Jet Planes, Television, and Foreign Policy

JET PLANES, TELEVISION, AND FOREIGN POLICY Georgfe W. Ball ?. -ocqueville was not the first political philosopher to lament the difficulties of conducting foreign policy in a democracy, and no doubt the lamentations will continue. At the moment, those difficulties are accentuated by the prevailing obsession with openness, which is an overreaction to furtive practices in the past. Both Presidents Johnson and Nixon conducted the Vietnam war—and, in Nixon's case, an irreleyant war in Cambodia—as though they were private quarrels. Today, the laws and regulations that mandate openness encourage the press to exploit leaks and rumors with an assiduity different not merely in degree but in method from the diligent reporters of an earlier era. Today also, television has become not merely a reporter but an actor in diplomatic dramas. To understand its current role, consider two modern episodes: the negotiation of the two Sinai agreements and the Camp David accords; and more recently, the handling of the hostage affaire in Tehran. In 1949, United Nations official Ralph Bunche settled the 1948 Arab-Israeli War by positioning himself on the isle of Rhodes and mediating between delegations from Israel and Egypt. That, however, was before the days of television. In 1974 and 1975, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger brought about the first and second Sinai agreements between Israel and Egypt by flying frenetically from capital to capital in the Middle East, accompanied by a whole planeload of reporters and cameramen. At each step correspondents reported to the American television audience the comments of "a senior official on the The Honorable George W. Ball served as Under Secretary ofState from 1961-66, and as US. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1968-69. He is currently a senior managing director of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. His latest book, Diplomacy for a Crowded World, was published in 1976. 6 SAIS REVIEW plane," while that "senior official" was regularly seen climbing on and off Air Force One or one of its siblings. Americans were caught up in the melodrama ofthe negotiation as though it were a police chase in the movies. Sometimes the mood was manic, sometimes somber; the scenario unrolled hour by hour before the eager eyes ofAmericans with suspense but little comic relief. Would Prime Minister Begin yield a further inch? Would President Sadat give in with an imperial act of generosity? Would Kissinger, "the miracle man" as they called him, reach an agreement or would it elude his grasp? Tune in tomorrow for the next episode. It was a script tailor-made for a visual medium and television milked the last ounce of excitement from it. In the succeeding administration, President Carter himself took over the central role. First he put the two principals under a kind of house arrest in Camp David, then flew dramatically to Egypt and Israel. The culmination was a splendid pageant on the White House lawn where those three deeply religious men, Begin, Carter, and Sadat, efficiently bussed one another's cheeks while the cameras rolled. It was art, but was it pretty? Or more accurately, was it costeffective ? From the American point of view it was an extravagantly expensive way to conduct foreign policy. With America's prestige committed—first through the direct involvement ofSecretary Kissinger and then, even more recklessly, ofPresident Carter—our nation's stake in a successful outcome resembled the gamble ofthose British peers who bet their stately homes on the turn ofa wheel. Since failure would mean a national embarrassment, we were prepared to pay almost any price to avoid it. The result was a curious kind ofnegotiation in which the interested parties devoted almost more attention to a haggle with the United States than with dealing with one another. From the beginning, every concession by either side cost America more, so that the whole enterprise began to resemble an Alice-In-Wonderland type ofreal estate deal. The United States purchased from Israel huge areas of worthless sand for an exorbitant price; then it paid Egypt an exorbitant price to accept that sand. Nor can anyone tell when the cost of the transaction will be fully liquidated; it is now regularized in an apparently perpetual annuity of...