Analysts See No Major Foreign Policy Impact : Baker: Secretary of state’s departure isn’t expected to impede government’s ability to handle crises abroad.

The resignation of James A. Baker III as secretary of state is likely to have some impact on the Bush Administration’s foreign policy-making operations, but it will not impede the government’s ability to handle crises abroad, analysts here said Thursday.

Although Democrats have suggested that Baker’s departure from the State Department will leave the Administration in a lurch--both in guiding the Middle East peace talks and in reacting to events in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Russia--private analysts say the situation isn’t that simple.

To begin with, for all the new signs of hope in the Middle East talks, no breakthroughs were expected until after the November election. Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs wants the negotiations to fail, but neither wants to deal with a lame-duck Administration.

Robert B. Satloff, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Israel’s new prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, wants “action” on the peace talks, “and isn’t about to let the departure of Jim Baker ruin his prospects. That’s what he was elected for.”

Satloff predicts that if anything, Baker’s departure may prod both the Arabs and the Israelis to work harder to keep the momentum of the talks going. “This is bigger than just Jim Baker,” he said. “It’s not catastrophic, by any means.”

Similarly, any new U.S. actions affecting Iraq or Yugoslavia doubtless would be decided in the White House anyway, leaving Baker even better positioned in the process now as chief of staff. And the situation in the Soviet Union has been quiet recently.

Some analysts suggest that Baker’s move to take the reins on the Bush campaign bandwagon could bolster the United States’ position internationally--by countering a growing conviction among some governments that Bush is so weak he may be about to lose.

Administration officials concede that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s recent increased defiance of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has been at least partly a result of Hussein’s perception of Bush’s weakened political standing at home.

If the campaign continues to founder, one private analyst speculated, foreign governments could begin to “gang up” to take advantage of the Administration’s weakness. Baker’s move to head the campaign effort could “neutralize” some of that sentiment, he said.

The Administration moved Thursday to allay some of the fears that Baker’s departure would leave the nation’s foreign-policy apparatus leaderless.

In a session with reporters, senior officials asserted that the outgoing secretary and his chief State Department Middle East expert, Dennis Ross, will continue to direct the U.S.-led peace process, and said Baker will attend meetings of the National Security Council.

“The fact that we are going to the White House does not mean that we are in any way precluded from being actively involved to the extent that we have time to be or want to be,” one official insisted. He said Baker would be involved “as the need arises.”

What Washington will lose is Baker’s uncanny ability as a negotiator and deal maker, and it remains to be seen how much difference that will make.

Geoffrey Kemp, a former National Security Council staffer now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggested that one place that could make a difference would be if the peace talks reach a critical impasse “and Baker isn’t available to shuttle back and forth.”

“One presumes that he’s keeping his fingers crossed that the Arabs and Israelis can keep the momentum going,” Kemp said.

Few doubt that Baker is capable of handling both his domestic assignments and at least some broad oversight of foreign policy at the same time. The Administration had not been expected to launch any major new foreign policy initiatives until after the November election.

Foreign policy analysts agree that Baker’s replacement at the State Department, Deputy Secretary Lawrence S. Eagleburger, is an experienced diplomat. If anything, Eagleburger will be even “more plugged-in to day-to-day operations” than the sometimes-aloof Baker, one insider said.

Still, not everyone is convinced that the secretary’s departure will be problem-free.

Robert Hunter, a former Democratic foreign policy adviser who is now a vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the secretary’s resignation “reduces the chances of an effective U.S. foreign policy for the balance of the year.”

Hunter also raised fears that Baker’s move to head the campaign risks “politicizing” U.S. foreign policy.

“To have the man who really is running the President’s campaign also running foreign policy will raise questions about everything he does,” Hunter said. “Every time he makes a decision, people will ask, did he do that for political reasons or foreign policy concerns?”

Another problem is that Baker is taking with him virtually all of his so-called “inner circle”--Ross and a handful of other high-level aides who have assisted on most of his foreign policy initiatives--leaving Eagleburger with relatively few insiders to whom he can turn.

But Alan J. Stoga, managing director of Kissinger Associates, a New York-based foreign policy consulting firm, contended that in many ways, the Texan’s departure “does not change things” much at all.

“It would be a rare election year in which a government undertakes new initiatives, and there was no reason to believe that 1992 was going to be that rare year,” Stoga said.

“Arab and Israeli participants (in the Middle East peace talks) must sooner or later begin wondering if this Administration is not replaced, what kind of deal it might get from its successors.

“That would have slowed the pace of the negotiations in any case,” Stoga said. “It was hard to be optimistic that much was going to be accomplished.”