Stormy Times for the U.S.

Washington faces losses, whoever wins in the Falklands

One of the first casualties in the war for the Falkland Islands has been the Reagan Administration's troubled attempt to mold its global ideology into a coherent foreign policy. Ronald Reagan came into office with an East-West world view that saw each crisis as a possible target of Soviet expansionism that must be vigorously opposed. Once again, unexpected events showed the world to be more complex than that, but no less challenging.

Plunged into the perilous currents of a South Atlantic struggle that nobody predicted, nobody...