NONFICTION - May 2, 1993

TWIN PILLARS TO DESERT STORM: America’s Flawed Vision in the Middle East by Howard Teicher and Gayle Radley Teicher (Morrow: $23; 418 pp.). Unlike most Western diplomats today--preoccupied with disheartening ethnic and economic upheaval in Eastern Europe--those dealing with the Middle East still get to play the Byzantine, James Bondian games of the Cold War. One of those lucky few was Howard Teicher, a senior director on the National Security Council who is better known as Ollie North’s immediate boss and as the official who claims to have briefed George Bush three times about the arms-for-hostages deal. (Bush not only knew about the deal, Teicher asserts, he actively encouraged it.) An old-style Cold Warrior, Teicher subscribes to the notion that hawks deliver olive branches more reliably than doves. Insisting that “weakness invites only aggression” and that “the preservation of freedom demands strength,” he claims that Khomeini rose to power in Iran because we failed to mount “a sustained demonstration of American power that left no ambiguity over America’s intentions, capability and will to protect U.S. interests.” Similarly, he argues that if we only had “finished off” Saddam in the Gulf War, the country would have fallen in line with our “vital interests.”

Any number of moral and strategic questions will be leveled at Teicher’s arguments: e.g., Given that the disregard American diplomats showed for popular sentiments in Iran only bolstered the fundamentalists’ power, would “more force” really have served our interests? But no one can deny that Teicher played this game of hardball well. He stopped in 1986, when Iran-Contra hit the headlines and his own teammates began playing against him. Suddenly, the Reagan Administration was denying him agency council and reporters were using sloppy reportage to weave sexy spy stories about his complicity. As Teicher writes poignantly, “I began to experience the sensation of free fall, as I grasped for the rip cord on my nonexistent parachute.”

BOOK MARK. An excerpt from “Twin Pillars” appears on Page 3 of Opinion.