Reagan Wears a Four-Leaf Clover : Luck or Not, the Tide Has Been Running His Way Abroad

Let’s say that you are given a multiple-choice quiz on President Reagan’s handling of foreign policy and national security. Which of the following statements would you choose as coming closest to the mark?

(a) The Reagan presidency has been a disastrous mix of miscalculation, confusion, careless rhetoric and loss of American prestige and credibility in the world.

(b) Critics of the Administration can’t see the forest for the trees. The flow of events in the world is far more favorable to the United States and Western notions of freedom and democracy than when Reagan entered office.

(c) Reagan is the luckiest man alive.

(d) All of the above.

Things may look different by the time Reagan leaves office 17 months hence, but as of now a sensible person would just about have to go with “d.”

Look at the events of the past month.

The Iran- contra hearings made painfully clear the absence of appropriate machinery and brainpower in the White House for the creation and coordination of an effective foreign policy. If further proof was needed, it came in the confusion of purpose and policy surrounding the reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers and the dispatch of a U.S. armada to the Persian Gulf.

But, to bend a hoary cliche, Reagan has a talent for falling into mud puddles and coming up smelling like a rose.

Knowledgeable folks were still shaking their heads in consternation over the Iran- Contra blunders when prospects suddenly brightened for a historic arms-control agreement, a summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and the opening of a new, more cooperative era in superpower relations. If these good things happen, and the country avoids disaster in the Middle East, the balance sheet is going to look a lot more favorable to Reagan.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian seizure of American hostages and the perceptions of U.S. impotence were a factor in the 1980 presidential election that propelled Reagan into the White House. As a generality, however, U.S. presidential campaigns are won or lost on the basis of domestic issues.

Thus we don’t usually get Presidents who are especially competent or knowledgeable about the world beyond our shores. Their closest, most trusted political advisers tend to be domestically oriented, too. Reagan and his in-group are arch examples.

The Californian came into office with an abiding faith in free enterprise as the answer to Third World development problems, strong anti-communist convictions and a belief that U.S. problems with both allies and adversaries grew from a perception of American weakness. In order to deal with the Soviets from a position of strength, he was determined to build U.S. military forces.

Many experts, both in this country and abroad, believe that the President was right on these basics. But Reagan’s Administration did not so much produce policies as postures. Little thought was given to the counterproductive effect on alliance relationships of hard-line speeches for domestic political consumption. There was a tendency to lurch from one crisis to another, improvising as he went along, without much regard to long-term consequences.

The situation was made worse by the repeated disagreements between the State and Defense departments over arms control and the appropriate use of military force, and the absence of anybody in Reagan’s inner circle with the knowledge and authority to impose order.

The President was unwilling to crack down on the infighters, and people in a position to know report that he was personally uninterested in the messy details of either foreign or national-security policy.

In judging the consequences, it is helpful to use the Soviet notion of the “correlation of forces”--a concept that embraces such factors as national will, economic and technological strength and allied relationships, as well as pure military power.

By that standard, the Soviets were on a roll through most of the 1970s as pro-Soviet, anti-Western forces seized or consolidated power in Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Grenada, among other places. American power was widely perceived to be on the decline. When speaking for home consumption, Soviet officials openly boasted that detente was something forced on the West by the Soviet advantage in the “correlation of forces.”

The picture changed dramatically for the better in the 1980s.

On the American side, a consensus in favor of higher defense spending was born. The economy, in the short term at least, proved to be one of the strongest and most resilient in the world. Third World leaders began noticing that the most successful less-developed countries were those that encouraged foreign investment and private enterprise, while the “socialist” countries became economic basket cases. Democracy gained in Central and South America, the Philippines and the Caribbean. The Soviet economic model became an embarrassment to anybody anywhere who proclaimed himself a Marxist.

In the face of unbelievable Soviet bullying, America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization went ahead with plans to deploy medium-range missiles.

Now we find the Soviet Union preparing to sign an agreement on the elimination of Euromissiles and perhaps a more important pact on chemical weapons as well. A summit meeting is in the works. U.S. negotiator Max Kampelman believes that a treaty on offensive strategic missiles may also be within reach. The Central American situation is muddled, but there is a fighting chance that the Sandinistas of Nicaragua can be nudged into a degree of power- sharing with the democratic opposition.

The pendulum is now threatening to swing the other way. The clumsy handling of the Persian Gulf situation is threatening to produce the very result that he wanted to avoid--an increase of Soviet power and influence in Iran and the Middle East generally.

It’s unfortunate but true that the average West European now sees Gorbachev as a greater force for peace and stability than Reagan. The President’s authority has been seriously, perhaps fatally, undermined by the Iran-contra affair. The U.S. Congress is holding back on defense appropriations, sometimes without appropriate regard for true national-security needs, and is meddling in foreign affairs to an extent never dreamed of during the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

Luckily, though, Gorbachev has problems of his own that apparently prevent him from fully exploiting U.S. mistakes and impel him to seek an accommodation.

Luck may be an unreliable substitute for wisdom. But it helps.