Surprise and Confusion

That seems all too often the U.S. reaction to new crises abroad

Anxiety and exhaustion lined their faces. They had been up much of the night, trying to deal with a bewildering series of crises around the world. the US ambassador in Afghanistan had been kidnapped and killed. The US embassy in Iran had been overrun by an armed mob, which held 70 Amercians captive for hour (see WORLD). Now a worried Jimmy Carter, flanked by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, was off on an important state visit to Mexico. No sooner had he arrived there than President Jose LOpez Portillo welcomed him with a public scolding. In the midst of all this, Carter learned that two Persian Gulf sheikdoms were taking advantage of the Iranian crisis to raise their oil prices 7%, a blow to his antinflation campaign.

It began as a bleak week, and it remained one. The swirl of events was so stormy hat at one point Carter considered postponing his Mexican trip -a move that would hardly have pleased the Mexicans. The President had also considered postponing his press conference last Monday, in the hope that the chaos in Iran might have cleared before he answered questions about it. He decided instead to use the conference to extend an olive branch. Said he: "We have been in touch with those in control of the [Iranian] government, and we stand ready to work with them."

What is uncertain, however, is just how much Iran's rulers, whoever they may ultimately turn out to be, want to work with the U.S. Equally uncertain is how the downfall of the Shah's regime will affect the balance of power in the Middle East, and in the world. All that is clear is that the collapse of Iran has raised serious new doubts about U.S. foreign policy. In ways not yet fully clear, the sight of Iran reduced to anarchy has brought into question Washington's ability and determination to support its allies and to assert what the nation stands for.

While attempting to create a new policy for the Persian Gulf, Carter must also try to revive the spirit of Camp David. Returning to | that secluded presidential retreat this week, Vance meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian Premier Moustafa Khalil in an effort to resolve the issues still blocking the peace outlined at September's summit. qed

Looming larger than all these questions is the recent souring of U.S.-Soviet relations. That trend has been greatly worsened by Carter's sudden normalization of relations with Moscow's rivals in Peking. It took another downturn last week when Soviet advisers were reported to have played a role in the Shootout that killed the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan. The State Department sent a sharp protest to the Soviets. Despite these strains, Carter has assigned top priority to concluding the long delayed SALT II and meeting with Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev.

These complex and pressing foreign policy problems would be difficult enough if they were arising one at a time. Coming all at once, they are nearly overwhelming the Administration's ability to cope with them. TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott reports:

The symptoms of the malaise afflicting U.S. policy are so numerous and varied that they almost defy classification into a single syndrome. The basic trouble seems to be that Jimmy Carter, after two years in office, is still unable to project a sense that he is in control of events. His major initiatives, such as the diplomatic offensive in southern Africa and the Camp David summit, have so far failed to fulfill expectations. His foreign policy has come to seem primarily reactive, responding to events that he did not anticipate. And his response has tended to be indecisive.

In Iran, the U.S. has appeared to be standing by and gawking at the collapse of a regime that was not only a friend but also the guardian of U.S. interests in a strategically vital region. This has underscored the impression of an American Administration that does not have sufficient grip on the reins of power to yank hard every now and then.

Whether the U.S. could or should have done more to uphold the Shah is debatable. Bringing pressure on the Shah to abandon his autocratic ways, to include opposition leaders in a government of national unity, might have helped -but also might not. What is clear is that the Administration's conflicting and confusing pronouncements on Iran have emphasized the lack of a coherent policy. One day the White House seemed to be proclaiming its all-out support for the Shah; the next day it was publicly doubting whether he could hold on to power. The mutual recriminations among the CIA, the State Department and the White House over who was "losing" Iran made a bad situation worse.

There are, however, a few points to made in the Administration's defense, tt has been alleged, for example, that Carter's human rights policy tied the Shah's hands, preventing him from dealing effectively with his enemies while at the same time making them more bold. But the Shah had publicly committed himself to domestic reforms well before Carter took office. He was responding to irresistible pressure from inside his country. According to the leader of a country bordering Iran, in a recent talk with a senior American diplomat, Washington should have moved ten years ago to make the Shah see the folly of pursuing rapid economic modernization without parallel social and political reforms.

At least one high Government official has suggested that the U.S. should have considered moving troops into Iran, ostensibly to protect the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, but in reality to reinforce the Shah. Yet the likely result of such intervention would have been a disaster far greater than the one now facing Washington. The U.S. would have been dragged into a civil war -almost surely on the losing side. Some Americans advocated a military coup in support of the Shah, but that idea was discarded.

Carter's policy, which had to change somewhat over the past few months, did not bind the U.S. inextricably to the Shah, did not call for an Alamo-like stand with him in his palace. Instead, Washington did its best to support each government in turn. Thus the Administration's muted but still audible criticism of the Shah's repression and the gradual distancing of the U.S. from the fate of the Peacock Throne may help Washington build a workable relationship with a new and very different Iran.

Whatever the pros and cons of the Administration's Iran policy, the crisis in the Persian Gulf has contributed to the impression of an Administration that reacts rather than initiates, and too often reacts in surprise and confusion. This seems to have been particularly true in its changing policy toward Peking. The timing and tone of the normalization announcement were managed by China, not by the U.S. The Chinese were impatient to get on with normalization. They also liked the idea of consummating their deal with the Americans before a signing of SALT II at a Carter-Brezhnev summit. They managed to make their impatience an imperative in the bargaining. They also managed to play brilliantly on National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski's own impatience. They knew that he could not resist the temptation to rattle the Soviets.

As a result, Teng Hsiao-p'ing's visit to the U.S. was on his terms. Beginning with his extraordinary interview with TIME Editor in Chief Hedley Donovan Teng used his U.S. trip to bait the Russian "polar bear" and to escalate the war of nerves over the conflict in Indochina Teng's visit left the impression that once again the Administration was not controlling events, even on its own home ground. The U.S.-China relationship, and the question of who is using whom, may be further complicated by Peking's weekend "attack of self-defense" against Viet Nam.

The next challenge is SALT. Carter is clearly committed to an arms treaty, but there is the very real question of whether he can get it both signed and ratified. First, he must continue cracking heads within his own foreign policy team to get an agreement on the final set of tradeoffs to be offered Moscow. Second, he must convince the Soviets that unless they make some concessions, SALT II could fall victim to what may well be a wide-open 1980 presidential campaign.

The coming weeks could be critical for the arms talks. A Cabinet-level special committee met last week to decide on final moves in what has been called SALT'S end game. Vance and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin have been meeting intensively to reach agreement on the final tradeoffs, and the two sides' delegations have been working overtime in Geneva. Carter is scheduled to offer a defense of SALT in a speech at Georgia Tech this week. Within "the next few weeks he hopes to announce a treaty signing and a Brezhnev summit by April.

But to convince Congress, the nation and world leaders that he has taken firm control, he is going to have to begin outlining a geopolitical world view that features America as an active, assertive and purposeful leader, rather than the baffled, dismayed, uncertain spectator it has too often seemed in the recent past. -

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