The U.N. voice that makes Haig squirm

Press, 18 June 1982, Page 13

The U.N. voice that makes Haig squirm

From

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

in Washington

Jeane Jordan Kirkpatrick, the outspoken United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and the only senior woman appointment in the Reagan Administration, was addressing a luncheon meeting of supporters of a Rightwing -"think tank." and clearly felt that she was among friends. She made jokes' about small, Third World nations, and bewailed the fact that at the- United Nations power and responsibility seldom have much to do with each other. Her style was easy. "Carry on eating." she told the guests; she was used to being received with less than rapt attention — a dig at the General Assembly, which she clearly regards as a forum of untamed schoolchildren. She brings to task the refreshing candour not only of one who is neither a professional politician nor public official, but who also holds such breeds in some contempt. “One of my more reliable aides," she said, with the trace of a sneer when quoting some statistics that had been prepared for her. The implication was obvious — few aides are worth a candle, and indeed, since she took up her job at the beginning of the Reagan term, there have been several resignations from her team. • She prefers the support of like-minded “neo-conserva-tives,” who come, like herself, from an academic background. A few days earlier she had been at the centre of a muddle at the' United Nations Security Council — first vetoing a resolution calling for a Falklands ceasefire and then announcing that on revised orders, if

she could, she would change the United States: vote to an abstention. It demonstrated not only that the United States conducts an incoherent foreign policy, but also that when controversy is in the air, "la" Kirkpatrick is seldom far from the action. The job she holds is a peculiar one in that it bears Cabinet rank, placing her alongside Secretary of State Alexander Haig, yet is relatively humble within the State Department hierarchy. Kirkpatrick can argue the issues with Haig as an equal, and then must take orders from a Haig underling. It is little wonder that the job attracts ambitious people who fancy a place at the centre of power, and then utterly frustrates them (as it once did Adlai Stevenson). Kirkpatrick herself pointed out that having completed nearly 18 months at the United Nations, she was coming up to par for the course. Her predecessor but one. Andrew Young, the first black holder of the job and now Mayor of Atlanta, had similar problems, never quite knowing whether he was a policy-maker or a functionary, and finally stepping over the line by having an unauthorised meeting with the Palestine Liberation

Organisation. Watching Kirkpatrick involves many of the emotions of being present at a highwire act performed without a safety net. She might, one felt, during her lunchtime talk, resign between the cold meats and the entree. She has already pondered resignation hard and long once, and asserts that the personal cost of being a public figure is almost too high to bear, taking her away from her family and denying her the time for reading and contemplation on which an academic life is based. Mrs Kirkpatrick’s outspokenness also, of course, tries the patience of her political masters, and her remarks at the lunch — held at' a New York club — brought her into fresh conflict with Haig. But Reagan is a forbearing soul, and the hunch here is that if Mrs Kirkpatrick does go before the end of her four year stint, it will because she quit, not because she was pushed. She is a renegade Democrat, who began a move to the Right a decade ago when Senator George McGovern

won the Democratic presidential nomination. She became a leading member of a group that coalesced round the magazine "Commentary,” published by the American Jewish Committee, which stands firmly against the Soviet Union and for Israel. Part of the common beliefs of this group is that Right-wing authoritarian regimes, such as Chile or Argentina, are far preferable to Left-wing totalitarian governments such as Cuba. By equivocating with the former, the United States runs the risk of creating the latter, she argues — the two recent examples being Iran and Nicaragua. It is a theory that appeals strongly to Ronald Reagan, and' when he had his attention drawn to a "Commentary” article by Mrs Kirkpatrick entitled "Dictators and Double Standards.” he invited her to work on his campaign. From there it was but a. short step to the United Nations. With her elitist nature and clear-cut, rather simple, foreign policy views, she was not going to find the Unitbd Nations .'the happiest of hunting grounds, where on the

whole the bias — shaped by anti-colonialism and. loathing of Israel — is more towards the Leftist totalitarians.

But it is clear, comparing what she had to say at lunch with some of her quoted remarks of a few months ago, that she may be tailor-, ing her. instinctive dislike of the United Nations to try to make the foremost international organisation more responsive to United States needs.

Mrs Kirkpatrick has begun analysing American failures at the United Nations rather than just railing against them. She blamed the United States for failing over a 20year period to come to terms with the changing membership of the United Nations, for not creating tactical alliances — in the way the United Kingdom does — and for not treating it as a political institution, a remarkable failure considering what a political country the United States is. The United States has consistently failed to make friends — “We're a bloc of one" — or to reward potential voting allies and penalise opponents according to normal political criteria. But — and this was her most fundamental, criticism — "reluctantly, I conclude that the decline of United

States influence in the United Nations is part and parcel of its decline in influence in the world. It is a direct reflection of the persisting United States ineptitude in international relations through several decades and administrations. We have not projected a concept of national purpose.” Which is much what the severest critics of the' Administration have been saying for some time. If Mrs Kirkpatrick accepts the challenge she herself has set, and tries to reform United States policy-making, she may — with the firm ideological support of her President and her own undoubted tenacity of purpose — move mountains.

However, since she is the person who sat down to dinner at the Washington Argentine Embassy the night after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, not all the United States friends will necessarily appreciate the direction in which this new coherence might lead. Copyright — London Observer Service.