In the immediate aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential elections, there was widespread pleasure that the hostages had all been freed from the 444-day captivity in the American embassy in Teheran. And Reagan’s choice of Alexander M. Haig as his Secretary of State did not cause much particular concern or interest. What struck me in the early days of the Reagan administration was the blistering criticism launched by Reagan at the Soviet Union in his early days in office. In his first press conference on January 29, 1981, Reagan accused Soviet leaders of reserving “the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.” And Haig in April, said that the Soviet Union posed “the greatest danger” to the world. But ironically, even though the Carter administration had invoked a ban on the sale of grain to the Soviet Union in the wake of the invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the Reagan administration decided to resume grain sales to appease angry U.S. farmers.
But the major event in the first months of the new term occurred on March 30, 1981 when John Hinkley Jr., somehow thinking this would impress the actress, Jodie Foster, attempted to assassinate Reagan as he was leaving the Washington Hilton hotel after having given a luncheon speech. Reagan was seriously wounded but survived after operations at the Washington Hospital Center His press secretary, James Brady, received a crippling head injury which handicapped him for the remainder of his life. What remains in the memory of those covering those events is the appearance of Haig in front of the White House press corps that day. At that moment, Vice President George H.W. Bush was in a plane returning to Washington. That led Haig to say “I am in control,” mistakingly thinking that the secretary of state was third in line, but the law had been changed and in fact Speaker of the House Tip O’Neal was third in line. This became a major embarrassment to Haig.
Reagan recovered fairly quickly, allowing Haig to continue on his planned overseas trips. The first one was to the Middle East. The trip had been delayed over concern of a Soviet invasion of Poland that did not occur. And so Haig went saw Sadat in Cairo, Begin in Israel, King Hussein in Jordan, and met the Saudis and then went on to Western Europe to discuss mainly relations with Russia and deployment of U.S. missiles on their territory. I later wrote a news analysis on April 12, 1981, pointing out that “Clearly Mr. Haig, after his embarrassing public rows with the White House, hoped that this trip would create a positive impression of him as a statesman. But this aim was complicated by the general nature of the mission itself. Its goals were broad and there were no specific negotiations undertaken, such as a resumption of talks on West Bank autonomy for Palestinians.”
Early in June, Haig left on another trip, this time to China. But he was still preoccupied with worries about Poland. My first story, after we landed in Hong Kong for a rest before going on to Beijing, reflected this.
“Hong Kong, June 12–Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig jr. held a news conference here today to express concern about ‘the seriously deteriorating situation in Poland.’
“Within hours of his arrival for a rest stop on his way to Peking, where he arrives Sunday, Mr. Haig decided to speak out about his apprehension that the Soviet Union might go beyong its threatening letter this week to the Warsaw leadership and intervene to stop the independent trends in Poland.”
We eventually, of course, arrived in Beijing and it turned out to be quite successful. Despite Reagan’s pro-Taiwan stances, Haig and Deng Xiaoping said at the end that the talks went “very well” and that Taiwan was not much of an issue. The trip ended on a bit of a bizarre note because I and a colleague from the Wall Street Journal had asked a Haig aide how he dealt with other issues while on his Asian trip. The aide gave us both a detailed rundown of how Haig had succeeded in watering down a Security Council resolution that the U.S.Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was going to let go through which would have condemned Israel for its bombing on June 7 of an Iraqi nuclear plant. This forced Haig to have a press conference the next day to deny he was criticizing Mrs. Kirkpatrick.
I remember writing a news analysis saying that “Haig and his advisers were growing uneasy and more than a bit defensive about the growing number of columnists and others, most notably former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance who have complained about the lack of a meaningful foreign policy.” This led Haig in Manila to say: “It’s true that we have not come out with a grand conceptual design a la Kissinger or Brzezinski or somebody else, and it’s true that the President has focused his primary attention on getting the economic mess at home straightened out. But do not delude yourselves. It doesn’t mean that he does not have a foreign policy or we don’t know precisely where we’re going because we do.”
What was most surprising to me was the dramatic shift in the administration’s attitude toward the Soviet Union in the summer of 1981. On August 11, in a speech to the American Bar Association in New Orleans, Haig said that the administration’s military buildup would encourage Soviet moderation and that the United States sought fair agreements with Moscow that recognized legitimate interests on both sides. Haig said: “We offer a reduction in the tensions.that are so costly to both our societies. We offer diplomatic alternatives to the pursuit of violent change. We offer faiar and balanced agreements on arms control. And we offer the possibility of Western traee and technology.”
Haig met with Gromyko at the U.N. General Assembly for two meetings totaling nine hours but despite the press buildup there were no surprise improvements in relations. For me, this was becoming an old record. But we were all startled by the crackdown in Poland whee the authorities initiated martial law on December 13, 1981. The Reagan administration initially reacted strongly, blaming the Russians, but it soon lost interest as did Western Europe.
In the spring of 1982, the Argentine military junta, faced with a deteriorating economy at home, decided to invade the nearby Falkland Islands which had been a British Crown Colony since 1841, This became a war in slow motion since it would take the British weeks to assemble a naval armada to go down there. What I considered bizarre was that Haig had decided on his own to try and mediate the conflict instead of sending Latin experts and others to do so. Haig took no press on his plane to Argentina, and we learned from his memoirs that he felt he was close at the end of his mission to getting a deal, but the Argentines pulled back at the last minute. For Haig, it was a personal setback. In his memoir, “Caveat,” Haig recalls: “In the few days since my last trip to Buenos Aires, my prediction to my wife that the Falklands might be my Waterloo had taken on the character of prophecy.” Haig noted that with the collapse of his peace efforts, his “image had suffered.” He claimed that during Reagan’s first trip to Europe, a 10-day swing that included an economic summit at Versailles in early June 1982, “it became plain that the effort to write my character out of the script was underway with a vengeance.” His term would actually come to an end later that month.
