Pickering at U.N.: A Bland Face of U.S. Power Politics

Thomas Reeve Pickering is an experienced hand at the practice of international power politics, a field at once ruthless and bureaucratic--and still the big, balding, genial diplomat manages to keep a low profile. During the Reagan years, Pickering served as ambassador in two beleaguered satellites of the American empire: El Salvador and Israel. Now, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a post often held by the flamboyant, he breathes new life into the concept of blandness.

Pickering’s style seems to suit President George Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, both of whom fancy themselves international statesmen. Pickering will provide no sound-bite competition from his drab office on United Nations Plaza. Unlike some of his predecessors, Pickering is not ready to believe he is turning the tide of history or tempted to violate ridiculous diplomatic protocol. He is the second-ranking Foreign Service officer at the State Department and it shows.

Does the appointment of a proved diplomatic operator to the ambassadorship indicate Bush’s foreign policy will rely more on the United Nations? The most substantial sign that the Bush Administration takes the United Nations seriously was its quick decision to begin paying substantial portions of the U.S. contributions that have been in arrears for years. Pickering’s appointment also suggests seriousness, if not originality. His forte seems to be unobtrusively knitting together U.S. clients under trying circumstances.

Pickering, for example, arrived in El Salvador in fall of 1983, when the U.S.-backed government there was in serious trouble. In the countryside, left-wing guerrillas were gaining; in the city, government death squads, having slaughtered thousands of suspected leftists, were turning on moderate political figures who enjoyed close ties with the United States. Further congressional aid to El Savador was in doubt. Pickering’s job was to hold the Salvadoran government together--and for the most part he succeeded.

Pickering played a leading role in arranging the December, 1983, visit of then-Vice President Bush to San Salvador. In a now-famous meeting, Bush presented the Salvadoran high command with a list of civilian and military death squad leaders. The Salvadorans removed a few of the most blatant and least-powerful killers from command positions; Congress was appeased. The Salvadoran government gained new legitimacy at home and abroad.

Pickering was bold enough to recognize that the issue of death-squad violence had to be faced--and realistic enough not to try any substantial remedy. Virtually all Salvadoran commanders, not just the four exiled officers, were in complicity concerning the murder of innocents. Pickering’s diplomacy successfully de-escalated a reign of terror without losing the confidence of the government responsible for it. Whatever the morality of sustaining a terrorist army, Pickering’s diplomacy was a considerable victory for U.S. policy.

In late 1985, Pickering was rewarded with an equally sensitive job: ambassador to Israel. The U.S.-Israeli relationship is multifaceted, involving constant bureaucratic cooperation between Israel and the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, various arms salesmen, North American Jewish organizations and countless others. The ambassador’s job is to keep track of all this and report back to senior U.S. policy-makers. It is one of the most demanding positions in the Foreign Service. It does not go to someone who made large campaign contributions.

Pickering arrived in Tel Aviv just as the machinations of the Reagan Administration’s secret arms-to-the-ayatollah deal began. In addition, Israel’s coalition government was in constant turmoil, straining bilateral negotiations-- and the Palestinian intifada erupted during Pickering’s tenure. Add the fact that the United States was inching toward recognizing the Palestinian Liberation Organization. There were, in other words, plenty of opportunities to misstep.

Pickering barely raised a ripple. Two Middle East observers in Washington could not remember a single notable incident in Pickering’s three years in Tel Aviv. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv was slow to recognize the nature and importance of the intifada --but then so was the Israeli government. The substance of Pickering’s own reporting on the political situation in Israel is not known. It is a measure of his discretion, though, that he was asked to stay a year beyond the normal two-year ambassadorial rotation.

There is, of course, a less flattering interpretation of Pickering’s clean record. Perhaps he was “out of the loop.” As the Iran-Contra scandal demonstrated, the State Department did not play a central role in the foreign-policy-making process. The department is now one voice among many counseling the President. Operatives from the National Security Council and the CIA are institutionally powerful in areas once the exclusive province of diplomats. For example, when the NSC undertook its dealings with the Israeli prime minister in 1985-87, the missions were often entrusted to self-promoting NSC “consultant” Michael A. Ledeen--not to Pickering.

Which is not to say Pickering was in the dark. The voluminous documents of the Iran-Contra affair contain various references to Pickering at both the Middle East and Central American ends of the scandal. In early 1985, for instance, Pickering was informed that former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez was coming to El Salvador. Rodriguez went on to set up the illicit Contra-aid network.

At one point Pickering sent representatives of a private Contra-aid group to meet Oliver L. North and that group later shipped material to the Contras. But Pickering told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he did not explicitly know that North was violating the Boland Amendment.

In terms of the arms-to-Iran deal, Pickering does seem to have been “out of the loop.” He was, for example, on the participant list at a White House meeting where Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was to discuss the matter. But a notation on the document suggests that Peres was unlikely to discuss the matter with anyone in the room.

Pickering, in short, is not a leading player, but a kind of diplomatic sixth man. He is in the other tradition of U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations: the quiet listener who follows the big talker. Just as, for example, Donald F. McHenry succeeded Andrew Young, Pickering follows Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, an ostentatious intellectual, and then Vernon A. Walters, a bit defter diplomat than Kirkpatrick but also a longtime covert-action advocate. Pickering brings no such baggage to the United Nations. He travels lightly--which is reason enough to watch him.