No. 1 Hawk Favors Combining ‘Power and Diplomacy’ : Libya Raid a Triumph for Shultz Policy

He is a stolid, outwardly unemotional ex-college professor who still thinks of himself as the mediator who once toiled to bring peace to belligerent factions in labor negotiations. He earned a reputation for unflappable competence as a government official and corporate executive. And conservatives still think he’s soft on communism.

Moreover, as the nation’s 60th secretary of state, he presides over the department of the government whose responsibility for diplomatic niceties and the nuances of foreign policy has given it a reputation--often not entirely deserved--for being reluctant to take decisive action.

But anomalous as it may seem, George Pratt Shultz has emerged as the most outspoken hawk in an Administration that prides itself on toughness, an unshakable advocate of using American military power as a tool of diplomacy in situations where even the Pentagon hesitates to tread.

Indeed, when U.S. warplanes blasted targets in Libya last week, their mission reflected triumph for Shultz in a long and public debate with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger about the uses and limits of armed force--a victory for the Shultz axiom that “power and diplomacy must always go together or we will accomplish very little in this world.”

Most secretaries of state have believed that diplomacy works best if backed by military muscle, and historically the State Department as an institution has been more ready to use force in low-level diplomatic situations than is often realized.

What appears to set Shultz apart, however, is his willingness not just to show muscle but to use it.

“It is sort of an irony that George Shultz, who is a longtime mediator and negotiator, has seemed readier to use force than the Pentagon,” former State Department spokesman John Hughes said.

“I don’t think he is a wild man in wanting to use force,” Hughes said. “What sets him apart from some others is that when the chips are down and you have tried everything else, (Shultz believes) you have to be prepared to use force.”

Although some professional Foreign Service officers are uncomfortable with Shultz’s hard-line policy, most of them seem to support it. Shultz has won the approval of many professionals by choosing career department officials over political appointees for a number of top positions.

“The Foreign Service is full of realists,” said one professional who asked not to be identified by name. “There may be a few murmurs of discontent, but there also is a realization that Shultz is at the top of his influence, and that increases the influence of the whole State Department.”

Despite the public perception of the State Department bureaucracy as a liberal redoubt, this career Foreign Service officer said, “the core of what you do when you are in the Foreign Service is to support the President’s policies and push those policies.”

To be sure, Shultz’s policy of diplomacy through strength fits the instincts of the President he serves. But the secretary of state’s unwavering advocacy of that position also seems to have prevented the President from wavering. In a speech delivered Oct. 25, 1984, for instance, Shultz declared that the nation must be prepared to use its military might, even if that means “the loss of life of some innocent people.”

And 48 hours after the air strike on Tripoli, in which doctors said that Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s infant daughter was among those killed, Shultz reiterated: “We regret any such (civilian) casualties . . . (but) when civilians put themselves in a military place, they open themselves to this kind of unfortunate byproduct.”

By all accounts, Weinberger joined in support of last week’s Libyan operation. In earlier speeches, however, the defense secretary had warned: “Employing our forces almost indiscriminately and as a regular and customary part of our diplomatic efforts would surely plunge us headlong into the sort of domestic turmoil we experienced during the Vietnam War, without accomplishing the goal for which we committed our forces.”

The Libyan raid marked the third significant use of American military power in support of diplomatic objectives since President Reagan assumed office in 1981; all have occurred since Shultz became secretary of state in 1982.

The first, in Beirut, fell far short of its objective of stabilizing and strengthening the Lebanese government and resulted in the deaths of at least 260 American servicemen and uncounted Lebanese civilians. The second, in Grenada, toppled a hard-line Marxist faction that had seized power from an existing Marxist regime, clearing the way for a democratically elected government.

Defends Use of Force

In contrast, the Libyan operation is the first directed against an established national government. Moreover, its announced objective, deterring future terrorist attacks against Americans, seems unobtainable in the short run. But Shultz continues to maintain that the use of force ultimately will serve U.S. goals by showing potential terrorists that attacking American targets is not worth the pain of the reprisal from Washington.

And, while the armed forces have maintained a low profile publicly, the Pentagon has made no secret of its reluctance to be drawn into combat situations when the fundamental objectives are diplomatic, not military.

“The State Department and the NSC (National Security Council) staff are strange places for hawks to be roosting,” observed one Pentagon official, who discussed Shultz’s disagreements with the Defense Department on the condition of anonymity. “The professional military looks at the realities: ‘How much force is needed? How do you sustain it? How do you resupply it? How do you get water to the troops? How do you handle medical evacuation? How much ammunition do you need? And how much airlift do you have?’

Details Ignored

“Some of the warriors elsewhere in town,” he concluded pointedly, “seem to wave aside these bothersome details.”

Even close associates find it difficult to say precisely why Shultz has become the Administration’s most outspoken advocate of the use of force--and the secretary himself is an intensely private man who hides his feelings beneath a thick shell.

His wife, Helena, has told friends that in some ways Shultz remains a mystery to her after 40 years of marriage. One former aide remarked that her assessment might be reassuring to any number of State Department officials who have tried, without much success, to figure him out.

Keeps Own Counsel

Even at play, Shultz keeps his own counsel. He enjoys playing golf and sometimes arranges diplomatic trips to include a stopover near challenging links. But, according to persons who have been included in his foursomes, Shultz goes about the game in the same methodical way that he runs the State Department, concentrating on his shots and shunning the conviviality common among other weekend players.

Shultz, 66, has been in and out of government since 1969, when he was named labor secretary in the incoming administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Later, he served Nixon as director of the Office of Management and Budget and as Treasury secretary. He joined the Reagan Administration on June 25, 1982, succeeding Alexander M. Haig Jr. at the State Department.

In between his jobs in the Cabinet, Shultz was president of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. and was a part-time business professor at Stanford University. He maintains a home on the Stanford campus and plans to teach there after leaving the government.

Graduate of Princeton

A 1942 graduate of Princeton who earned his Ph.D. at MIT, Shultz is a former faculty member at MIT and headed the University of Chicago Business School during an era when it was making a name for itself as a pioneer in the monetarist school of economic analysis.

As an academic, Shultz served often as a labor mediator, and Hughes believes that Shultz’s work in labor negotiations shaped his policy views. For this reason, Hughes said, Shultz is willing to negotiate with the Soviet Union--which he views as a reliable party--but is unwilling to talk to Kadafi, because he has no confidence in the word of the Libyan leader.

“He is a very stolid person,” observed Arjay Miller, the retired dean of the Stanford Business School, who recruited Shultz there. “He is thoughtful, obviously intelligent--methodical is a good word--and he has a tendency to think through a problem. He is not changeable; he has firmly held positions. He doesn’t have his finger to the wind.”

Occasionally Shows Temper

Despite his reputation for unflappability, Shultz occasionally shows that he has a temper. In recent years, what has made him angriest has been the argument--most frequently advanced by European government leaders--that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. For example, he banged the table with his fist as his face flushed red when the foreign minister of Yugoslavia made such a comparison at a joint news conference earlier this year.

Shultz also reacts with heat at anything he considers an affront to his personal integrity. Last fall, he responded angrily to a White House plan to require random lie detector tests of government officials, including Cabinet members, with access to classified information. In fact, after he threatened to resign, Reagan agreed to abandon the plan.

But even the Shultz temper is carefully controlled: He almost always displays it at times when it reinforces the point he would like to make, and most analysts who have watched Shultz closely say they cannot recall a single instance when Shultz hurt his own interests because of his temper.

‘Stolid’ and ‘Methodical’

Indeed, Shultz’s “stolid” and “methodical” qualities, which impressed Miller a decade ago, are among the ones most frequently cited to describe the secretary of state’s success in consolidating his power over the management of the nation’s foreign policy.

Shultz’s style may be plodding--the Wall Street Journal once called him “relentlessly boring”--but he seldom permits himself to be distracted by matters that he considers of secondary importance. At the same time, he has carefully avoided anything that might “upstage” President Reagan.

“He is very much in sync with the President,” said one former associate. “But even if he wasn’t, he is the kind of secretary who would never get out ahead of the President.”

‘In Sync’ With Regan

Another key Administration official declared that Shultz seems to be “in sync” with White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, with whom he shares a big-business background and a hard-nosed view of the world. Indeed, Shultz’s influence in the Administration has increased since the start of Reagan’s second term, when Regan replaced James A. Baker III as chief of staff.

On Capitol Hill, an aide to one Democratic senator said: “He has the respect of the Hill, and he is willing to stand up to people in the Administration. Nobody has laid a glove on him inside the Beltway”--the interstate highway circling the capital, which has become a synonym for “inside Washington.”

But, this aide added, Shultz “has no international success whatsoever to point to, and, with the exception of Vietnam, he has presided over more American casualties abroad than any secretary of state since the Korean War.”

Shultz’s Policy Blamed

The aide, who asked not to be identified, conceded that it is harsh to blame Shultz alone for the 241 servicemen, mostly Marines, killed by a suicide truck bomber in Beirut in October, 1983. (At least 19 others died in sniping and other incidents.) But he pointed out that the troops were deployed in pursuit of Shultz’s policy.

Likewise, a Pentagon source said: “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Weinberger were never comfortable with the role of the Marines in Lebanon. Weinberger loyally defended the policy, but he was never happy to have the Marines sitting in that exposed position. And the Marine commandant wanted to get them out sooner than they came out.”

However, Hughes asserted that the Marine casualties “hit Shultz very hard.” The secretary of state served in the Marines during World War II, ending the war as a captain--and to this day, Shultz refers to himself as a Marine.

Even amid the emotional anguish of the Beirut bombing, Hughes said, “I don’t think it deterred him from believing you have to be willing to use force when all other avenues have failed.”

Despite his reputation as an advocate of the use of military power, Shultz has become the favorite target of a number of conservative groups, which consider him soft on the Soviet Union. These groups grumbled loudly when Shultz replaced several conservative ideologues with career diplomats in key State Department posts--but the friction seems to go far deeper than that.

In an interview, Richard Viguerie, the publisher of the Conservative Digest, called Shultz “a typical Eastern big-business Establishment Republican who has hardly ever been identified with populist views over the years.”

Viguerie added: “We would like to see people come in at the top level of the State Department who really recognize that Communists are evil people and have a goal of world conquest.”

Shultz has never made any secret of his distaste for communism in general and for the Soviet Union in particular. But he maintains that it is necessary to conduct business with the world’s other superpower.

Viguerie’s criticism came as a surprise to Miller, who was president and then vice chairman of Ford Motor Co. before he became dean of the Stanford Business School.

“George is a very conservative person,” Miller said. “He is an Establishment guy. He represents the business community--and the business community is usually regarded as conservative.”

Speaking to reporters in his office three days after the Libya raid, Shultz was asked if he thought his policy had been vindicated.

“I don’t have a particularly good feeling about the fact that it was necessary to take such strong measures to deal with terrorism,” he said. “But it was clear to everyone that it was important to take action.”