aig
Alexander Haig first attracted attention in this country in 1973 when, with a distinguished military record behind him, he was summoned by a beleaguered Richard Nixon to become his White House Chief of Staff in order to lend an aura of in- tegrity to a — by then — fatally tarnished Administration. Although the appointment did not save him, Nixon, for once, proved to be a good judge of character. Haig is in- deed a man of unquestionable integrity and simple-minded loyalty. When testifying
before the Senate Foreign Relations Com- mittee that was to confirm him as Secretary of State of the newly incumbent Reagan Administration, he repeatedly refused to denounce his former boss, although he must have known the ways of Washington well enough by then to realise that to be so unforthcoming about one's values could cost one one's job.
But it was immediately prior to the Falklands conflict when, in Kissinger fashion, he shuttled backwards and for- wards between London and Buenos Aires trying vainly to reconcile the two warring parties, that he achieved real fame here. His mission proved a complete failure. But his memoirs provide no clue to the mystery why he undertook this futile exercise, since he not only expected it to misfire but also to provide the opportunity his enemies in the Administration had been looking for to get rid of him. What emerges from his account of the episode is the startling con- flict between him and Mrs Jeane Kirkpatrick, the US Ambassador to the UN, which, in its ramifications, goes a long way towards explaining his ultimate downfall. Whereas Haig subscribed to Mrs Thatcher's view that resisting Argentina's aggression would be perceived by the world (and especially by the Soviet Union) as an expression of the resolve of the West to de- fend its interests, Mrs Kirkpatrick took the view that for the United States to align itself with Britain would buy it 'a hundred years of animosity in Latin America'. Haig bitter- ly accuses her of thwarting his negotiations, encouraging the Argentines in their ob- duracy and thus perhaps of bringing about the bloody outcome he was seeking to avoid. He did, however, share her anxiety about the survivability of the Galtieri regime. Somehow, its face had to be saved; the Junta had to be seen to have achieved something by its precipitate act. Surprising- ly, Mrs Thatcher proved quite amenable to the idea: at one point, she put forward a proposal that provided for a halting of the Task Force 1000 miles from the Falklands, an Argentine withdrawal from the islands, a joint interim administration by Britain and Argentina and a guaranteed completion of negotiations on the question of sovereignty by the end of 1982. Unfortunately, the members of the Junta persistently failed to agree among themselves: each time a breakthrough seemed in sight and Haig was ready to board his plane bound for Lon- don, Costa Mendez, Argentina's foreign minister, would appear at the airport td wish him well and to remind him that the question of the sovereignty of the Malvinas was not negotiable.
The Falklands issue was, however, almost the only one on which the Reagan Administration, with a few exceptions, sup- ported its Secretary of State. Despite the similarity of Reagan's and Haig's view of the Soviet Union as the malevolent in- stigator of all the world's troubles, the two men diverged quite sharply about how to deal with this 'evil empire'. But it took Haig
18 months to realise this and it was not Until 1984 after his curt dismissal from office that the full extent of his lack of understanding 01 President Reagan became apparent to hill' It is striking that Haig's memoirs, unlikc those of Kissinger or Brzezinski, contain nO portrait of the President. Instead of the clear outlines of the diffident an' suspicious Nixon, or the saintly and all-too- eager-to-impress Carter, a shadowY, enigmatic figure emerges. Reagan nods or smiles, says a few encouraging words t° Haig such as 'You're my foreign polieYguYcj Al', since he keeps asking for them, and then disappears again. But the only indica: w tion of the existence of disagreement bet ween the two men came when one or o' member of the Administration would Put' sue a line the opposite of Haig's. What vl,f the reason for this? For Reagan, but not i"" Haig, anti-Soviet rhetoric is just that rhetoric. Through opposition to munism, the American people acquire di° sense of identity. Reagan came to powe,h1.1 the crest of a self-congratulatory wave P""ii wanted to sweep the humiliations unhappiness of recent years firmly into past. The new Secretary of State wantehe resistance to Soviet expansionism to he,tt cornerstone of the Administration. ni'f Reagan, having seen the downfall Johnson, Nixon, and Carter, all of '0°1 had been too preoccupied with foreignfarig- fairs to pay enough attention to tenulk, their domestic constituency, set about 'Its ing appointments that would ensure popularity. 'It was an Administrati,o'r politically loaded in favour of 015 domestic vested interests,' Haig reirt„.31:i, ruefully. Exactly. Reagan, unlike knows what the American people do 11° want. Haig had wanted to blockade Cuba Pros means of 'solving' the Central Alberje,he problem, but Reagan knew that American people were simply not read.Y. tod, get embroiled in a war against even tnibtrice ly insignificant opposition. Reagan, nrt:Ito Haig, is unenthusiastic about entering in a strategic partnership with China, sin fe cre him, as for many Americans, one ,rri munist power is much like another arid suing detente is as senseless with the Ott.enct with the other. Where Haig warned agal„ce lifting the embargo on grain sales t° USSR unless some concessions could be eh; tracted in exchange, Reagan only thooPA about rewarding the Farm Belt that supported his election. When Reagan, order to be seen to be taking a tough line ° the Soviet Union, as punishment for suppression of Solidarity suspended the!' suing of licences for the export of ecItinc:s ment needed to construct the Soviet ,gbe pipeline, Haig's warnings that this would deleterious for the unity of the Weste. Alliance were completely ignored. That these differences remained hiddeilly from Haig for such a long time is not read surprising, given just how few opportuni" e he had had to see the President, let al°011y discuss foreign policy with him- It was °,s5 through the persistent leaking to the P2" (` The New York Times and The Washington Post had become White House bulletin boards'), the creation of rival chan- nels of communication with foreign dignitaries and through his progressive Isolation that he realised he was out of favour. Reagan had given no hint of this to his face. In part, all of this was, no doubt, done out of the anxiety that Reagan's en- tourage shared — that Haig nurtured Presidential ambitions and was using his Position as Cold Warrior-in-Chief to take Media attention away from an ageing Reagan and build up momentum for his Own campaign. But there is more to Haig's downfall than that. He was pursuing a Policy that is increasingly unattractive to a Public conscious of the decline of US ?,°‘ver. Dispatching marines to defend the fee world' was agreeable enough in the Ys when victory over a feeble opposition w. as assured, but once the threat of Soviet Intervention to prevent the defeat of client states such as North Vietnam or Syria became a reality, military operations had to - scaled down into those frustrating, Messy exercises in attrition that we have con-le to know. Similarly, unquestioningly eftunitting oneself to the security of Western Europe was easy enough when the overwhelming strategic superiority of the United States deterred any foe. It does not do so any. longer. Reagan probably realises this, whereas Haig does not. Their rhetoric may be the same, but Reagan wants to do no more than to persuade Congress to vote for funds for the strengthening of the defence of the United States. Unlike Haig, he does not believe that the USA is burden- ed with the responsibility of leading the West. This he clearly demonstrated when he ignored President Mitterand's entreaties to do something to prop up the French franc, just as he offered no more than his engaging smile to Helmut Schmidt when the latter complained to him that the high level of US interest rates was causing social and political turbulence in Western Europe. Haig felt that the leader of the Alliance should make the greatest sacrifices. But it is contrary to all of Reagan's instincts to at- tempt to persuade the American people that the interests of any other country should take precedence over their own. Perhaps a greater chasm than that which separates Ronald Reagan from Gary Hart or Walter Mondale is the one that divides any of these men from Alexander Haig.
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