From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (135 page)

These personnel changes brought no more than token political gains. Foreign policy issues were not in the forefront in 1976. The nation was spared foreign crises. The president clung doggedly to an internationalist foreign policy shed of detente, but he continued to be squeezed hard between left and right. Liberal Democrats were determined to destroy the imperial presidency and challenge old and new commitments abroad. But the mood of the country and Congress had shifted markedly to the right. Ford and Kissinger perceived only belatedly that conservative Democrats and especially Republicans represented the more serious immediate threat. Jackson's presidential campaign quickly imploded, but within the Republican Party Reagan mounted a formidable challenge and especially targeted Ford's foreign policy. He attacked detente, sneered that "Henry
Kissinger's recent stewardship of U.S. foreign policy has coincided with the loss of U.S. military supremacy," and warned that the administration had all but recognized Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. After a strenuous primary campaign, the president held off Reagan's challenge by a mere 117 delegate votes, squandering much money, energy, and political capital in the process.
⁵²

Foreign policy was not the decisive issue in the presidential campaign, nor even a major one. Americans had long since turned inward. A faltering economy that had not responded to Ford's initiatives loomed much larger in the minds of voters. The president could not shed the heavy baggage he still carried from the Nixon years. His opponent, the relatively unknown Democratic governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, cast himself as a Wilsonian moralist, sparing Ford further attacks from the right. But a colossal blunder in the debate with Carter on foreign policy did hurt Ford late in the campaign. Although he had prepared carefully for questions on detente, the president to the shock of his advisers—and listeners—answered a question regarding Helsinki by affirming that there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" and that the United States did not "concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union." What he meant, of course, was that the United States did not concede Soviet domination. But it came out wrong, and when given a chance to correct his blunder he compounded it by listing individual Eastern European countries that did not "consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union." A media newly committed to "gotcha" journalism played up into a major issue a mistake that might otherwise have passed with little notice. Carter could not let pass a golden opportunity to attack Ford for the amorality of detente. The president stubbornly refused to issue a correction. Ford's statement, one of the great political blunders of recent years, cost him the debate and votes from Eastern European ethnic groups, although probably not the election—economic issues appear much more significant. It certainly raised doubts about his understanding and stewardship of U.S. foreign policy.
⁵³
He lost to Carter in a very close contest.

By the time Carter took office, detente was moribund if not dead, and two competing views of U.S. foreign policy had emerged. The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) pressed for military superiority and a tough
stance toward the USSR. Originally formed in 1950 to lobby for NSC-68, it was reborn in 1976 with Gerald Ford, ironically, as midwife. Responding to shrill conservative charges that the CIA had repeatedly underestimated Soviet capabilities and intentions, the president established a group called Team B to take another look. Composed of hard-liners such as Paul Nitze, Harvard historian Richard Pipes, and arms control official Paul Wolfowitz, Team B concluded in its report that the Soviet Union was seeking military superiority and indeed global hegemony and was exploiting detente to that end. As an outgrowth of Team B, the CPD sprang back into action. It was composed of retired military officers, conservative politicians, labor leaders, Jewish intellectuals, and an emerging group of so-called neo-conservatives, former liberals who had rebelled against the perceived cultural excesses of the 1960s. The CPD agitated for a massive defense buildup along the lines of NSC-68 that would give the United States absolute military superiority. Amply funded and very well connected, the group viewed Communism as an unmitigated evil, advocated its containment and ultimate destruction, and urged active steps to promote democracy abroad.
⁵⁴

The Trilateral Commission took a very different tack. Founded in 1973 by banker David Rockefeller, then chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, the commission was an informal network of thoroughly establishmentarian business executives, academics, and government officials from the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. United States trilateralists believed that their country must adapt to recent changes in world politics and economics. The age of U.S. supremacy was over, they insisted, a new era of "complex interdependency" under way. The USSR was a sated superpower with enormous internal problems and an outdated ideology. Learning from America's failure in Vietnam and France's in Algeria, they insisted that military power had limited utility in a changing world. They believed that Nixon and Kissinger, in particular, had focused too narrowly on Soviet-American relations to the exclusion of other, more important matters. They set out to rebuild relations, neglected in the Nixon years, among the Western European nations, Japan, and the United States. To promote global stability and economic prosperity and check nuclear proliferation, the advanced nations must work together to promote human rights and to help Third World countries meet their economic needs, thus shifting the focus from East-West to North-South issues. The trilateralists also identified new "transnational" problems such as a looming
scarcity of critical resources, the environment, and worldwide inflation. The subject of numerous conspiracy theories from the political left and right—the most exaggerated warned that the Trilateral Commission comprised a consortium of the industrial giants who sought to run the world—the group had its day briefly in the Carter years, when the president and many of his top foreign policy advisers were members.
⁵⁵

Where Ford had sought continuity in U.S. foreign policy, Carter was committed to change. A born-again Christian, surrounded by advisers scarred by Vietnam, he set out to restore morality to America's dealings with other nations and the United States to its customary position of world leadership. The first president elected in what some experts prematurely designated the post–Cold War era, he hoped also to shift the focus from East-West concerns to relations with the developing world. Carter attained some major successes. More than was appreciated at the time, he redirected U.S. foreign policy in important and enduring ways. By the end, however, his achievements were lost in an administration afflicted by mismanagement, burdened with unrelenting political opposition, and simply overwhelmed by events.

Carter's rise from obscurity to the presidency is a remarkable success story. A native of rural Georgia, he attended the U.S. Naval Academy, served in the navy, and became a protégé of the celebrated submariner Adm. Hyman Rickover. He returned to Georgia in 1953 to go into peanut farming and then politics. Elected governor in 1970, he served capably but gained little national attention: When he appeared on the popular television show
What's My Line?
the panelists could not guess what he did! The ambitious, upstart Georgian effectively exploited his status as a political outsider with a population weary of Beltway insiders and appealed to a broadly felt popular need for honesty in government. He took advantage of the Democrats' new and more open nominating process to win a series of primary victories over lackluster opponents such as Senators Jackson and Edward Kennedy. His southern origins, centrist politics, and lack of Washington connections helped him eke out a win over Ford. He brought to the White House no foreign policy experience. His views were formed in a crash course provided through Trilateral Commission meetings. A devoted Baptist and Sunday school teacher for much of his life, he still used in private the salty language learned in the navy. Intelligent, hardworking, and devoted to public service, a person of firm moral standards, he had a
tendency, as president, to micromanage and bog down in details. He lacked a sense of history and the ability to see how events and issues were connected. He did not have the charisma and persuasive powers to sell a nervous public on policies that were often sensible and realistic. At times, he manifested a shocking lack of political savvy.
⁵⁶

Carter's appointments to key foreign policy positions created additional problems. A West Virginian by birth, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance became a card-carrying member of the eastern foreign policy establishment. He served capably as secretary of the army and McNamara's top deputy under Johnson. A public servant of great integrity, he was deeply influenced by the Vietnam War. He was firmly committed to improving relations with the Soviet Union and Third World nations. Quiet in demeanor, discreet, he took a cautious and conciliatory approach toward the world and was alert to the complexity of international events. He was a consummate pragmatist and problem solver.
⁵⁷
His White House counterpart, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, was in many ways his polar opposite. A Columbia University professor and prolific writer on international relations, Zbig, as he was known, brought to the position a résumé much like Kissinger's, although he lacked his predecessor's nimble mind, trademark wit, and ability to charm the media. Born in Poland, the son of a diplomat, he boasted, so the joke went, of being "the first Pole in 300 years in a position to really stick it to the Russians."
⁵⁸
His butch haircut in an age of floppy hairstyles and sharp features gave physical evidence of the aggressive posture toward the Kremlin he would relentlessly push. Prickly and arrogant, he scorned Vance's "gentlemanly approach to the world." He advocated "architecture" in foreign policy, by which he meant clarity and certitude, as opposed to Kissinger's "acrobatics." He had served as executive director of the North American branch of the Trilateral Commission and helped to shape its views. He had a tendency to make grand geopolitical pronouncements, a "flair for making little fishes talk like big whales," according to former undersecretary of state George Ball.
⁵⁹
A Vance-Brzezinski feud broke
out early in the administration and worsened throughout, creating an institutionalized schizophrenia in policymaking, especially on Cold War issues, an unfortunate situation with a foreign policy neophyte as president. With the resurgence of Soviet-American tensions late in Carter's term, the national security adviser gained the upper hand.

Carter's ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, and First Lady Rosalynn Carter deserve special mention. A youthful and prominent civil rights leader and follower of the late Martin Luther King Jr., Young was among the first African Americans to hold a top-level diplomatic position, an appointment of great symbolic importance for people of color at home and abroad. Like many other African American leaders, he linked the struggle for freedom in the United States with the fight against colonialism abroad, especially in Africa, and he was one of the first U.S. diplomats to disentangle southern African issues from the Cold War. Often far out in front of Carter and the diplomatic establishment, outspoken and at times quite undiplomatic in demeanor, Young sometimes got his boss in trouble with his candor. His unconventional behavior ultimately forced his resignation. While in office, however, he helped to improve U.S. relations with the Third World and to engineer a major shift in policies toward Africa.
⁶⁰
The first lady also assumed an important role in her husband's administration. Rosalynn Carter sometimes took part in NSC briefings, sat in on top-level meetings, and advised the president on major issues. In the summer of 1977, she conducted an official mission to Latin America, meeting with leaders of seven nations and discussing sensitive matters such as commercial issues, human rights, disarmament and nuclear proliferation, and the drug trade.
⁶¹

Carter came to office promising basic changes in how things were done and what was to be done. He went to great lengths to distinguish himself from his discredited predecessors. He would play the dominant role in shaping policy—there would be no Kissinger in his White House. Instead of the obsessive secrecy, ultra-Byzantine processes, and undemocratic methods of the Nixon-Kissinger era, he promised open diplomacy, adherence to American democratic principles, and cooperation with Congress. He sought to formulate policies consistent with the values he believed
Americans held dear. He firmly believed that a more moral and democratic foreign policy would win strong popular support.
⁶²
He vowed to work closely with the European allies and Japan. He recognized that the Cold War would continue to command U.S. attention, but he planned to give equal weight to other issues and to view the world through other than a Cold War prism. He hoped to redress what he considered the legitimate grievances of Third World nations, especially in Latin America and Africa. He placed enormous emphasis on promoting human rights and on curbing the lethal arms trade that threatened the peace and inflicted misery on the innocent. In short, Carter set out to change the policies that had been created in the late 1940s and modified only slightly thereafter.

By seeking to do too much too fast—and doing it in a notably amateurish manner—the administration got off to a singularly bad start. One of the president's first moves was to announce the beginning of troop withdrawals from South Korea. It is not clear exactly how he came to that decision. It reflected a widespread post-Vietnam aversion to military involvement abroad and Carter's personal desire to liquidate seemingly outdated Cold War commitments. He believed that the troops were more needed in Western Europe and that if necessary the United States could defend South Korea with air and naval power. The Park Chung Hee government exemplified the sort of repressive ally Carter found repugnant. South Korea's recent bribery of U.S. congressmen in a scandal known as "Koreagate" created the right climate for a drastic policy change. Carter's stubborn commitment to the policy after doubts were raised seems to have been based on his determination to carry out a campaign pledge.
⁶³