Facing A World of Worries

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But these precepts have proved an inadequate guide to dealing with the complexities of the real world, in which bellicose anti-Soviet rhetoric sometimes frightens U.S. allies more than it does the leaders in the Kremlin, and in which friends (actual and potential) insist on pursuing their own explosive quarrels rather than subordinating them to any common anti-Soviet cause. The President, who came to office lacking experience in foreign affairs, has given such matters only intermittent personal attention. Haig, beset with bureaucratic battles, has tended to focus his formidable energy on one foreign problem at a time. In the words of a U.S. diplomat at an embassy in the Middle East, speaking of his own region but voicing a comment that has broader application: "We do not even have a framework, a bare outline of ideas, let alone a complete policy. All we are doing is playing fireman."

With some success, it should be said. The basic good fortune that has followed Reagan throughout his political career has held to date in foreign policy. No situation has gone beyond a point of no return. Indeed, the U.S. and the world may yet muddle past the menaces that last week were pressing in on every side. But the week was a potent reminder of how ominous and difficult to control events have become.

The Falklands. By the time Haig returned to Washington, he had set an exhausting new record for shuttle diplomacy: 32,965 miles covered during 71 hr. 40 min. in the air on six flights between Washington, London and Buenos Aires in twelve days. And still negotiations continued, with no resolution. British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym came to the U.S. for two days of talks, even while the British fleet was closing in on South Georgia Island, a probable staging area for an invasion of the Falklands.

Were all those trips necessary? The U.S. obviously had to try to head off a war that could put intense strains on American alliances in Europe, Latin America .or both, and foreign policy experts praised Haig's conduct of negotiations as being, in the admiring word of one Indian diplomat, "professional." Doubtless, too, Haig got a better sense of the British and Argentine positions in face-to-face talks than Washington would have garnered through an exchange of messages. Even so, it is questionable whether Haig should have committed himself to an all-consuming mission that prevented him from watching other festering trouble spots that call for attention—especially the Middle East—and involved U.S. prestige so heavily in what could too easily evolve as a no-win situation for Washington.