Word: radars
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...White House aides and State Department officials last week. The Administration might quarrel with portions of his description, but in spirit it was accurate enough. Seeking to balance conflicting pressure from Israelis, Arabs and European allies in the wake of winning Senate approval for the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia, the Administration found itself at odds with nearly everybody. Luck most certainly will be needed to avoid provoking even more anger, and the President and his aides did not have much luck last week...
...once the chips were on the table, the consequences of defeat, in the White House's view, were all too plain. If Congress turned down the Administration's plan to sell five sophisticated AWACS radar planes and other air-combat gear to Saudi Arabia, Ronald Reagan's ability to conduct any effective foreign policy at all would be called into serious question. If he could not deliver on this promise, how could foreign leaders trust any other commitment he might make? In European as well as Middle Eastern capitals, U.S. allies awaited the vote as a test of Reagan...
...early as Feb. 3, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was proclaiming publicly that a new arms deal with the Saudis was in the works. He made no mention of AWACS, but Air Force General David C. Jones, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shortly convinced him that the radar planes should be included. According to some Administration insiders, Jones' clinching argument was economic: a sack of cash from the Saudis for the AWACS would hold down the cost of producing the radar planes for the U.S. Air Force...
Opposition has surged, then faltered, then lately surged again. Now the final tally is too close to call. The Reagan Administration appears to have tried everything from crude offers of pork-barrel projects to invocations of biblical Armageddon to defend its proposed sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. Yet when the Senate votes on the sale this week, conceded Reagan's Senate proconsul, G.O.P Leader Howard Baker, "it may still be lost...
Something would be lost even in victory. Approval of the sale would enrage Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and perhaps harden him against further conciliation in the Middle East peace process. Disapproval would humiliate Reagan. In addition, it would likely impel the Saudis to buy comparable Nimrod radar planes from Britain and would weaken U.S. influence with the biggest exporter of oil to the West. Whatever the outcome, the debate has already strained U.S.-Saudi relations and diminished Reagan's standing among American Jews...