From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (136 page)

Thus, shortly after taking office—and without full consultation with allies—he announced the first withdrawal, setting off a firestorm in East Asia. South Korea naturally protested that the removal of U.S. troops would invite another North Korean invasion. Japan feared instability in Northeast Asia, fretted about its sizeable investments in South Korea, and questioned the reliability of U.S. security commitments. Many members of Congress opposed the decision and in light of Koreagate refused to appropriate funds for the military aid Carter hoped would palliate South Korea for the removal of troops. Within the bureaucracy, there was all-out rebellion. Carter would not reverse his decision, but in the face of rampant opposition at home and abroad Brzezinski developed a plan to delay the first withdrawal and reduce its size, making subsequent withdrawals unlikely. This early misstep had importance consequences, weakening Park's stature,
leading eventually to his assassination, and making it impossible to reconsider withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea for years to come.
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Carter also acted impulsively in the Middle East. Certain that bold measures were needed to move the interminable negotiations off dead center and minimizing the depth of the antagonisms among the various parties, he proposed a comprehensive Arab-Israeli settlement rather than continuing Kissinger's step-by-step approach. Reducing an enormously complex dispute to the simple formula of peace for land, he proposed that Israel's right to exist be guaranteed in return for its withdrawal from the occupied territories. Ignoring Vance's advice to move slowly and living up to his personal pledge for open diplomacy, he also came out publicly in May 1977 for a Palestinian homeland. His forthright if foolish approach to the most intractable of diplomatic problems won guarded support from some Arab leaders. Predictably, however, it provoked outrage in the American Jewish community and more importantly in Israel, where it helped produce an electoral victory by hard-liners led by former terrorist Menachem Begin and a subsequent toughening of Israeli policy on the West Bank. Carter's rash foray set back the peace process he had hoped to advance.
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Nowhere was Carter's early impulsiveness and ineptitude more on display than in relations with the Soviet Union. His approach was riddled with contradictions. He deliberately set out to downplay the centrality of Soviet-American relations while at the same time pursuing major negotiations with Moscow. He was undoubtedly sincere in his desire to decrease tensions. What he did not grasp was that other initiatives he was taking would inevitably increase them.
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His Soviet policies were also complicated by sharp disagreements between Vance the pragmatist and Brzezinski the hard-liner.

Arms control was the first casualty. While vowing to look beyond the Cold War, Carter pushed ahead with a typically bold—and as it turned out wildly impractical—proposal to move beyond SALT and achieve reductions of rather than limits on nuclear weapons. However praiseworthy his commitment to openness, the real world of diplomacy requires at least a modicum of secrecy or at least discretion, and he infuriated Soviet leaders at the start by announcing his proposal publicly before explaining it to them privately. He proposed deep cuts in land-based missiles, where the
USSR had a clear-cut advantage, creating the impression that he was not serious.
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This reckless plunge into an old Cold War thicket delayed serious negotiations on arms control and complicated dealings on other matters.

Carter also learned the hard way what should have been obvious: that his campaign for human rights could be a huge impediment to negotiations on arms control and other issues. The president somehow assumed that he could compartmentalize such matters. The Soviet leadership, not surprisingly, viewed protests about human rights violations as blatant interference in their internal affairs. Carter's timing could hardly have been worse. The administration first criticized the Soviet and Eastern European governments and praised dissidents at the very time it set forth its arms control proposals. It escalated support for dissidents and began issuing "report cards" on observance of Helsinki human rights provisions precisely when a nervous Kremlin was cracking down on dissent at home and within the satellites. Soviet leaders responded with more arrests and imprisonment of leading dissidents. They even expelled an American newsman covering dissent and charged Jewish dissenters with working for the CIA. The spat further strained relations already tense from the breakdown of detente in the Ford administration. Along with the deadlock over SALT, it delayed for several years a summit that might have headed off emerging problems. It set the tone for a steady deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations over the next four years. Brzezinski later conceded that the administration in its early days tried to do "too much all at once."
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Although Carter never quite mastered the intricacies of diplomacy, his administration did achieve some major successes in different parts of the world, moving boldly in new directions and taking important initiatives. The problem was that some of his achievements were not the sorts of things that brought visible and tangible benefits to the United States. Sometimes, in fact, he paid a high political price at home for doing the right thing abroad.

The Panama Canal treaties are a case in point. Negotiations to replace the one-sided Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 had been going on sporadically since the 1964 riots, and the canal had become an issue in the 1976 campaign. Carter, ironically, had vowed that he would never surrender U.S. control, but once in office, he changed his mind. Experts
persuaded him that the canal, while still useful, was no longer vital to U.S. trade and security. Diplomats warned that without a settlement unrest in Panama could threaten U.S. control of the canal. Vance had witnessed firsthand the 1964 riots and was deeply committed to negotiations. Carter increasingly saw a treaty as an essential element of his new and more conciliatory approach to Latin America and the Third World in general, an "auspicious beginning for a new era," in his words.
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The United States secured an acceptable treaty in part because Panamanian dictator Gen. Omar Torrijos needed one as much as it did. His nation's economy was in shambles; unemployment had soared. Under fire from left-wing protestors on one side and the National Guard on the other, Torrijos desperately needed the treaty revenues to solidify his shaky position. In August 1977, Washington thus concluded a treaty favorable enough to present to a skeptical American public. Panama would take over territorial jurisdiction of the canal once the treaty was ratified and legal jurisdiction over a period of three years, but the United States would continue to operate the canal and be responsible for defending it until December 31, 1999. The ten thousand anxious "Zonians" could retain their jobs until they retired or died. Panama's major concession—crucial to the success of the treaty as far as North Americans were concerned—was that even after January 1, 2000, the United States could defend the canal's neutrality. Washington paid $40 million to sweeten the deal and threw in an attractive aid and trade package. Although it made significant concessions, the United States plainly gained from the treaty.
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In diplomacy as in war, Americans are disposed to accept nothing less than total victory, and the treaty proved a very hard sell. Public opinion polls showed powerful opposition; foes of the treaty were much more outspoken than its defenders. "The only people who give a damn are the ones who oppose it," a White House aide conceded.
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The very idea of giving up the canal was anathema to most conservatives. "We bought it, we paid for it, it's ours and we're going to keep it," Reagan often roared, an applause line that blithely ignored late twentieth-century realities but touched deeply felt emotions. The U.S. military saw the treaties as yet another sign of the nation's weakness, offering further encouragement, in
New York Times
columnist Hanson Baldwin's words, to "penny-dictators
and minor aggressions everywhere."
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Conservatives mounted a furious lobbying campaign against the treaty. On the other hand, major business organizations backed it as a way of promoting trade in Latin America. Religious groups supported it in order to shed "colonial positions of the nineteenth century."
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A fierce debate raged across the country from August 1977 to April 1978 and in the Senate through the first months of 1978. The key to the administration's eventual narrow victory was the passage of two amendments carefully crafted and shepherded through the upper house by Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee. The first gave the United States explicit rights after the year 2000 to intervene militarily to keep the canal open and for U.S. ships to move to the head of the line in times of crisis. Originally a memorandum of understanding, this amendment was formally incorporated into the treaty after quite extraordinary negotiations between Senator Baker and Torrijos. Pro-treaty forces turned back seventy-seven amendments designed to cripple the document and ratified it by one vote more than the necessary two-thirds.
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Carter deserves much credit for the canal treaties. To be sure, the administration bungled its efforts to promote Senate approval. A massive public relations campaign had little impact; a major presidential speech promoting the treaties was labeled by one newspaper a "dud." Efforts to sway senators were typically disorganized and ineffectual. The administration also erred by acquiescing in an amendment giving the United States the right to take any action to keep the canal open.
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This said, where his predecessors had equivocated, Carter fully committed the prestige of his office to negotiating and ratifying treaties giving up control over one of his nation's signal accomplishments. He showed great courage in going to Panama City for a signing ceremony in June 1978. Despite the political price he would pay, giving up the canal was the right thing to do, and Carter had the common sense and decency to see this. The treaties "symbolize our determination to deal with the developing nations of the world . . . on the basis of mutual respect and partnership," he proudly proclaimed.
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Carter also completed the process of normalizing relations with China. Ironically, this long-overdue abandonment of an outdated Cold War position was driven in part by new Cold War considerations and itself significantly inflamed Soviet-American tensions in the late 1970s. Vance had hoped to pursue a balanced approach toward the two Communist powers, but Brzezinski relentlessly promoted closer ties with Beijing as a means to threaten Moscow. He skillfully maneuvered to wrest control of China policy from his archrival. As Soviet-American relations steadily deteriorated, he won over the president. The timing was right. A new Chinese leadership headed by Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping needed normalization with the United States to pursue its own domestic and foreign policy agenda. On a visit to Beijing in the spring of 1978, Brzezinski signaled U.S. interest in teaming up against a "common Soviet threat" and offered as bait indirect arms sales through Western Europe. He also expressed U.S. willingness to sever official relations with Taiwan, a crucial concession long demanded by Beijing. Without making formal pledges, China in oblique diplomatic language indicated it would not seek to absorb Taiwan by force, clearing away another major obstacle. Deng's visit to the United States in early 1979 was a major event. Carter hosted the most elegant gathering given for any foreign dignitary during his entire presidency. The diminutive Chinese leader appeared in a Washington arena with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, put on six-shooters and a huge ten-gallon hat at a Houston rodeo, and even visited Disneyland, a privilege denied Nikita Khrushchev. On March 1, 1979, almost thirty years after the Communists took power, diplomatic relations were officially restored.
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A diplomatic revolution of such magnitude was bound to have major repercussions. The U.S. ambassador awakened Chiang Kai-shek's son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo at 2:30
A.M
. to give him several hours' notice before official announcements were made halfway across the world. Anti-American riots broke out in Taiwan. When Undersecretary of State Warren Christopher traveled to Taipei on a mission of mollification, his car was attacked by angry mobs throwing stones and sticking bamboo poles through the broken windows.
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By contrast, normalization enjoyed broad support in the United States. In economic hard times, Americans again dreamed of tapping China's vast market. Some conservatives were seduced by the
prospect of China joining an anti-Soviet coalition. But the remnants of the China lobby, joined by Sen. Barry Goldwater and Reagan, charged sellout of a loyal ally, denounced Carter's appeasement of an old foe, and warned that the sordid deal with China called "into question the honor—the very soul—of America's word in the field of foreign relations."
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Congressional friends of Taiwan failed in a constitutional challenge to the president's authority to abrogate a treaty without the consent of the Senate, the Supreme Court once again upholding presidential prerogative. They did secure passage of a law guaranteeing future U.S. sales of defensive weapons to Taiwan and vaguely pledging U.S. support for its defense, embarrassing the Carter administration and infuriating the Chinese.

With Brzezinski in the driver's seat, the Carter administration in 1979 moved full throttle toward closer ties with China built around mutual opposition to the Soviet Union. The NSC ignored Vance's continued calls for balance and shut the State Department out of China policy. The administration stopped short of the alliance Deng apparently preferred but collaborated closely to thwart Moscow's perceived hegemonic aspirations. The USSR had become Vietnam's closest ally and chief benefactor after the fall of Saigon, arousing fears in Beijing. Even before normalization was consummated, Carter appears to have given Deng the green light to invade Vietnam—an ironic twist in that a decade earlier the United States had gone to war there to stop Chinese expansion in Southeast Asia. China became a major outpost for snooping on the Soviet Union. The United States removed export controls and sold China modern technology and eventually weapons. In a move of enormous symbolic importance, the administration in the summer of 1979 ignored the Jackson-Vanik amendment, winked at China's human rights violations, and offered most-favored-nation status and Export-Import Bank credits. Normalization was an obvious move, but in taking it the administration lost a necessary sense of balance and was enticed into a connection that compromised its ideals and damaged broader global interests. Mutual antipathy toward the Soviet Union proved a flimsy basis for a lasting Sino-American relationship.
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