Falling Short

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One place where the President's speech was well received was white South Africa. Foreign Minister Botha welcomed what he termed Reagan's conviction that it was impossible to negotiate with Marxist terrorists and the President's exposition on the suffering that sanctions would cause black Africa. Although Botha criticized a few things, it was a matter of praising with faint damns. "It is regrettable," he noted, "that President Reagan condemned the measures taken by the South African government to protect black citizens against violence and intimidation."

Reagan, by putting the issue of sanctions at center stage, may have handed the Democrats an emotional issue for the fall. While polls show that the sanctions question does not concern a large number of voters, the topic rouses strong support among activists who consider forceful opposition to South African apartheid a moral imperative.

Another political consequence of Reagan's speech is that it helped inflame the public rhetoric he sought to dampen. Although virtually no one supports the current system in South Africa, it could be dangerous if American foreign policy is once again driven by a moral rampage against an unpopular pro- Western state. The long-term interests of both the U.S. and South Africans, black and white, will require a tortuous and careful sorting out of extremely complex factors rather than a headlong rush toward confrontation.

The Administration also faces strategic questions about its current course. Reagan is right in asserting that South Africa plays an important role in the global balance; it would be a consider- able blow to the West if the government were replaced by one aligned with Moscow. Yet the current system in Pretoria is inevitably going to be replaced, perhaps in five years, perhaps in . 25, as even all but the most adamant whites in South Africa admit. That is why Tutu's outburst that the West "can go to hell" is so chilling, and that is one reason speeches that please Pretoria's whites and enrage Soweto's blacks are misguided.

As with the Philippines and Haiti, the Administration is fast approaching the time when it will have to make a decision: Is it prudent any longer to stick by an old and often loyal regime, or is it time to support the forces that will replace it? If, as Reagan says, a new society is destined to be born in South Africa, the U.S. seems to be on the side of the ancien regime. The time may soon slip away, if it has not already, when a Desmond Tutu or an Oliver Tambo will consider the U.S. a potential ally. The Administration is understandably troubled that some members of the African National Congress are Communists, but to alienate those who are not is to risk enlarging the Communist ranks.

Finally, Reagan's approach raises some real moral concerns, even if these can be clouded by the demagoguery or naivete of some who have adopted the cause. Sanctions may not be effective. They can even be counterproductive. Yet there may come a point when a political system is so abhorrent that other nations must proclaim simply and clearly that they will treat it as an outcast. That rationale, more than any hope of modifying his behavior, was the President's most compelling justification for sanctions against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.