Trouble on the Team

A foreign policy power play leads to talk of Haig's resignation

The last thing he wanted, said President Reagan, was an unseemly squabble among his top foreign policy advisers. Yet that is what he got last week in the most explosive and embarrassing clash of his young Administration. Annoyed by what he saw as a challenge to his authority as the nation's chief foreign policy manager, Secretary of State Alexander Haig publicly questioned a decision by his boss and even hinted that he might resign after a scant two months in office. What riled Haig was Reagan's decision to put Vice President George Bush in charge of "crisis management," though precisely what that meant remained tantalizingly imprecise. Nevertheless Bush's appointment pitted Haig against the White House staff and imperiled, at least temporarily, the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It was a quarrel that could hardly have come at a worse time, for even as it was boiling along, a major crisis to be managed loomed on the horizon—the confrontation between the government and the independent union movement in Poland.

At week's end all the participants in the Haig affair were insisting that business was as usual and that "the team" was back in harness. But in fact no one had emerged from the altercation with his honor or credibility enhanced, and several questions had been raised about the new Administration's ability to conduct diplomacy. The questions were many. Was there a potentially serious flaw in Reagan's aloof, above-the-battle approach to management, which relies heavily on staff aides to keep rivalries in check? How seriously had Haig's prestige been damaged, not only in the White House but on Capitol Hill and abroad? How well could the Secretary of State be expected to work with Reagan's top aides, with Bush and—perhaps most important —with the senior White House staff and Richard Allen, the National Security Adviser, whose hand had seemingly been strengthened by the furor?