Argentina invokes security pact

Well, topic A still dominates the news and the news telecasts and the social talk of practically anyone you run into on the street, in the lift, even on a park bench where, the other day, an unlikely philosopher, a rather scrubby old man, tossing bread at pigeons, grumbled, 'I thought we were always against the Nazis'.

That sums up one view, a view which haunts the president and his advisers and makes them uncomfortable. I say this without irony. If Argentina were almost any other South American country, the way would be clear for the administration to vote a downright condemnation of the Falklands invasion. Of course, it did that in the United Nations Security Council, but then it was called on to be a go-between and since Britain is the best ally in Europe, and Argentina the new ally in South America, at once the dilemma set in – alternative choices of action neither of which could be, barring a miracle, satisfactory to both sides.

All through Secretary Haig's shuttle diplomacy, 31,000 miles, 65 hours in the air, there was always at the back of his mind the fear that the Argentines, if they didn't get most of what they wanted, would call on the Organisation of American States, the OAS, to invoke the Rio Treaty.

Now let me say something about the OAS and what it was set up to do. It was formed so long ago as 1948 under the same impulse that gave birth to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. In other words, it was a response, almost a firebell response, to the advance of the Soviet Union after it formed its own Cominform, suppressed an independent Czechoslovakia, fomented a civil war in Greece and applied pressure on Turkey. This led to the famous Truman Doctrine to try and contain the Russians from any more territorial or ideological expansion.

So, the OAS was created as an anti-Communist security pact – a common front, originally of 28 member nations of this hemisphere, bound by treaty to repel aggression against any of them. Aggression meant, then, and was always expected to mean, Communist aggression. So that in 1962 when Fidel Castro had put off his promised democratic elections – he still has – and everybody saw the way things were going on his island, Cuba was allowed to stay on as a member of the OAS but it was excluded from all activities.

Well, considering what has happened since then, what with a spate of military coups and right-wing dictatorships and, also, an opposing spate of left-wing and near-Communist resistance and guerrilla movements, the OAS has had a rough time agreeing as a body on almost anything except on the obligation of the United States to provide military and/or economic aid here and there and everywhere.

The headquarters of the organisation is in Washington DC and however little it's been able to do as a united body, its structure is by no means that of a skeleton. It has a permanent council and various subsidiary councils for education, for science and culture and, believe me, a commission on human rights which has developed as a reflex Nelson's ability to peer far and wide with a blind eye.

The most effective, or at least the most functional, of these councils is the main one, the permanent council. It can call meetings of the member states' foreign ministers whenever one country feels itself threatened by outside aggression. So long as Secretary Haig was commuting between London and Buenos Aires and pausing to report to the president in Washington, Argentina didn't exercise this right. But once he came to rest, protesting that the negotiations were still on but admitting that time was running out, Argentina upped and called a meeting of the OAS permanent council last Tuesday.

The motion before the members of the council was to convene a foreign ministers' meeting on Monday 26th to consider collective action against Great Britain. The vote was 18 to nothing in favour of the meeting, with Colombia, Trinidad, Tobago and the United States abstaining. The fact that 18 out of 21 states thought there was a case to consider is a reflection of the fear in which Argentina is held by her neighbours for, as almost any American official you care to consult will point out, and what any Briton will indignantly proclaim, it is quite an interpretation of the word 'aggressor' to pin it on Britain.

Of course, the OAS delegates are quick to tell you that there has not yet been any aggression covered by the Rio treaty, that is to say no aggression perpetrated against any American country. I believe they put the meeting forward because, by then, they expect the British fleet to be hovering, at least, off the Falklands. In short, they are preparing to act to vote collective action if Britain attacks the Falklands. But Britain can invoke a well-known clause of the United Nations charter which gives any member nation the right to act in its own self defence. Furthermore, I'm told that one provision of the Rio treaty which, true or not, has certainly gone unmentioned so far, says that any collective action of the OAS must bow to a resolution of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Well, whichever way it goes, the next vote to take collective action requires a two-thirds majority. The responsible people in Washington doubt very much that Argentina will be able to muster that majority.

In fact, several Central American nations are anxious to bring in a resolution to condemn not Britain but Argentina for its aggression against the Falkland Islands. President Reagan and his entourage hope it won't come to a vote to any issue which would pit the United States against the majority of the OAS members.

What comes out of all this during the rather gloomy pause that I'm talking through is that American opinion is beginning to crystallise into three lumps. There are the people who, disheartened by the complications of the negotiations, are saying that President Reagan and his administration should have stayed out of it since the start. There are the people, a growing number I should guess, who have looked ahead beyond the Falklands and seen the possibility of many more coups and patriotic adventures if Argentina gets her way – the people who urge the president to try and try again with the negotiations, and that's what he's doing.

There's the third group, and I don't doubt it is a majority of Americans, who, like the pigeon-feeder on the bench, are embarrassed by the pretence, necessary perhaps at present, by the pretence of trying to be neutral as between a democratic ally and a dictatorship – the people who say, 'For heaven's sake, let's drop the theory that Argentina can protect us from Communism in Central America. They sell lashings of their beef and 80 per cent of their grain to the Soviet Union, don't they? Let's come down solidly on the side of the British!'

At a press conference in the White House grounds the other day, Mr Reagan was asked the excruciating question if the United States would have to take sides. It was excruciating because the United States will have to, but this is a fine time for the desperate mediator to have to say so. 'If the worse comes to the worst,' he said, and then added, understandably, 'that would be a terrible thing to say in the midst of all the delicate negotiations.'

Well, let's hope that, by the time some of you hear this, we can cry with the poet, 'But look, we have come through'. Nothing that I can see ahead is going to stop or cancel, may postpone, the OAS meeting of the foreign ministers on 26th.

There's one other thing that must be said about the agony of rationalisation and statecraft that Mr Reagan and his intimate advisers are going through and I believe – if we could all see the memos and warnings from the State Department coming into the White House about the effect on other countries, other conflicts, of the Falklands mess – agony is not too strong a word.

Former presidents, for better or worse, have had some foreign policy theory to go on, however much the theory wobbled in practice. With Truman and Eisenhower, it was containment of Soviet power. With Kennedy, it was the rather alarming promise to defend the liberties of 43 countries allied by treaty. With Johnson, it was more vaguely but just as sincerely to raise up the depressed peoples everywhere. With Nixon, it was to match the Soviet power but melt the Cold War and break the ice with China. With Carter, it was to make respect for human rights the test of an acceptable ally.

With Mr Reagan, we have no guiding principle except a rather fuzzy distinction he made at the beginning of his term between authoritarian governments and totalitarian governments. What this has meant in practice, in the practice of deciding who is good and who is bad, is that an authoritarian government is a right-wing government, brutal perhaps, which is good because it's opposed to Communism. A totalitarian government practises Communist brutality. This fine distinction evidently makes little distinction between acts of aggression. It all depends who you are aggressing against.

Yet the United States is bound, under the United Nations, to be against the use of force in any international dispute. In practice, the United States condemns the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Cuba, in Africa, but nervously supports Israel for taking out the nuclear arsenal of Iraq. So the Falkland Islands are looked on by, I believe, a rising majority in Congress, as a more glaring test of principle.

To compound the agony in the White House, the administration is being made to understand that not to come down against an aggressor could, after the Falklands, encourage new Russian aggressions and leave the European allies in bitter doubt about the dependability of America as an ally in their vulnerable neck of the woods.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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