The Gentle Persuader

Much has been made of Secretary of State George Shultz's congenial, soft-spoken manner. Yet in five months on the job, he has done more than merely bring collegial calm to Foggy Bottom. On at least two occasions the methodical, low-key Secretary has persuaded President Reagan to modify deeply held policies.

As soon as he took office, Shultz set about refashioning U.S. policy in the Middle East. He and aides worked hard and quietly; at night their working papers were locked in Shultz's office safe to prevent leaks to the press. The Secretary made sure that Reagan was kept abreast: three times he took his ad hoc policy review group to the White House to explain the salient details of Middle Eastern geopolitics. Reagan, who is instinctively pro-Israeli, was gradually persuaded to adopt a policy that was more even-handed toward the Palestinians.

Shultz's powers of presidential persuasion were put to a tougher test when America's European partners defied Reagan's embargo on equipment for the Soviet natural-gas pipeline. Shultz thought the sanctions were a mistake, since he knew U.S. attempts at enforcement were bound to cause more disarray in the NATO alliance than in the Soviet Union. Yet he characteristically never wavered in his public support of Reagan's stern approach.

Nor was he blunt with Reagan even in private. He did not tell the President he had been wrong to impose the sanctions or, as the high-strung Alexander Haig might have done, threaten to quit if the policy was not reversed. Instead, he acted more like a reassuring but lucid tutor with Reagan. He knew that the President would not abandon his wish to punish the Soviets. Shultz's basic stance was that restrictions on the export of advanced Western technology to Moscow, if the ban had the support of all NATO allies, would far more effectively prick the Soviet economy than would a problematic pipeline-equipment embargo. The Secretary raised the issue of American economic self-interest as well, pointing out that U.S. pipeline suppliers were losing business to European competitors. In the end, the President was convinced by the weight of the thoughtful evidence carefully laid out during weeks of meetings.

Meanwhile, Shultz spent much of September negotiating secretly with West European officials for a face-saving way out of the impasse, reaching a basic agreement last month, at a meeting near Montreal of NATO foreign ministers, to restrict high-technology exports to the Soviet Union. (The French were difficult: they tried to fuzz the restrictions and insisted that the details be secret.)

Shultz handles the President so deftly that White House aides have persuaded him to sit in on recent budget-drafting discussions. During the Nixon Administration, Shultz served variously as Budget Director, Treasury Secretary and Secretary of Labor, and Reagan's advisers hope that Shultz's mainstream economic expertise can help coax the President away from his refusal to increase tax revenues or pare weapons expenditures. Shultz has obliged, but he may not give it his all. His foreign policy successes so far are due in large part to his skill in avoiding any real confrontation with Reagan (making some State Department officials wonder about his ultimate mettle), and in the looming budget struggle such deference could prove impossible. Moreover, Shultz owes much of his effectiveness to his apparent lack of personal ambition. By asserting himself in economic policy, he may be forced to squander that advantage as well.

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