3 Advisers to Presidents Have Doubts on Raid

Despite the widespread popularity in the United States of the recent counterterrorist air attack on Libya, three former national security advisers who served under Presidents Reagan, Carter and Ford are expressing serious reservations about the raid’s long-term effects on both terrorism and Reagan’s public support.

In separate interviews, the three said that the April 15 bombing of Tripoli and other Libyan targets already has demonstrated that it cannot halt terrorism. And they predicted that, if it is repeated, the public support that Reagan now enjoys will fade away.

“There are things other than air attack, which are sensible and easier to sustain publicly, such as mining or a blockade,” said Robert C. McFarlane, who resigned as Reagan’s national security adviser last December. “Americans have a short-lived tolerance for violence,” he said, and would soon be repulsed by the civilian casualties associated with additional air attacks.

McFarlane’s concerns about Reagan’s ability to maintain domestic support for further military action in the face of mounting terrorist incidents are shared by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, and Brent Scowcroft, who served in that capacity under President Gerald R. Ford.

All three said they favor a broader approach to terrorism, one that is not so exclusively focused on the military option. And, if Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi strikes again, as they expect he will, they would like to see Reagan order some kind of blockade or mining of the waters around Libya instead of renewed bombing.

A blockade would be “less lethal and yet politically more effective,” Brzezinski said. “It puts the country under psychological and political pressure which can then be directed at the leader. When you bomb quickly and then disappear, you tend to solidify the position of the leader. That’s the lesson of all bombings.”

Scowcroft, who also favors a blockade as a means of tightening the screws on Kadafi, said that “the kind of targets that we can hit without causing a public outcry in this country are not that numerous.” He believes that a series of escalated bombing attacks on Libya would puncture the public euphoria over Reagan’s policy that he said now exists in the United States.

“If Vietnam didn’t teach us anything else,” McFarlane said, it taught us “that a President cannot sustain a policy that people don’t understand or that we cannot explain.”

Although public opinion polls have shown overwhelming support of the Libyan air strike, many surveyed indicated that they believe the raid eventually will serve only to increase terrorism. A New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted in the few days after the attack showed that 77% of the U.S. public approved of the bombing and 14% disapproved. Thirty percent said they believed it would reduce terrorism, but 43% predicted that it would lead to more.

European Views Differ

Results of a similar survey in Europe, however, were markedly different. In Britain, from which U.S. F-111 fighter-bombers took off to begin their mission, a poll taken for the Times of London showed that only 29% of those surveyed believed that Reagan took the right action and 66% said it was the wrong action.

Scowcroft, in his argument for action such as a blockade, said that it would “certainly get Europe’s attention” because it would impose economic penalties on America’s allies as well. Libya remains a substantial supplier of oil for European countries.

For his part, McFarlane has converted to what he calls “a more deliberate approach” to terrorism since his pleas for decisive military action were overruled in the Administration’s inner councils.

Along with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, McFarlane favored military retaliation after the October, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon. He also advocated military strikes in other terrorist situations and does not deny that he had a reputation for being something of “a bomb thrower” in the Administration.

Reagan Reluctance

But Reagan, bolstered by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, was unwilling at that time to make the military commitment. As a consolation, McFarlane was given the authority last summer to conduct a study that would “analyze and define the scale and character of a decisive strategy to counter Kadafi.”

Although his colleagues expected that McFarlane would simply justify his appetite for military retribution, the study had the opposite effect. It convinced McFarlane that he was more wrong than right in focusing on the military option.

“I have come half-circle myself,” he said. “I came to the conclusion that the level of resources and length of time needed were such as to foreclose a quick solution to the Kadafi problem--so I adopted a more deliberate approach.”

Zealot, Not a Bully

Kadafi’s psychological profile was a key component of McFarlane’s reassessment. “He’s not a bully; he’s more of a zealot,” he explained. “There’s a big difference: A bully, you can persuade by superior force, but a zealot’s only reason for being is achieving the revolution.”

Although they have served opposing parties and Presidents with starkly differing foreign policies, Brzezinski, Scowcroft and McFarlane endorse a virtually identical approach to combatting terrorism. They believe that Reagan should play political hardball when he meets with the allies at the summit conference in Tokyo next week, using U.S. economic leverage if necessary to overcome their reluctance to sever ties with Libya.

Also, the three favor a more aggressive pursuit of terrorists through shared intelligence, something that the Europeans have been slow to do for fear of upsetting “back-channel arrangements” with terrorist groups--guarantees of safe passage for terrorists in exchange for immunity from attack for their citizens.

‘Paying Off the Devil’

Although France and Italy have publicly renounced such arrangements, McFarlane questioned whether they have truly ended. “If you’ve been paying off the devil for years, it’s not easy to quit,” he said. “There are hundreds of terrorists roaming the world without being tracked, and we ought to be able to do that.”

McFarlane advocated the creation of clandestine forces to infiltrate terrorist organizations over a period of years. Unlike covert forces, the United States would acknowledge their existence but would operate in secret.

Brzezinski called McFarlane’s idea “perfectly sensible” but was skeptical about whether the United States had the tradition and the linguistic talent to make it work. “Where are we going to recruit these guys to infiltrate the Hezbollah in Tehran?” he asked.

The three advisers agreed that Reagan had talked himself into a position where he had little choice but to respond militarily once Kadafi was directly linked to the April 5 bombing that killed an American serviceman in a West German discotheque.

However, unless Reagan embraces a more comprehensive policy, they warn that the air attack on Libya will prove counterproductive in the war against terrorism. “We haven’t really dealt a blow to terrorism,” Brzezinski said. “We’ve just made ourselves feel good.”