Analysis : Foreign Policy : Reagan Legacy Threatened by Iran Arms Deal

For six years, President Reagan measured his foreign policy achievements largely in terms of his capacity to deal with what he saw as America’s enemies: the Soviet Union, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya and Communists and terrorists wherever found.

Now a secret effort to thaw the icy U.S. relationship with one of those arch-enemies, Iran, appears to have thrown Reagan’s foreign policy into chaos and threatened long-term U.S. interests--especially in the field of arms control, where fallout from the spreading scandal may hand the Soviet Union a previously unexpected bonus.

While the President and other officials have spoken of the need to put the Iran-and- contras controversy behind them, signs are growing that the Administration may never fully recover the initiative in international relations. Foreign policy experts now generally agree that in the final two years of his term, Reagan will be too preoccupied with damage limitation to develop new programs or dramatically improve old ones.

Adding to the President’s troubles, the Iran revelations come at a time when his foreign policies are facing severe difficulties in many parts of the world. From South Africa and the Middle East to Western Europe and Moscow, Administration initiatives already have either failed outright or borne little fruit.

And the latest twist of the Iran controversy--the diversion of arms sales profits to skirt a congressional ban on U.S. military aid to the contras--threatens to scuttle the showpiece of Administration policy in Central America, its program to aid the anti-government forces in Nicaragua.

“The Reagan foreign policy in general is in profound disarray,” said I. William Zartman, professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “This Iran business only brings that to light. It is a case of too many amateurs running the place. Everything focused on terrorism and yet we end up trucking with the terrorists.”

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been one of the Administration’s strongest supporters on Capitol Hill and a man given to restrained judgments. But this week he all but pronounced the obituary of Reagan foreign policy.

“I think we’re badly crippled,” Lugar said Tuesday on NBC-TV’s “Today” show. “I think in basic areas, the Mideast (and) Central America, for example, we’re dead in the water until we get this resolved.”

Thin Foreign Policy Record

If things turn out that way, Reagan will add little or nothing to his foreign policy legacy before he leaves office Jan. 20, 1989. Under those circumstances, specialists agree, the Administration will be remembered primarily for a substantial military buildup and for restoring a belief in U.S. power both in the American public and abroad.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz has predicted that history also will credit the Reagan presidency with two significant accomplishments:

--Fostering a dramatic increase in the number of democratic governments, especially in the Western Hemisphere, after decades of dictatorship.

--Nurturing a trend among the developing nations of Africa to try free-market economic policies after years of economic disaster caused by ineffective state enterprises.

Shultz points to the success of El Salvador’s U.S.-backed elected government in combating a Communist-supported insurgency as well.

Those are not trivial achievements. But in terms of historic legacies, they seem dwarfed by the long-term impact of such foreign policy monuments as President Harry S. Truman’s Marshall Plan, President Richard M. Nixon’s opening to China or President Jimmy Carter’s Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

If Reagan hopes to improve on his thin foreign policy record, specialists say, his best chance is to pursue an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. In this, the Iran affair may haunt him: The Administration probably could get some sort of pact, but now it may be able to do so only by making concessions it rejected earlier.

“The Russians understand that this is a weak presidency which would jump at an opportunity to have a success,” said Robert G. Neumann, a former ambassador who served as the chief of Reagan’s transition team for the State Department following the 1980 election. “When the Russians are in a position like that, they can get some concessions.”

Contrast to Carter

Neumann said the Soviets might overplay their hand by demanding far more than Reagan could grant, but he added, “I think they will go easy on Reagan to see what they can get.”

In contrast to the Carter Administration, which scored its most impressive successes in dealings with friendly countries--Israel and Egypt at Camp David, Panama on the Canal treaties--Reagan Administration policy was framed by its relationship to U.S. adversaries.

Reagan’s efforts to build armed strength and to restore the U.S. reputation as a potent military power were presented primarily in terms of rivalry with Moscow. As a corollary to that policy, Reagan called for deep cuts in the nuclear forces of both sides.

In Iceland, Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev discussed--and almost agreed on--the most sweeping arms reduction program since the heyday of disarmament following World War I. Whatever the ultimate outcome on arms control, by discussing the ultimate elimination of all ballistic missiles--and maybe of all nuclear weapons--Reagan and Gorbachev put a scare into U.S. allies in Western Europe, who are reluctant to compete with Moscow in conventional weapons, as they might have to without a nuclear deterrent.

Beyond the superpower rivalry, Reagan Administration foreign policy has been focused on enemies falling into two general categories--nations that support terrorism and countries with Marxist governments.

Hard-Line Policy Softened

In a speech on July 8, 1985, Reagan accused Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua of backing terrorism around the world. He referred to them as “a new international version of Murder Incorporated.”

But a month later, the policy toward Tehran was secretly softened. Israel sent a shipment of arms to Iran, launching the U.S.-approved weapons sale program that ultimately shattered the U.S. stand against terrorism.

The Administration’s effort to combat Third World Marxist governments has included the invasion of Grenada and U.S.-backed insurgencies in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan.

In the view of foreign policy specialists, however, the Administration’s chief accomplishments are psychological. It is too early to say if they can survive the Iran-and-contras imbroglio.

The President “restored confidence in ourselves after the Vietnam letdown, and he gave us the sense that we had revitalized the containment (of communism) policy after a period of relaxation,” said Robert E. Osgood, a former senior national security official.

“There is obviously less to that achievement in material terms, especially in military terms, than you might suppose from the money spent on it. But it is real because it reversed the impression of other countries, possibly including the Soviet Union, of U.S. weakness,” he said.

A region-by-region assessment of the Administration’s achievements looks like this:

Middle East: Even before the Iran controversy broke, the policy was in disarray. U.S. efforts to bring Israel and Jordan to the peace table failed even though both nations urged Washington to mediate the dispute over the future of the Palestinians in territories seized by Israel in two wars. The Administration’s earlier attempt to bring peace to Lebanon was literally blown apart by terrorist bombers who attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

“The Middle East has been a disaster,” said Neumann, former ambassador to Afghanistan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. “First you had (former Secretary of State Alexander M.) Haig’s pipe-dream of a strategic consensus, as if you could ever bring Israel and the Arab states into a consensus about anything.

“The high point was Reagan’s Sept. 1, 1982, speech proposing a settlement for the (Israeli-occupied) West Bank and Gaza. Shultz deserves the main credit of having been the main architect of that speech. But he fell into the trap of Lebanon, a trap he was pulled into by both the Israelis and the Arabs.”

The Iran controversy itself seems to have ended all hope of any sort of Administration achievement in the Middle East. Reagan used up all of his political capital with moderate Arab nations by selling arms to Iran, a non-Arab nation engaged in a bitter war with Arab Iraq.

Central America: In El Salvador, the elected government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte still faces critical problems. But Shultz likes to remind critics that the country was almost written off before increased U.S. aid, and Duarte’s considerable political skills, stabilized the situation.

In Nicaragua, the Administration was able to keep the anti-Sandinista insurgency from falling apart despite a congressional ban on military aid to the contras. In one of the Administration’s biggest victories on Capitol Hill this year, Congress appropriated $100 million in aid to the rebels.

But revelations that proceeds from Iran arms sales were diverted to the contras now threaten to scuttle the program.

Africa: For almost six years, the Administration tried without success to nudge South Africa away from its apartheid policy with quiet diplomacy. Earlier this year, Congress seized control of policy toward the white minority regime, imposing economic sanctions over Reagan’s veto. The lawmakers’ action shattered Reagan’s “constructive engagement” policy.

Zartman, director of Africa Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, said: “I think constructive engagement was the logical move in the situation the Reagan Administration inherited, . . . but the Administration was unwilling to use sticks as well as carrots. Now the policy has been overtaken by events in South Africa itself.”

The Administration is able to point to more success in its policy covering the rest of Africa. The U.S. government has been urging substitution of free-market economies for government-run programs. Recently, countries throughout the continent have done just that, with often dramatic results.

Zartman said that the trend is admirable but that Reagan was merely lucky enough “to have been there at a time when the state sector became overburdened and had to turn to the private sector.”

Emerging Democracies: Since Reagan took office, elected governments have replaced right-wing dictators in the Philippines, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Guatemala and several other states. That trend has become one of the Administration’s proudest boasts.

“The ideas that we have stood for and advocated--political freedom, democracy--are gaining ground all over the world,” Shultz said in a recent speech. “We see it in our own hemisphere, and we see it elsewhere.”

If the new democracies hold on, the Administration can claim a victory tinged with irony: Reagan often suggested that right-wing “authoritarian” dictatorships were less of a menace than left-wing “totalitarian” ones. So far, all of the new democracies have replaced authoritarian regimes of the right.