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Foreign affairs have not been the strong point of the Reagan Administration. One may debate the merits of the President's economic program, but there is not much doubt about the specifics of his policies or the goals they are designed to achieve. In contrast, Reagan's conduct of foreign policy has suffered from contradictory words and deeds, ill defined objectives, persisting personnel troubles, and abrasive encounters with both friends and adversaries abroad. Nowhere has this been more true, or more unfortunate, than in the Middle East.
At the peak of last summer's fighting in Lebanon, just before George Shultz succeeded Alexander Haig Jr. as Secretary of State, political columnist Anthony Lewis wrote in despair that "the Reagan Administration -- the most inept, the most pathetic American government of this century in foreign affairs -- is unable or unwilling to do anything serious about the Middle East."[1] Why this failure? Which is it: "unable", or "unwilling", or both? And will Shultz instead of Haig make a difference?
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It is not surprising that there are confusions and uncertainties in this Administration's management of foreign affairs. To begin with, Reagan is the only U.S. President since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term (1933-37) to be more concerned with domestic than with foreign policy. (Of course this could change especially if his domestic policies fail to produce the promised improvement in the economy.) All of the Presidents from F.D.R. through Carter were intensely interested in foreign affairs, or quickly became so. Five of them acted in effect as their own Secretaries of State, i.e. Roosevelt (from 1938 on), Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (before he became embroiled in Watergate) and Carter. The other four gave their Secretaries broad leeway and let them serve as "lightning rods" for criticism, although retaining their Constitutional responsibility as final arbiter, i.e. Truman with Marshall and Acheson, Eisenhower with Dulles, and Ford with Kissinger.
Reagan, at least to date, fits neither of these patterns. Lacking interest, knowledge and experience in foreign affairs, he has not tried to be "his own Secretary of State". Yet neither did he give wholehearted support to Haig, his first Secretary of State (and it is too soon, as of this writing, to tell how he will work with Shultz). Nor, as...