Stormy Times for the U.S.

By WALTER ISAACSON

Washington faces losses, whoever wins in the Falklands

One of the first casualties in the war for the Falkland Islands has been the Reagan Administration's troubled attempt to mold its global ideology into a coherent foreign policy. Ronald Reagan came into office with an East-West world view that saw each crisis as a possible target of Soviet expansionism that must be vigorously opposed. Once again, unexpected events showed the world to be more complex than that, but no less challenging.

Plunged into the perilous currents of a South Atlantic struggle that nobody predicted, nobody wanted and nobody seemed sure how to control, the U.S. found itself trying to mediate between Argentina, a would-be partner in the effort to fight Communist influence in the Western Hemisphere, and Britain, a historic ally that is Washington's staunchest supporter in the NATO alliance. The more intense the battle between the two countries became, the more the U.S. stood to lose--and the more, it could be said, the Soviet Union might stand to gain. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it last week, "Sometimes you come up against a situation where you can't win."

The most immediate consequence of the conflict is the breakdown, at least for the moment, of Reagan's attempt to forge an alliance among nations in the Americas to fight Marxist influence in the hemisphere. Washington's decision to back Britain with sanctions as well as rhetoric has helped to divide the Americas once again along North-South lines. A sweeping alliance of left-and right-wing regimes, spanning the ideological spectrum from Cuba to Brazil, has rallied to support Argentina, miscasting it as a victim of colonialist subjugation. "The tilt toward Britain will destroy the coalition we must have if we are to prevent a Communist takeover of Central America," said North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, the lone opponent of a Senate resolution endorsing a pro-British policy.

Whether the rift between the U.S. and its Latin neighbors will prove serious depends on how long the Falklands dispute lasts. While the U.S. and Britain are aligned against a Latin American nation, "Hispanidad," the tradition of Latin American solidarity, will remain at the fore, overshadowing a myriad of inter-American territorial and ideological disputes, like Argentina's quarrel with Chile over the Beagle Channel. Already there are mutterings within the Organization of American States about moving the headquarters of that hemispheric coalition out of Washington, or forming a purely Hispanic rival group. Said a senior O.A.S. official: "Never has the U.S. done so much so fast to destroy its image in Latin America." But some State Department officials still believe most Latin American nations, despite their verbal support for Argentina, are discomforted by the junta's use of force to settle its territorial dispute with Britain, and realize that their long-range economic and political interests are inevitably linked to the U.S. Says one optimistic analyst: "We should not take this lightly, but in six months it will be forgotten." One example of the attitude at work: Brazilian President Joao Figueiredo, even though he has condemned U.S. support for Britain, did not cancel his state visit to Washington this week.

The Administration tried hard to reduce the damage to its relations with Latin America. Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote to members of the O.A.S. last week, assuring them that the U.S. is sensitive to their anticolonial concerns. He said that the U.S. sided with Britain only to uphold the all-important principle of nonaggression, which decrees that force should not be used to resolve international disputes. President Reagan wrote personal notes to five key Latin American leaders with a similar message. Said he: "My Government fully understands the deep national commitment of Argentina to recover the islands and its frustrations of long years of fruitless negotiations."

Washington's pro-British tilt, which it had little choice about adopting in the end, severely damaged what was a blossoming, albeit controversial, relationship with Argentina. The junta in Buenos Aires, shunned by the Carter Administration because of indefensible human rights violations, was courted by Reagan as a strategic ally in the anti-Communist crusade. Last year Administration officials proposed the resumption of arms sales to Argentina, which, like the U.S., is supporting the military campaign of El Salvador's government against leftist guerrillas. Some Latin American experts regarded this friendly abrazo as naive and misguided. Argued Johns Hopkins University Professor Riordan Roett: "The idea of a U.S. condominium of interest with the Argentine military to thwart revolution was a terrible one. Its demise is no loss."

Some of the anti-Soviet hard-liners within the Administration fear that the rupture of relations with Argentina may drive it into an alignment with Moscow. But most experts consider this unlikely, even if the regime of General Leopoldo Galtieri is overthrown. Capitalist and predominantly Roman Catholic, Argentina is not a likely place for a Marxist revolution, especially after years of violent government repression of leftists. Any regime that replaces Galtieri will almost certainly also be controlled by the anti-Communist military.

Nevertheless, the current crisis could ease Argentina into closer ties with the Soviet Union, its No. 1 trading partner. To the dismay of the Carter Administration, the junta undermined the 1980 U.S. grain embargo against Moscow, and now sells 77% of Argentina's crop to the Soviets. "It is altogether possible that the Argentines may want to give the Soviets base rights," says Richard Helms, former director of the CIA. Even if it were to keep the Kremlin at arm's length, an Argentina humiliated by the outcome of the Falklands crisis could be dangerously destabilizing to the region. Buenos Aires has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and operates a reactor capable of making weapons-grade plutonium. Question: Would a vengeful regime build the Bomb? Would it threaten to use it?

Moscow, which has been more of a taunting spectator than a participant in the Falklands dispute, stands to gain the most from the North-South fighting, even if the government in Argentina does not become more accommodating to the Soviets. Both Haig and British Foreign Secretary Francis Pym have complained that the U.S.S.R. has been "fishing in troubled waters" with its propaganda attempts to capitalize on the crisis. Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, speaking at a Moscow dinner honoring Nicaraguan Leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra, said that the South Atlantic confrontation occurred "precisely because there are forces that are trying to preserve or restore their positions of dominance and to impose foreign oppression." In deference to his Marxist guest, Brezhnev did not embrace the junta's cause more explicitly.

For Cuba, too, the Falklands present an opportunity to insinuate itself with Argentina and other Latin American neighbors after years of isolation. Havana's ambassador to Buenos Aires, Emilio Aragones Navarro, went so far as to say that "we ought to be fighting. The cause of the Malvinas is the cause of Cuba, of Latin America and of the Third World." Yet despite the self-serving rhetoric of the Soviets and their clients, the majority view is that the Falklands will not inflate into an East-West showdown. "Frankly, I do not see the danger of this escalating to that extent," Reagan said last week.

The outcome of the Falklands war is almost sure to involve U.S. military strategy as well as diplomatic policy. The first full-scale naval battle in 40 years erupted just as Reagan's fiveyear, $1.6 trillion defense buildup was being debated by the Senate. The war provides ammunition to both sides of a dispute about the effectiveness of large surface ships for projecting power into areas of conflict.

Navy Secretary John Lehman defended the Administration's plan to build 110 new surface ships, including spending $7 billion for two 90,000-ton Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers. The sinking of the Sheffield, said Lehman, showed that relying on smaller aircraft carriers, as proposed by Colorado Democrat Gary Hart and other military reformers, would be dangerous. Only large carriers can transport airborne defenses, including F-14 "Tomcat" fighters and surveillance planes, that will adequately protect fleets against modern missiles. The Argentine plane carrying Exocet missiles "would not have gotten anywhere near one of our battle groups," he claimed. Lehman also insisted that the war shattered the reformers' argument that there are "low-threat" areas of potential conflict that could be adequately handled by less sophisticated naval weapons.

Hart responded that the smaller 40,000-ton carriers he proposes would, like the Nimitz, still be able to carry F-14s for their defense. In a letter to his fellow Senators, Hart argues that the sinking of the two warships near the Falklands shows how vulnerable surface ships are to modern missiles and submarines. It is wiser, he contended, to rely on a larger number of less expensive ships than to put too many eggs in one basket. Military reformers believe that the current state of technology gives an edge to those trying to destroy, rather than defend, a surface ship; U.S. carriers and battleships are particularly vulnerable to Soviet radar-guided missiles that can be launched from medium-range Backfire bombers. Said one official: "Why go out and build a $40 million ship when it can be wiped out by a $100,000 bullet?" The Senate last week decided to send the defense spending bill back to committee for further consideration.

Another military lesson of the war is that world arms sales often beget unintended consequences. The flagship of the Argentine fleet is an aircraft carrier built by Britain; the Sheffield was sunk by a missile made in France. U.S. proposals to sell F-5E fighter jets to Taiwan have exacerbated another lingering territorial dispute. Vice President George Bush went to Peking last week to try to ease Sino-American tensions caused by the proposed arms sale.

The unexpected turbulence in the South Atlantic has, for the time being, upset elements of Reagan's foreign policy and unraveled key alliances. It has dissipated much of the good will gamed by Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative, an economic and trade development plan that is currently being challenged in Congress by special-interest groups. A House Ways and Means Subcommittee, for example, voted last week to lessen trade preferences for shoes and rum. The Administration position on the Falklands has also undercut its controversial goal of convincing Latin America that the most dangerous threat to the stability of the hemisphere is the kind of subversion, promoted by the Soviets and their surrogates, that currently threatens the government of El Salvador.

Perhaps the lasting lesson of the Falklands, however, may be that in charting a foreign policy through turbulent seas, certain basic lodestars must not be forsaken. Reagan and Haig have correctly noted that one issue of principle supersedes more pragmatic considerations: political disputes and territorial claims should be solved by law rather than military aggression. As a senior State Department official said last week: "The simple bottom line is that aggression cannot be, and cannot be seen to be, rewarded." The short-term consequences of the U.S. decision to oppose, firmly if perhaps belatedly, Argentina's invasion of the disputed islands is clearly harmful to Reagan's Latin American policies. But, unlike the long-term consequences that would come from condoning such action, the damage is, or ought to be, reparable. --By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Johanna McGeary,Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, Bruce W. Nelan/Washington

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