Poindexter Isn’t the One to Advance Arms Control

At this point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan has silenced his most dedicated detractors about whether he knows how to lead. His directions may be in dispute. Details may elude him. But he has succeeded in treading the mountaintops of policy, and he is well in command politically.

With such political gifts, the President has not seemed to need a professional and effective team of foreign-policy specialists. To be sure, slipshod staffing has helped produce major errors from Lebanon to South Africa to Central America. Politically, however, foreign-policy mistakes have been of little account. Indeed, Reagan’s deft handling of the personal side of superpower summitry with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev squelched critics.

Yet as Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, the President’s fourth national-security adviser, takes over for Robert C. McFarlane, the foreign-policy problem has changed. In his first term Reagan was preoccupied with creating a domestic revolution to ring down the curtain on big government. His foreign-policy goals were few: Increase defense, “stand tall,” confound the Soviets. In the simplicity of these seven words lay both leadership and success.

By contrast, second-term strategy has promised to be far more ambitious and demanding. Most important, Reagan at Geneva set a course that could lead to productive results in East-West relations. As all modern Presidents have learned, however, it is one thing to give orders and quite another to see them carried out.

Little support is required to set a tone or style. Also, Reagan needed little adroitness to resist what he saw as premature pressures from outside and from some governmental agencies to get down to serious cases with the Soviet Union. Yet leadership that can capture the imagination of a nation hardly carries beyond the White House gates when it comes to enlisting the positive support of government machinery.

No student of Washington could have missed the squabbling among Reagan’s senior foreign-policy advisers. Most recently celebrated was a letter sent to the President by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger before the Geneva summit, seeking to constrain Reagan on arms control. When leaked, the letter provoked a White House rebuke. In similar vein, McFarlane is said to be departing in part because of new challenges from the White House chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, who is not noted for knowledge of foreign affairs.

Other administrations have seen similar struggles for power and position. Reagan was not particularly affected by fractious subordinates while he was content to pursue a passive foreign policy. His new activism, however, demands attention to what is taking place in his official family. In short, if he will understand the need to manage as well as lead, he can succeed in his new foreign-policy designs. If not, he will surely fail.

Poindexter is now key to Reagan’s prospects. Indeed, he must prove able to confound the very expectations that led to his selection. Reagan could have sought any number of individuals with strength in management and stature in foreign affairs. Instead, he has chosen someone not known for bringing to heel others in the Administration who are trying to dominate the President’s mind. But someone who can force contending Cabinet secretaries to work together is exactly the type of person whom Reagan must have as his national-security adviser.

Poindexter’s elevation from being deputy to McFarlane, however, is testimony to his avoiding the limelight and any threat to the prerogatives of the state and defense secretaries and the White House chief of staff. On that much, if nothing else, the contending barons agree.

The central importance of the national-security adviser does not derive primarily from the qualities of intellectual and policy leadership brought to the job by the likes of Henry A. Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. It is rather his position at the center of the web of foreign-policy-making. Provided that he has clear presidential backing, he can act as a neutral but forceful arbiter.

The Poindexter appointment seems to signal that Reagan above all wants to avoid ruffling the feathers of his subordinates, and thus has failed to learn the imperatives of active as opposed to passive foreign policy. It also connotes a continued belief that the charm of leadership, both style and luck, will carry him through.

If so, he will soon be disabused. For example, it has been clear that no one in the senior ranks of the Administration is both able and willing to do the hard, detailed and loyal work that Reagan needs if he wishes to seek a serious arms-control agreement with the Soviets. Portions of his Administration do not in any realistic way share that goal. Until they do, or are replaced, they almost surely will prevent this achievement. The bureaucratic leadership to bring them on board can now come only from the White House.

By all accounts, however, Reagan is not prepared to invest Poindexter with enough authority to do the job. Unless he does so, the foreign-policy fate of the Reagan Administration could soon be sealed.