Leaving Job, He Calls ‘Risks Worth It’ : President’s Man in Paris--an Undiplomatic Envoy

International banker Evan Galbraith came to Paris as American ambassador in the fall of 1981, determined to proclaim the ideology of President Reagan loudly and clearly throughout France.

Today, four years later, he is leaving Paris confident that he accomplished exactly what he set out to do.

In doing so, however, he angered and troubled his staff at the embassy, irritated and bemused French officials and turned himself into the symbol of all that infuriates the U.S. Foreign Service about the Reagan Administration’s political appointments to diplomatic posts.

At one point, the French government became so angry at his public attack on the Communist ministers then in the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand that a high-ranking official of the Foreign Ministry told a group of American journalists: “If our ambassador had interfered in your politics in the same way in Washington, he would have been dismissed by us the next day.”

The French government summoned Galbraith three times during his term to reprimand him officially for his public statements.

None of this disturbs the 57-year-old ambassador, who is now returning to banking.

“I don’t think there’s any way you can undertake the mission that I did without incurring certain risks,” he said recently, “but the risks were worth it.”

He has, in fact, compounded the risks by proclaiming from time to time during the last few months of his tour here that a political ambassador, such as he, is better qualified for the job, as he defines it, than a career diplomat.

Some of his comments have upset the people working closest with him. After the ambassador seemed to belittle the U.S. Foreign Service in what became a celebrated interview, a top career diplomat in the embassy expressed the sense of betrayal felt by Galbraith’s staff.

“We had advised him, we had helped him,” the official said. “When he made a mistake, we had always excused it, saying he was learning. At the least, we could say that the ambassador, no matter what he did or said, was really a very nice guy, and we liked him. But then we were very hurt by his remarks.”

The problem might be eased for the Foreign Service if Galbraith were a buffoon, making mistakes out of ignorance, inexperience and provincialism; in that case, he could be easily exposed and ridiculed. Galbraith, though, is not a buffoon.

Long Experience in France

An old friend and Yale University classmate of National Review editor William F. Buckley, Galbraith came to Paris as ambassador with almost 20 years of banking experience in France and Britain, working for Morgan Guaranty Trust, Bankers Trust and Dillon Read. He knew France and many influential French people well, and his French was fluent enough for him to field questions easily on television interviews.

A carefully groomed man with a nose bent out of shape by a high school football injury, Galbraith, by all accounts, at least initially struck his staff as a charming, kindly and generous man.

These traits could be seen in public. In March, 1984, while accompanying Mitterrand on a visit to the United States, Galbraith noticed a small group of elementary schoolchildren in Davis, Calif., sad and disappointed because the French leader had passed them by without noticing their handwritten signs of welcome in French.

Galbraith rushed over to them and said softly, “I’m the American ambassador in Paris. Can I substitute?” He then shook hands with each child, leaving them beaming and satisfied.

The Reagan Administration has named non-career diplomats like Galbraith to two out of every five ambassador posts--almost double the ratio of political appointees of the Carter Administration.

The American Foreign Service Assn., a professional organization that represents American career diplomats, accepts the principle of political appointments but has complained about the number made by Reagan and about the appointees’ approach to the job.

Galbraith is regarded as one of the most extreme examples. He has upset American diplomats because of his unbending ideological insistence on his own brand of diplomacy. He expounds a view of his job that, in their view, is dangerous to diplomacy and to their careers.

Coming out of what he calls the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Galbraith tried to alter the traditional role of an ambassador by turning himself into an advocate of his Aministration’s positions.

At a recent lunch with foreign correspondents in Paris, Galbraith said that in an age of rapid communications, an ambassador no longer needs to spend his time quietly passing messages on to foreign officials and reporting back to Washington about their views.

“The traditional role of diplomacy . . . has changed vastly since the days of Benjamin Franklin (the Continental Congress’ envoy to France in 1776), when he was off on his own, isolated for a long period of time . . . ,” Galbraith said. “The best thing we can do as an ambassador is to engage yourself out in the open world and become an active advocate of your President’s views and an active defender of them.”

Better Qualified

Galbraith said that a political appointee like himself could obviously expound Reagan’s views better than a career diplomat could.

“I think it’s important, especially in an allied country, to have somebody clearly identified with the President who can speak on his behalf with his heart in it,” he said. “I don’t care how adroit one is as an advocate, when you are taking someone else’s case and arguing it, you don’t do it as convincingly as your own case. I think the President deserves to have somebody who can argue his case convincingly and with conviction.”

The ambassador offered an example of what he described as his advantage as a political appointee.

“When we heard that France was sending arms to Nicaragua,” he recalled, “I made it very clear that this is something Ronald Reagan would be very much opposed to. It would cause an antagonism between the two countries. I did that without any hesitation on my part or without any instructions. But I knew how he would feel about that. I think it was important to get that across to them as quickly and as forcefully as possible. I did that.”

It would have been “very difficult for a career officer” to do this sort of thing, he said.

Career diplomats, hearing that, consider it condescending. They deny that they would have any trouble protesting quickly to France about arms sales to Nicaragua.

They are even more disturbed by the philosophy behind Galbraith’s remarks. They insist that an ambassador does not represent the President alone but the people of the United States. After all, they say, an ambassador does not take office solely upon the President’s appointment; he must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Said an American ambassador to another European country: “It has always been assumed that the ambassador represents the views of the country as a whole, and the President’s views have always been considered a large part of that. But what Galbraith says carries it too far.”

On a more personal level, Galbraith’s philosophy troubles Foreign Service officers because it would limit their careers. “Where would it leave us?” one in the Paris embassy asked.

Carried to an extreme, it would keep career diplomats out of most significant ambassadorial posts. Or, if they did manage to win an ambassador’s assignment, they would be so compromised by their public advocacy of a President’s views that they would never be appointed to another post by another President.

Perfect Example

This seems to be exactly what Galbraith has in mind. He told the correspondents that there are many Americans working abroad in private business who engage in the kind of high-level negotiations and dealings that prepare them better than a career diplomat for the job of ambassador. And he cited himself as an example.

“I’ve lived in Europe probably twice as much as any Foreign Service officer existing today,” he said. “I’ve lived in Europe 20 years. I’ve lived in France now 10 years. I’ve lived in England 11 years. I have had business transactions in 35 different countries, and I’m not rare. There are a lot of us out there.”

Galbraith’s public advocacy of Reagan’s ideology often provoked controversy in France. Many French people looked on his pronouncements as blatant interference in their internal politics. This is often cited by career diplomats as proof that the Galbraith diplomacy is bad diplomacy. Career diplomats believe that an ambassador accomplishes far more if he is discreet in public.

In a recent interview at his office in the State Department in Washington, Dennis Hays, outgoing president of the American Foreign Service Assn., made it clear that this is the view of his group.

“You have to be careful when you get the bully-pulpit ambassador out there,” Hays said.

Over the years, Galbraith, speaking in public, chided France for taking part in the construction of a Soviet natural gas pipeline, described the French government as unable to distinguish between political exiles and terrorists, accused the Communist ministers in Mitterrand’s Cabinet of having allegiance to the Soviet Union and called on France to refrain from changing the political status of its troubled South Pacific island of New Caledonia.

Despite official reprimands from the French government for such remarks, Galbraith maintained that French officials would secretly compliment him for expressing his views. In their private discussions with American journalists, however, French officials never hinted that they were pleased with the rhetoric of Galbraith.

Preaching to Conservatives

However, some analysts do believe that Galbraith accomplished much by preaching to conservatives in the United States.

“The French government knows,” said a key official of the U.S. Embassy who is not a State Department employee, “that he has been able to persuade the conservatives back home that the Socialist government here was not a Communist government even though it had Communists in the Cabinet. The crazies back home would never have believed a professional.”

The four Communists in the 42-member Cabinet left the government in July, 1984, in protest over the ruling Socialists’ economic policies.

The most difficult public moment for Galbraith probably came last February when, expounding his views about the worth of political ambassadors, he told the New York Times that “there’s something about the Foreign Service that takes the guts out of people.”

“Foreign policy is too important to be left up to Foreign Service officers . . . ,” he said. “It’s like the line about war being too important to leave up to the generals. Well, the Foreign Service officer is like a military person. To move up, he has to avoid trouble. He learns in time to have a horror of confrontation.”

‘Tie His Tongue’

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, in an unusual move, openly belittled the ambassador. “When he says it takes the guts out of people,” the secretary told a Voice of America interviewer, “somebody ought to tie his tongue for him.”

On the morning after Galbraith’s comments were published, the ambassador faced a tense meeting of his top staff at the embassy in Paris. Galbraith opened the session by saying he did not want to discuss the interview.

Most officers held their anger back and said nothing. But according to several sources, Adrian Basora, the political attache, a career officer who is viewed as well-informed and far from dramatic, stood up to say that he could not keep still, that he had to protest on his own behalf and that of the political staff of the embassy.

Basora’s protest made it clear to everyone how deeply the staff had been hurt by Galbraith’s remarks. Since then, the ambassador has insisted that the published interview distorted his views by making it seem that he had belittled the physical courage of career diplomats. He has not, however, said that he was misquoted in saying that they lack courage in dealing with their superiors.

Galbraith also upset the Foreign Service during the last election campaign by joining 20 other political ambassadors in endorsing Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) for reelection. Career officers, who are prohibited by law from taking a stand of this sort, believe that the political ambassadors hurt the nonpartisan tradition of the Foreign Service through their endorsement. The Foreign Service Assn. is lobbying for legislation to make it illegal for political ambassadors to make such endorsements in the future.

Galbraith is unrepentant about his endorsement. “We come from the same conservative wing of the party,” Galbraith said of Helms, “and I have no embarrassment about supporting fellow conservatives. I think the reaction to that act was childish, and I don’t think it is something that was worthy of the discussion it created.”

Tennessee Businessman

There is some uncertainty within the embassy here about the man nominated to be Galbraith’s successor, Joe M. Rodgers, a 51-year-old Tennessee businessman whose main credentials for the job are his conservatism and his work as a Republican Party fund-raiser. Rodgers lacks foreign experience; he started studying the French language a few months ago when he received word of his appointment. Still, as some see it, his lack of sophistication could be a virtue.

“The embassy is apprehensive about the new ambassador, of course,” a high-ranking career officer said. “But we have been told that he is different from Galbraith, that he is willing to listen, that he has none of the intellectual arrogance that we associate with the East Coast establishment.”