23 JULY 1977, Page 7

A new American era

Nicholas von Hoffman

Washington It was disconcerting that the White House should leak the news that the United States was now in what an unnamed high official called 'Era 2.' The proclamation of eras, epochs and ages ought to be done after a prelude in brass and never by unidentified sources. The use of the Arabic numeral was also puzzling. We Americans, with our taste for the grand and our fancied affinity with ancient Romans, ordinarily would designate it 'Era II.'

The explanation for the uncharacteristic '2' may be that the credit for the discovery of 'Era 2', and our existence in it, goes to Professor Samuel P. Huntington, of Harvard University, a political scientist with a reputation for the most ferociously unsentimental pragmatism. Mr Huntington, who is much admired for his writings cautioning against the excesses of democracy, is a member of the staff of the Trilateral Commission, that semi-official body of millionaires and politicians from Europe, Japan and the United States who meet in suffocating self-importance from time to time and scare the American Left. Both the President and the Vice-President are members; so is Nelson Rockefeller, but he'll join anything.

Since Professor Huntington is on record as being opposed to raising excessive expectations among the common people, he may have felt that the use of a Roman numeral would be too ornamental. That must remain in the domain of speculation, but what is known is that Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser, had Professor Huntington conduct a study of where Russia and America are in relation to each other — and that is how we learned we had finished with the cold war, passed though détente and had arrived in Era 2, described by the New York Times as 'a Period incorporating both the competition of the cold war era and the cooperation of the détente period.'

Since these conclusions are described as unofficial and in no way approved by the I resident, the White House can back away from them if enough people don't like them. But for the record the word here is that the Russians aren't achieving strategic superiority, that their naval preparations are nothing we can't handle and that the conventional forces of the Western powers _will be up to any eventualities in Europe. aThis is quite a reversal after months of larmist talk about the strength of Russian

forces, The proclaiming of Era 2 may be someh iflg of a reaction to increased grumbling over the state of relations with the Russians. The administration's happy contention that all is well between Washington and Moscow has fallen through the floor in the face of Brezhnev's repeated statements to anybody who'd listen — from the President of France ,to strolling businessmen — that things are lousy and getting worse. Even Secretary of State Vance, who apparently has somewhat less influence on foreign policy than the chief White House usher, has begun to concede that all is not unblemished amity.

Whether Era 2 will ever achieve the dignity and notoriety of détente is doubtful. Brzezinski has been on the television selling this idea of cooperation with the Reds on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and abusing them the rest of the week. But people, neither civilian producers nor government policy makers, aren't built that way. Things must be getting either better or worse. Only lovers, and then only the crazy kind, alternately slap and kiss.

It's said that Era 2, or the data in the study leading to the discovery of this new hour in the history of our species, was responsible for the President's decision not to go ahead with the B-1 bomber. The liberals in the Democratic Party, always rummaging about to find some reason to cheer their leader, were delighted. They did their best to give the impression, without actually saying so, that the choice was made in the interests of disarmament or some such. But, on that point, there is no reason to disbelieve the President who said America wasn't going to build the bomber because the Cruise missile is cheaper and better.

At the same time work continues on put ting the new and deadlier M-12-A warheads on the Minutemen missiles, and on development of the huge MX land-based missile, scores of which are supposed to perpetually rove the country on railroad freight cars so the Russians won't be able to knock them out on a first strike. Apparently nobody from the Pentagon has been on an American railroad train in the last twenty years or the generals would know that, while our railroad cars can do a lot of things like rust, leak, lurch and emit compressedair sighs, the one thing they do not do is go forward or backwards.

It would be misleading to leave the impression that the country was convulsed by these questions. One almost never hears them discussed. Summer has hit with its hot, humid hand so the propensity is to discuss nothing but baseball, gardening and the pleasant fact that, while the stock market continues to run in place, there is gas in the tank and a little money in the bank. For those who insist on getting upset about something, a Mr Donald Ellsburg, Assistant Secretary of Labour for Employment Standards, has come forward to offer himself.

Mr Ellsburg has issued an edict which even the Tsars might have hesitated to promulgate. Mr Ellsburg has declared that henceforth 'Employers who have contracts with the Government [which is everybody but the local delicatessen] who fail to consider qualified .alcoholics and drug abusers 'for employment] because of their handicap are clearly violating the law . Our Government [the reverential capital G is Mr Ellsburg's] spends a considerable amount of money each year to rehabilitate alcoholics and drug abusers to help them become employable, productive citizens. It would be incongruous to turn around and deny them protection under the antidiscrimination law.' An assistant of Mr Ellsburg has explained this means every company must have an 'affirmative action programme' to locate and hire drunks and dope fiends just as they would blacks, Hispanics and others who receive preferential treatment now because they were kicked • around then.

We can expect to see corporations sending personnel recruiters to pull bums out of ash cans, and snatch wired and blinking coke heads from the promiscuous beds of rock stars in order not to be penalised for having too few worthless people on the payroll. It's to be expected that schools will be started to teach the industrious children of the middle class how to achieve an economically indispensable vice. Naturally, there will be accusations by organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People that some young white persons, who have secured employment on their claim to be hopeless lushes, are actually secret abstainers. But, of course, government inspectors will be hired to check these disputed claims and make sure that every company's quota is filled with bona fide drunks, hopheads, pill poppers, deadbeats and loafers.