Now Is Not the Time for a Diplomatic Rambo : Right Wing’s Outrage Only Assures That Our Foreign Policy Will Be Held Hostage

Occasionally even the most hardened and detached observer of American public life is seduced into attributing a tinge of wisdom, even statesmanlike vision, to our federal politicians and their journalistic satellites. Indeed on rare occasions, and for some few individuals, it may be merited.

But almost always at such wishful moments, a Korean jetliner is shot down or Nicholas Daniloff is arrested in Moscow. Then an orgiastic eruption of demagoguery shatters the fragile veneer of sophisticated moderation to unveil the primitive impulses and ambitions that rest, sometimes dormant but always alert, in the bowels of our democratic politics.

I know nothing more about Nicholas Daniloff than I have read in the public print. And the same is true of those--both politicians and journalists--who so eagerly, and with such assured ferocity, tell President and populace what must be done.

This may mean we know all there is to know about the Daniloff case; or that we know almost nothing at all. But since the art of government consists in the need to act upon incomplete or uncertain information, I assume that Nicholas Daniloff is wholly innocent, that he was not a spy, nor in communication with members of the American “intelligence community.” Therefore his arrest by the KGB was wholly unjustified and egregiously stupid. One cannot assume that the fate of some minor Soviet agent in New York so moved the compassionate Slavic soul that the Kremlin was willing to risk the disruption of its most important foreign-policy objectives to save its man from a brief period in an American jail--a sentence almost certain to be terminated by some form of trade in conformity with the well-established rules of Cold War spying.

I also assume--and this is not mere hypothesis, but a certainty--that President Reagan is not soft on the Soviet Union, that he is not a dupe of Moscow’s propaganda, not some weak-willed “knee-jerk liberal” unwilling to respond to Soviet intransigence, eternally compliant to the demands of the “evil empire.”

But he is the President of the United States, with very large responsibilities for the well-being of this country and the world. And he cannot abdicate those duties in order to gratify the outrage of critics who would make his response to their litany of demands a test of his personal courage and public convictions.

I confess to some satisfaction at the opportunity to take the President’s side against the irresponsible outrage of his critics from all parts of the political spectrum but primarily from the ideological right, whose prototypical spokesman is columnist George F. Will--that inquisitorial, self-sanctified guardian of the faith at whose words vice presidents quail and the impoverished and unemployed despair.

Will--and I cite him only to simplify discussion, since similar sentiments have been voiced by many others--implies that President Reagan’s will has collapsed in the face of this Soviet act, that he has been overwhelmed by cowardly instincts similar to those that characterized the Iranian hostage crisis.

It is nonsense.

Daniloff, after a brief period of detention, is now in the American Embassy. He is, of course, still confined to the Soviet Union under threat of trial for spying. There is little doubt that, given some time and an ambiance of rational tranquillity, Daniloff will be returned safely and without any American acknowledgement that he was more than a responsible, hard-working journalist. I have no doubt of the Administration’s ability to resolve this situation, given the very large interest of both nations in ending this wholly unanticipated crisis.

But time, tranquillity and restrained wisdom are precisely what Reagan’s critics would deny him. Will, and it seems many others, would have the President behave like a diplomatic Rambo. “We’ll show them.” “They can’t do that to us.” “There’ll be no summit, no arms control and no trade.” “And not only that: We’ll bring down the United Nations or, at least, expel it to a more congenial place--perhaps Tehran or even Moscow.”

What satisfaction this mindless flailing about must give to the KGB. It has been able to take hostage not only an innocent journalist but the entire course of American foreign policy.

And how courageous are those like Will who, in order to “punish” this Soviet transgression, are willing to undermine our own President and do large damage to the goals of American policy. A summit meeting, arms control, economic trade are not gifts or concessions. They are expressions of our own self-interest. They are designed to enhance the well-being and security of the United States. And the United Nations, feeble and self-indulgent as it has become, is at least a useful means for us to gaugethe frustrations and latent hostilities of the Third World.

One can agree that the Daniloff arrest is an outrage that should be redressed. But surely it is unreasonable, even irrational, to demand immediate and irreversible acts of great magnitude and ominous portent without allowing the President time to exercise the patient skills of diplomacy.

Fortunately, the stubborn persistence of President Reagan--which I have so often found to be misdirected--will probably prevail over this clamor from the right. And he will have learned why many of his predecessors have found their allies more dangerous and less tolerant than their political foes.

And this danger is not merely to an Administration: It menaces the American nation on which these sometime allies of the President are willing to inflict most serious wounds in order to demonstrate their own arrogant defiance. Will, in particular, could better manifest his personal convictions by offering to exchange himself for Daniloff--a substitution of hostages the Soviets, if they give it a little thought, might be positively eager to accept.

I, of course, am willing to offer myself for exchange. And I did work with the CIA. Once upon a time.