Facing A World of Worries

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As worthy as U.S. mediation might seem, the risks are enormous. There is a danger of lasting damage to the uniquely intimate U.S. relationship with Britain, Washington's closest ally. Though Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government expressed understanding of the U.S. desire to maintain neutrality while trying to mediate the conflict, unofficial voices were asking: Where are the Americans, now that we need them? Warned the Economist, a prestigious and firmly pro-American British weekly: "Have-it-both-ways irresolution on the part of the United States will lose British popular support for America's nuclear policies and deployment, and for its European, its NATO and its Soviet policies." In fact, the U.S. has privately told both sides that if negotiations collapse, it will openly back Britain. But then it would lose Argentina's vocal support for U.S. Central American policy and alienate much of Latin America, even if Argentina does not follow through on its threats to seek Soviet political and economic support for its efforts to hold on to the islands.

The Middle East. A deadline long regarded with something close to dread by U.S. policymakers passed by safely at week's end. For months the U.S. has been concerned that something might delay the scheduled Israeli pullout from the Sinai on April 25. As he started his Falklands shuttle, Haig dispatched his No. 2 man, Deputy Secretary of State Walter Stoessel, in the hope that his mere presence would have a calming effect. The Israeli bombing of Lebanon at midweek stirred U.S. officials to private fury, but the State Department contented itself with a mild public statement while getting messages to the P.L.O. urging that nothing be done to give Israel an excuse for a wider attack.

The Administration does not seem to have a plan for what to do next. Haig's early hope of persuading Israel and the moderate Arab states to subordinate their enmities to a "strategic consensus" against Soviet penetration of the area died long ago. Since then, says one disgruntled U.S. policymaker, the American attitude has been "Don't face anything until someone rubs our nose in it." It is a posture that has won no friends. A long series of mild and ineffectual rebukes to Israel—about the bombing of both the Iraqi nuclear reactor and Beirut last summer and the de facto annexation of the Golan Heights—has angered moderate Arabs far more than U.S. arms sales have soothed them. Even some American officials fear that Prime Minister Menachem Begin now believes the U.S. will do nothing to restrain Israeli actions, and that in consequence he may yet order a full-scale strike against the P.L.O. in Lebanon.