants--a massive military buildup--and making deals with the Kremlin is not his idea of the way to achieve it. McFarlane, Regan and Shultz have ganged up to keep Weinberger back in Washington next week and away from the summit. But even in absentia, Weinberger may have more influence on Reagan than the other three combined.

If a deal is to be made, McFarlane will be the one charged with pulling it together. He is an unlikely choice for such a daunting task. In 1979 he was still a lieutenant colonel in the Marines; he retired because the corps, having little use for a budding national security strategist, shipped him off to a Marine base in Okinawa. As a National Security staffer in the Nixon and Ford Administrations, however, and later as counselor of the State Department, McFarlane won over some heavyweight mentors, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig. When Reagan's National Security Adviser William Clark succumbed to burnout and stepped down in 1983, McFarlane, by then Clark's deputy at the White House, became the compromise choice to replace him.

He was viewed as the least self-aggrandizing and most efficient candidate for the delicate job of coordinating national security. At first he brought modesty to a position that in the past has been filled by outsize egos. To friends, McFarlane jokes edgily, sometimes in Kissingeresque dialect, about how his old boss used to say that he liked Marines because they never presumed to know too much.

McFarlane soon found the Administration lacking in foreign policymakers with a coherent world view. He has moved with growing confidence to fill the vacuum. Indeed, at times he views himself as the only Reaganaut able to think in geopolitical terms. "He gets up to a big one like the summit, and he looks in the mirror and sees Henry Kissinger," snipes a White House staffer. McFarlane favors arms control, not because he is, as he has been called, an accommodationist toward the Kremlin but because he believes the U.S. will benefit in military terms if it can reduce the Soviet advantage in big "silo buster" ICBMs. He also believes that the Soviets will want a deal to hold down deployment of new U.S. weapons. Says an Administration aide: "He is a closet hawk who nonetheless knows what must be done and how to get things done."

Ironically, it was McFarlane who did more than anyone to sell Reagan on the Strategic Defense Initiative, the biggest stumbling block to an arms-control deal. Back in 1983, no one at the top levels of the Pentagon or State Department was eager to shift from offensive to defensive weapons. Reagan had begun to toy with the idea after talking to Scientist Edward Teller, a leading conceptualist of a space-based nuclear shield. But it fell to McFarlane to make the President a true believer by arranging for a briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told Reagan that a space-based defense system was technologically feasible. McFarlane felt that Star Wars would help break a negotiating stalemate and make the Soviets more willing to strike a deal.

Nonetheless, McFarlane soon found himself in the awkward position of trying to persuade Reagan to show some flexibility on SDI for the sake of bargaining with the Soviets. His briefings are precise and carefully reasoned, but the President finds his National Security Adviser somewhat pedantic, bogged down in mind-numbing minutiae. McFarlane is simply not the sort to indulge in sweeping generalities as his boss does, nor is he an easygoing yarn spinner like Reagan's closest cronies. Reagan, 74, still regards McFarlane, 48, as a young staffer who lacks the clout of a Cabinet-level adviser.

The National Security Adviser has had an equally arduous task formulating an arms-control package that Reagan's advisers can agree on. Starting last year, he tried bringing Shultz, Weinberger and CIA Director William Casey together at informal lunches twice a week in the Family Dining Room of the White House, but the so-called Family Group eventually tired of togetherness, and the lunches have become sporadic.

Though praised for his common sense and ability to think three or four moves ahead in plotting diplomatic strategy, McFarlane is faulted by some Reaganauts for holding his cards too close. In part his circumspection is a necessary survival tactic in the warfare of bureaucratic leaks, but some feel that McFarlane is a bit standoffish by nature. "No one really knows what he feels deep down," says one National Security staffer. "He's the most secretive person I've ever met."

McFarlane's maneuvering and generally good press have aroused the jealousy of Chief of Staff Regan, who in ten months on the job has moved to consolidate his power at the White House but has so far failed to subjugate the National Security Adviser. Economics, not foreign policy, is the former Treasury Secretary's expertise. On national security questions Regan sees his role as doing whatever the President wants. He will be the last adviser to tell Reagan that his twin goals of negotiating arms reductions and forging ahead with SDI are irreconcilable.

If the chief of staff listens to anyone besides the President on foreign policy, it is Secretary of State Shultz. A self-effacing public servant, Shultz has managed to stabilize the State Department after the rocky reign of his predecessor, Haig. But Shultz is an incrementalist, not a global visionary. He sees his job as chipping away at the ice encrusting U.S.-Soviet relations, not ushering in a new age of East-West understanding. As an Atlanticist, he views the summit as a way to defuse tensions in NATO by reassuring U.S. allies that the U.S. is serious about arms control. He is a moderate only in comparison with the Pentagon hard-liners. By ordinary standards, he is conservative and leery of the Soviets. "Shultz has never been one to lead the charge to change Ronald Reagan's mind," says one State Department official.

Defense Secretary Weinberger claims to support verifiable arms control. But his pronouncements have served to slow down the negotiating process and threaten to derail it altogether. Weinberger's idee fixe is the need to rearm America. He seems almost obsessed with preventing the Soviets from gaining any further strategic edge. His ally and instructor in this crusade is Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, a veteran nuclear expert who has repeatedly used well-crafted arguments and detailed knowledge of the superpowers' doomsday stockpiles to block the Administration from making any offer the Soviets might actually accept. Together, Weinberger and Perle managed to slip some barbs into the U.S. counterproposal tabled in Geneva a fortnight ago. These include proposing a ban on mobile missiles that would require scrapping the Soviets' SS-24s and new SS-25s in exchange for canceling development of the U.S. Midgetman. At the same time, they have framed support for SDI as a test of loyalty to the Administration, skillfully chilling whatever desire McFarlane or Shultz might have to press Reagan on arms control.

Fearful that Weinberger's presence in Geneva would doom any chance of a deal, Shultz, Regan and MacFarlane managed to keep him off the summit team, despite the Defense Secretary's fervent pleas to the President. The White House is trying to muzzle Perle as well, last week vetoing his appearance on West European TV lest he make some impolitic remarks. Nonetheless, either Perle or his equally hard-line superior at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, is likely to go to Geneva in a backup role. Even from a remote perch, the Defense Department hawks are sure to be vigilant.

Despite Weinberger's absence, Reagan no longer needs to listen to his Defense Secretary to know what is on his mind. He has great respect for Weinberger's opinions. Both men share a simplicity of vision untroubled by confusing nuance. That is not to say their vision is identical, however. Reagan persists in believing that the U.S. can have both arms reductions and SDI; Weinberger apparently cares less about a superpower deal than about Star Wars. Says Paul Warnke, Jimmy Carter's chief arms-control negotiator: "Essentially what Weinberger is urging is that we go it alone."

A variety of Soviet experts and State Department bureaucrats will accompany Reagan's principal advisers to the summit sessions, mostly to act as functionaries. "Deciding who is going to sit at the table is like deciding who is going to meet Princess Di," says one diplomat.

Arms-control Adviser Paul Nitze is the most intriguing member of the summit bullpen. Nitze, 78, a white-haired, spry member of the old postwar foreign policy establishment, has been dubbed "the Silver Fox" for his wily bureaucratic skills. If anyone can find a way to bridge the chasm between the U.S. and the Soviet arms proposals, it is Nitze. The arms-control veteran, however, has been tagged by many Reaganauts as an accommodationist for his willingness to work out a deal.

On the eve of the summit, the President and his men seem caught in an awkward minuet. Unlike earlier Presidents, Reagan is oblivious to the essential details of arms control. His advisers are either unwilling or unable to make him confront the difficult practical choices. Until they do, it is hard to see how they can offer the President much more than moral support when he faces off against Gorbachev in Geneva, or begin the hard business of translating superpower proposals into progress. --By Evan Thomas. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

With reporting by Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington