Word: reagan
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...reluctant to say anything officially about the mounting crisis. At a European Community summit in London last week the twelve leaders agreed to avoid criticizing Washington. In France, an assistant to Premier Jacques Chirac said, "We don't intend to add the least little grain of salt" to the Reagan Administration's wounds. West Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung succinctly summed up the mood of allied capitals by comparing it to "the sound of embarrassed coughing...
Privately, however, Europeans were incredulous at what they considered the sheer naiveté of U.S. officials, notably President Reagan. Said a French official: "Everybody knows that Iran is the one country where American public opinion simply would not tolerate compromise." One West European foreign policy official expressed amazement at the sloppiness of the operation's organizers, wondering that "if it was handled this badly, how will they handle other matters...
...most obvious victim was U.S. diplomatic credibility, especially on the subject of dealing with terrorist regimes. Washington has been critical of some allies for failing to support U.S. measures against state-sponsored terrorism, notably the American bombing raids on Libya last April. In light of Reagan's willingness to trade weapons for Iranian help in securing the release of U.S. hostages, it will be more difficult to ask for cooperation in the future. Editorialized Bonn's General-Anzeiger: "It will take a long time before the leading power in the West can credibly champion the stringency of joint standards...
Despite the atmosphere of normality in Geneva, there were signs that the Iran-contra affair could indeed affect superpower relations. Coming on top of Reagan's decision to violate the unratified SALT II arms treaty, the scandal has evidently prompted the Kremlin to allow Soviet commentators to attack Reagan personally, something that was avoided in the recent past. Georgi Arbatov, head of the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies, called the scandal "a truly cinematic story out of second-rate Hollywood films, in which Ronald Reagan has been featured for years...
Some U.S. officials fear that the Soviets will seek to exploit Reagan's problems by either driving a harder bargain or refusing to agree to any arms pact for the next two years. These concerns are rarely voiced in Western Europe, which is still in shock over Reagan's willingness at Reykjavik to discuss deep?and possibly even total?cutbacks of U.S. nuclear weapons on the Continent without first consulting NATO allies. Such a move would force them to base their defense primarily on conventional weapons, in which they are considerably outclassed by Warsaw Pact forces...