Nation: Welcome to an Impossible Job

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What experts think it takes to succeed at State

The Secretary of State must deal with more than 140 countries around the world. He must manage a sprawling 15,000-person bureaucracy. He must justify his policies to a Congress that lately has seemed ever more inclined to put strings on his freedom of action. And he must do all this in a world of instant communications that flash events in far-off nations onto American TV screens as fullblown crises, moments after they occur.

It may sound like an impossible job —and in fact only a handful of the men who have held it in modern times are widely regarded as having been outstandingly successful (among them: George Marshall, Dean Acheson and Henry Kissinger). Foreign policy experts in the U.S. and abroad are reluctant even to discuss the attributes of an "ideal" Secretary, contending that no such paragon could exist. But they do talk about the qualities needed to make a Secretary effective. The list is well worth the attention of Alexander Haig—and Ronald Reagan.

As most experts see it, a successful Secretary of State must: >Win the confidence of his President. This seems obvious, but it is often overlooked, usually with unhappy results. A Secretary who cannot persuade his President to make him the chief recommender, articulator and executor of foreign policy will quickly be upstaged, most likely by the President's National Security Adviser. U.S. policy will seem—and too often be—confused, vacillating, subject to sudden flip-flops.

Ideally, says Kissinger, the Secretary should talk to the President every day, and the two should "get into each other's heads" so that there are no misunderstandings about what policy is and should be (Acheson boasted that he did exactly that with Harry Truman). The President, of course, must make the final decisions, and he will not always agree with his Secretary. Kissinger has this advice for a Secretary who is often overruled: "You should leave."

> Use the bureaucracy capably. The department's career officers will know much more about specific countries than the Secretary ever can; he must draw on their expertise and give them a sense that their advice is taken into account in formulating policy. But he cannot tolerate endless squabbling and wars of newspaper leaks among his subordinates; he must run a tight ship, as Cyrus Vance, for one, did not. On Reagan's transition team, there is already quarreling between members who favor an ultratough policy toward the

Soviet Union — ending all arms control negotiations, for example — and others who want a more moderate approach. Haig will have to find some way of dampening the dissension if the disputants wind up in second- and third-echelon jobs at State.

>Be persuasive in dealing with Congress.