After Faltering Start, Baker ‘Catching Up,’ His Aides Say

In the optimistic glow of President Bush’s inauguration week, Secretary of State James A. Baker III confidently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he intended “to hit the ground running--instead of just hitting the ground.”

It hasn’t worked that way. Six weeks after Baker’s confirmation, his own aides acknowledge that their first steps on the job have looked more like running in place. And instead of early triumphs, Baker has been buffeted by a series of stalls and small reverses:

-- A Central American peace plan took the State Department by surprise, leaving Bush and Baker without an alternative U.S. policy to offer.

-- A series of Soviet initiatives in Europe and the Middle East had Baker and his aides visibly scrambling to reassert U.S. leadership.

-- A new U.S. dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization--which Baker emphatically supports--came under fire after PLO guerrilla squads continued to attempt attacks on Israel.

-- An invitation to a Chinese human rights activist to dine with President Bush in Beijing turned into an embarrassing confrontation with China’s leaders.

-- And even Baker’s personal finances briefly became an issue, forcing him to order the sale of his substantial holdings in a bank with large Third World debts.

Baker himself, seemingly unflappable and serene, waves off such problems. And his aides say they are gradually mastering jobs they initially found overwhelming.

“We have been behind,” admitted one, “but we’re catching up. We’re turning the corner.”

Career State Department officials and some foreign policy experts outside government are less generous.

“Last month, I would have given them a grade of 3 on a scale of 10,” said a senior diplomat who has been working with Baker and his aides. “This month, they’re up to maybe a 6.”

“Baker seems very confident, but he may be in some danger,” added Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former aide to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. “I’m not sure all the criticism is justified, but the potential for some real problems is there.”

Even avowed fans are worried. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Jimmy Carter Administration, said he considers the new foreign policy team the best in a generation but finds the slow start “a little bit mystifying.”

Baker is not the first to experience a rocky beginning at the State Department. Most new secretaries run into at least some reverses as they struggle to tame both the U.S. foreign policy agenda and a sometimes resentful State Department bureaucracy.

And there are already signs of clearer sailing ahead. Baker’s meeting last week with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze went well, creating new momentum toward a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting and resumed strategic arms talks later this year.

Arab, Israeli Visits

Likewise, on Central America, Baker has won applause from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress for trying to create a new U.S. diplomatic effort toward a negotiated peace. In the Middle East, a coming round of visits to Washington by Arab and Israeli leaders will give the Bush Administration an opportunity to advance its own, still-forming initiatives.

But Baker must still work against several handicaps. One is high expectations.

George Bush campaigned for the presidency as the most experienced foreign policy candidate in a generation, and Baker took over the State Department as his closest--and politically savviest--aide. When they did not hit the ground with the running start they had promised, the result was disappointment.

“We thought that this guy was going to do great things, that it was going to be exciting around here,” said a State Department official who asked not to be named. “We’re still waiting.”

Also, Bush, Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft came into office with no major initiatives in mind. Instead, they launched a careful, three-month review of existing policies--an approach that, however prudent, slowed the Administration’s reaction time.

Thus, after Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced unilateral cuts in Soviet military strength and pressed for renewed strategic arms negotiations, the Bush Administration said it could not offer a specific response because its review was not complete.

When West Germany’s government pressed for clear signals on U.S. military plans, the Administration did not have them ready. And when Central Americans produced unexpected peace plans for both Nicaragua and El Salvador, the Administration was on the sidelines, its policy for the area still unformed.

“I would not necessarily say they were caught with their pants down,” said Ruben Zamora, a Salvadoran leftist leader. “But they were putting their pants on.”

In the absence of new policies, it has been difficult for Baker to cut a commanding figure on the world stage--despite a grueling travel schedule that has had him on the road for 17 of the past 31 days.

At the opening session of talks on conventional arms reduction in Vienna last week, Baker sought to make a splash with a major speech on the future of Europe. But the main announcement he planned to make--an early withdrawal of U.S. chemical weapons from West Germany--was watered down, reportedly by cautious National Security Council officials, to merely “exploring” early withdrawal.

Baker’s Rhetoric Overshadowed

The rest of Baker’s rather general rhetoric was overshadowed by Shevardnadze and British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, who gave more spirited and more pointed speeches on the military confrontation across Europe’s East-West divide.

In addition to waiting for policies, the State Department is still looking for dozens of key officials to arrive on the job.

Only 3 Confirmed So Far

Baker has chosen most of his top appointees, but only three have been confirmed by the Senate. That is not unusual; the Reagan and Carter administrations had to wait months for confirmations too.

In previous inaugural years, however, assistant secretaries often began working into their jobs weeks before they were confirmed. Few are doing so this time, apparently because the FBI’s security checks are taking longer.

Baker still has not designated an assistant secretary for Europe. His first choice for the job, one of the most prestigious in the department, reportedly turned him down.

But then, diplomats say, Baker’s management style makes many of the senior jobs look less enticing than before. The new secretary prefers to run things through a small, close-knit group of young aides--Undersecretary Robert M. Kimmitt, policy adviser Dennis Ross, counselor Robert B. Zoellick and spokeswoman Margaret D. Tutwiler. Two of them, Zoellick and Tutwiler, who had served under Baker when he was treasury secretary for Ronald Reagan, have little foreign policy experience.

The rise of Baker’s inner circle has caused some predictable resentment among senior Foreign Service officers, many of whom had been given considerable autonomy under his predecessor, George P. Shultz.

One indignantly described Kimmitt as asking whether the State Department had ever devised a method for following up on the secretary’s decisions. “What did he think we’ve been doing before he arrived?” the diplomat fumed.

Chance of Serious Problems

More important, though, some officials worry that if Baker tries to run his job through too few aides, serious problems will ensue.

“Baker may have done it that way at Treasury, where you can deal with a relatively small number of issues, but it won’t work at State,” Sonnenfeldt said. “You can try to create a monster bureaucracy on the seventh floor (where the secretary and his aides work), but they can’t read all the telegrams themselves--they’ll get swamped.

“You’ve got to use your assistant secretaries for dealing with Congress and with foreigners. If word gets around that they lack authority, that’s going to create a problem: Congressional chairmen are going to insist that Baker come up to every hearing.

“In the end,” Sonnenfeldt predicted, “the Foreign Service will triumph.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story.