Carter calms the storm
Henry Fairlie
Washington In one of the less inflamed phrases in his memoirs De Gaulle wrote: 'The United States brings to great affairs elementary feelings and a complicated policy'. There can be no question that some elementary feelings have been aroused in the populace by the holding of the American hostages in the embassy at Teheran. There can equally be no question that the administration has been following a day-to-day policy of very complicated tactical engagements which show some signs of yielding results. On the whole and at least up till now, it has all been quite heartening to watch. One can imagine how le grand Charles would have reacted if he had had to face a similar provocation in one of the countries of the Levant where French influence had once been high. He would have gone on television — half paladin, half pantaloon — and waved his arms about. But what actions would he have taken? None that would have matched his words though I suppose that, unable to get his troops into Damascus. he might have annexed Quebec. The comparison is worth drawing if only to rebut any idea that there is some kind of more visible leadership which President Carter should and could have given, and to emphasise that, as the frustrating days have passed, the American people as a whole have ungrudgingly acknowledged that he has led them wisely and ably. The anger has by no means subsided, but the cries to act in anger have.
But having offered these plaudits, welldeserved as they are, one must move to sterner considerations. In the first place. this is not a crisis. Unless one side or the other chooses to escalate it. it is as yet only a damned ticklish situation. Nothing that involves the national security of either country is yet at stake. This is most clear in the domestic context. The American people are certainly to be congratulated on their general calm, but one must at the same time notice that they have so far suffered no inconvenience. They are prepared to do without Iranian oil now. But when the lines at the petrol stations grow. . .
I like to think that the recent fifth edition of Satow's A Guide to Diplomatic Practice has been in the crisis room at the Department of State. Edited by Lord Gore-Booth, the chapter on 'Attacks on Embassies', which precedes that on 'Kidnapping of Diplomats', has a great charm to it. Have we not all forgotten that, when a mob of young people attacked the British embassy in Indonesia in 1963, 'in the evening, as a gesture of morale-raising defiance, Major Walker, the assistant military attaché walked round the damaged building playing the bagpipes'? In the general principles which the new Satow offers for dealing with situations. there is an underlying insistence that an excited response is not helpful. The State Department has precisely avoided that crisis atmosphere, and there is a lesson here all American administrations might learn. Since it is their own people whose lives are in danger, the State Department has been in charge from the beginning. That's why America has acted so well. The president deserves All the credit he is given for not pressuring the State Department into appeasing the more volatile elements in the public. But the simple fact is that the State Department has been in charge, and so has indeed reacted very much as if Satow is at hand. 'Firm but not tough' — one of the official descriptions of the policy — would have been approved by him.
The tactical successes of the Administration have amounted to as much of a diplomatic policy as can be expected in such circumstances. Iranian funds in the United States were frozen before the Iranian government could take them out. The refusal of further shipments of Iranian oil was announced before the Iranian government was able to stop them. These may seem to be only very small change, but they have had their intended effect. Simply by doing very little in public, and only reacting to developments in an informal and timely manner, the State Department has kept the Iranian government off balance. But what, or who. or where, is the government of Iran? It was with surely understandable frustration that Hamilton Jordan exclaimed at a meeting in the White House the other day: 'We don't know who's in charge' in Iran. Ah: but the foreign ministries in the more stable countries in the world today have to get used to the fact that they often do not know who is in charge in the less settled countries. Here is the new Satow: 'Attacks of the kind described above imply an aroused public, possibly aroused by the receiving government as well as a degree of political instability'. This is exactly the situation in which the State Department is having to act at the moment. One can only hope that all American presidents from now on will reduce the importance of their personal foreign offices in the White House and leave the State Department to conduct the nation's diplomacy.
The elements in the populace who are now shrieking to the Administration to `do something' are those who are normally most preoccupied with the menace from Russia. But at this moment when 'elementary feelings' can run riot, they suddenly lose all interest in the bear that is sitting on the borders of Iran. and especially in its cubs inside Iran who know a honey pot when they see one. I heard a foreign service officer say in the past few days: 'To talk of "Marxist students" in Iran just now is a euphemism for Soviet penetration. Could any politician today say that we may need the Ayatollah?' He did not wait for an answer but gave it himself: 'Of course not'. But he then gave the warning which is now most worrying: 'I am terrified of the dam of criticism which will break as soon as the hostages are freed'.
The thought is alarming. The candidates who are now being silent will feel free to beat the Administration with any stick they choose. It is not enough to say that, if the hostages are rescued unharmed, the president can ride the waters of any dam. What is alarming is that the long-term strategic interest of America in the area will be lost to sight. Wounded pride will demand vengeance on the Iranian regime — a regime which may be desperately needed.
I foolishly get some satisfaction• from seeing that many people now agree with me that America's prestige abroad will be a major issue in the coming election. But not in these circumstances, I pray, not with this melodrama. I forget who once said that a country's prestige is only how other nations expect it to act on the basis of its previous performance. The State Department has performed well in recent weeks, but what candidate in the election will not be ready to throw the country's advantage away?
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