Exceptional (10 page)

I can't think of a better way to demonstrate for the American people and for the world that Détente with the Soviet Union . . . in no way means that we've given up our fundamental principles concerning individual liberty and democracy. Solzhenitsyn, as the symbol of resistance to oppression in the Soviet Union, whatever else he may be, can help us communicate that message simply by having him in to see the President. Seeing him is a nice counterbalance to all of the publicity and coverage that's given to meetings between American presidents and Soviet leaders. Meetings with Soviet leaders are very important, but it is also important that we not contribute any more to the illusion that all of a sudden we're bosom-buddies with the Russians.

[
The Soviets
]
have been perfectly free to criticize us for our actions and policies in Southeast Asia over the years, to call us imperialists, war-mongers, and various and sundry other endearing
terms, and I can't believe they don't understand why the President might want
to see Solzhenitsyn.

Cheney lost the argument, and Ford's refusal to see Solzhenitsyn became a key element in the conservative foreign policy case against Ford.

Henry Kissinger would later write, “In retrospect, I believe we would have been wise to . . . schedule a meeting with the President . . . in as unobtrusive and dignified a
manner as possible.” The trepidation some in the Ford administration felt about shining a light on human rights abuses inside the Soviet Bloc would be overcome with the signing of the Helsinki Accords.

The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe opened on July 30, 1975, in Helsinki, Finland. Former secretary of state Kissinger has written of the conference and the accords that followed, “Turning points often pass
unrecognized by contemporaries.” Both sides had incentives to participate and sign the accords, and, it is fair to say, neither side recognized the dramatic impact the agreement would ultimately have on the collapse of communism and the downfall of the Soviet Union.

The accords included provisions that affirmed the postwar division of Europe, which the Soviets wanted. The accords also, and more important as it turned out, included language recognizing “the universal significance of human rights and fundamental freedoms . . . in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.”

Former ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin described the reaction of Soviet Politburo members when they read the text. He said they had no objections to the first parts of the treaty, but when they read the article guaranteeing human rights, “their hair stood on end.” Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko tried to reassure
them, arguing that the significant thing about the Helsinki treaty was that it recognized the postwar borders of Europe. “That's what we shed our blood for in the great patriotic war,” Gromyko said. “All thirty-five signatory states are now saying—these are the borders of Europe.” As for the sections about human rights, Gromyko declared, “We are the masters of this house, and each time, it will be up to us to decide how to act.
Who can force us?”

As President Ford saw it, “
The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations did not recognize that the human rights provision was a time bomb. We, the United States believed that if we could get the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations to respect human rights, that was worth whatever else was agreed to in the Helsinki Accords.”

The Soviet leadership believed they could explain the agreement to their people by stressing the final settlement of the postwar boundaries and essentially ignoring the human rights provisions, but according to Ambassador Dobrynin, when the full text of the accords was published in the official Soviet Communist Party paper,
Pravda
, it had “the weight
of an official document.” Thus, in Dobrynin's words, “It gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement, a development totally beyond the imagination
of the Soviet leadership.”

Within months of the treaty's signing, “Helsinki Groups” began forming in countries behind the Iron Curtain. What had once been forbidden—demanding respect for fundamental rights from Soviet Bloc governments—was now, in essence, officially sanctioned. The Soviet government had, after all, signed a treaty committing to observance of those rights and published the treaty for all to see.

On January 1, 1977, a group of intellectuals in Prague signed the “
Charter 77” manifesto urging the government of Czechoslovakia to live up to its obligations under the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords. A number of the signatories were imprisoned,
including playwright Vaclav Havel. While Havel was in prison and later under house arrest, his influence grew as he continued to write essays and plays about human rights and human freedom. Twelve years later, he would become the first president of liberated Czechoslovakia.

PRESIDENT FORD LOST THE 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. The Nixon pardon had cost him politically. There was also a moment during the October 6 presidential debate from which it was very hard to recover. A question from Max Frankel of the
New York Times
implied that the Helsinki Accords meant the United States accepted Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. President Ford responded by saying, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be
under a Ford administration.”

Frankel was perplexed and followed up: “I'm sorry? Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a
communist zone?” Ford doubled down, explaining that the people of Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland did not consider themselves to be dominated by the Soviet Union. The national press and the Carter campaign had a field day. The next day President Ford clarified his statement, but the damage had been done.

ON JANUARY 12, 1977, eight days before he was sworn in as president of the United States, Jimmy Carter met at Blair House with General George Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and members of Carter's
national security team. According to a report by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak in the next day's
Washington Post
, Carter and his top advisors were receiving a briefing on the Single
Integrated Operational Plan, which covered “the President's awesome responsibilities in the event of a Soviet attack.” Carter shocked the assembled group by instructing General Brown to begin studies of the possibility of cutting the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal significantly to only 200–250 intercontinental ballistic missiles. General Brown, reported Evans and Novak, was “stunned speechless.”

Two months later, Carter sent Secretary of State Cyrus Vance on a mission to Moscow. In late 1974, President Ford and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev had agreed in principle on nuclear arms limitations that would extend the terms of the SALT I Treaty. Vance arrived in Moscow with a plan for far deeper cuts in each side's arsenal. Brezhnev
flatly rejected it. Les Gelb, who served in the Carter State Department and traveled to Moscow with Vance, explained later that the mission's failure was interpreted as a sign that “the Carter team was inept.” The impact of this misstep was, in Gelb's view, “a
deep stab wound.”

In May, President Carter explained his aims for strategic arms reductions in a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, calling for a freeze on modernization and weapons production, along with “continued substantial reductions.” He also said, “The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous. I believe we are strong and prosperous
because we are free.” It was an odd turn of phrase given that it was precisely America's strength that guaranteed our freedom. As for the other “great democracies” to which Carter referred, in the aftermath of World War II, they, too, were free because America was strong.

In June 1977, President Carter canceled America's B-1 bomber program. The B-1 was to have replaced the aging B-52s. Carter secured nothing in return
from the Soviets. In April 1978, Carter announced he was stopping the development of America's neutron bomb program, again without securing anything in return from the
Soviets. Even members of his own party were concerned. “I'm dismayed and puzzled. I don't understand,” said Georgia Democratic senator Sam Nunn. “They're not
on a very clear course.”

The appearance of American weakness was compounded by a sense of diplomatic incompetence. On March 6, 1980, for example, the American ambassador to the United Nations voted to condemn Israel's building of settlements on the West Bank. Arab states hailed the vote. Israel, which had expected an abstention from the United States, was shocked. The following Monday, the White House was forced to issue a statement in Carter's name explaining that the vote had been, in fact, a “mistake.” It was, according to the White House spokesman, a “
foul-up” in communications between the State Department and the White House.

The most significant and long-lasting damage to American interests during President Carter's administration came with the takeover of Iran by the militant Islamist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. The shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed in January 1979, had been one of America's most important allies in the Middle East. Less than a year after he was deposed, an Iranian mob stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans and forty others hostage. The Iranians would ultimately hold
fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days.

When the shah fell, the government of Saudi Arabia asked the United States for a demonstration of our continued commitment to our other allies in the region. President Carter sent a squadron of F-15s. When the planes were airborne, he announced they were unarmed.

Until 2009, Jimmy Carter's was the least competent presidency of the postwar era. His misguided actions extended beyond his time in the White House. When the United States was attempting to gain UN support to liberate Kuwait in 1990, we learned that former president
Carter had contacted heads of government with seats on the Security Council and urged them to vote against the American position. By then his influence was not what it had been when he was in office, and he failed.

Governor Ronald Reagan of California summed up the concern millions of Americans felt about President Carter's mishandling of our national security policy. Accepting the Republican presidential nomination on July 17, 1980, Reagan asked:

Who does not feel a growing sense of unease as our allies, facing repeated instances of an amateurish and confused administration, reluctantly conclude that America is unwilling or unable to fulfill its obligations as leader of the free world? Who does not feel rising alarm when the question in any discussion of foreign policy is no longer, “Should we do something?” but “Do we have the capacity
to do anything?”

Six months later, on January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan began to restore America's strength, confidence, and capacity to lead. He'd been elected in a landslide—489 electoral votes to Carter's 49. Shortly after Reagan took the oath at noon, the Iranians released the American hostages.

ON OCTOBER 16, 1978, the papal conclave elected Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be bishop of Rome. History would know him as Pope John Paul II.

On hearing of Wojtyla's election, Yuri Andropov, who was then head of the KGB, angrily inquired of the KGB chief in Warsaw, “How could you possibly allow the election of a citizen of a socialist
country as pope?” The Soviets were right to be afraid. Shortly after
becoming pope, John Paul II made clear the role he intended to play. The church behind the Iron Curtain was “not a church of silence anymore,” he said, “because it
speaks with my voice.”

Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to his homeland in June 1979. Millions of Poles turned out to greet him as he made his way across the country. On June 2, his first day in Poland, he was received at the Polish White House by President Henryk Jablonski and Communist Party leader Edward Gierek. In his public remarks at the occasion, the pope spoke of the importance of freedom for the church in Poland. He reminded his hosts that they would be responsible for their treatment of people of faith “before history and
before your own conscience.” He also told them that he would continue to care as deeply about the well-being of the Polish church as he had when he was archbishop of Kraków.

In sermon after sermon in this nation where communists had outlawed religion, John Paul II spoke of the “
thousand-year-right of citizenship” of the Christian church in Poland. He said, “Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude.” And he said, “Without Christ it is impossible to understand the
history of Poland.” Not only was Christ the past, the pope declared, he was “our Polish future.” Millions of voices lifted in response chanting, “
We want God!”

Communist Party signs posted on walls across the country read “The Party is for the people.” During the pope's visit a handwritten addendum appeared on thousands of the signs: “But the
people want the Pope.”

John Paul II's last stop was his hometown of Kraków. He stayed in his old room at
the archbishop's residence. For each of the three nights he was there, thousands of young people gathered in the streets and on the roofs of adjacent buildings, cheering and singing. When the pope appeared on the residence's small balcony, the chants rose
up,
Sto lat
! Sto lat!
(“May you live a hundred years!”) Instead of delivering a sermon,
the pope sang, each night, with the Polish students and workers gathered outside his window.

His final mass was on June 10 on the
Kraków Commons. The largest crowd in Polish history gathered to hear him. There in the fields of Kraków, the pope proclaimed: