From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (138 page)

The Carter administration focused on Latin America and especially its three largest countries, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina—with very limited results. The hemisphere appeared no longer threatened by Communism, and Carter hoped to shift there from a Cold War orientation to the North-South approach he preferred. All three countries were ruled by authoritarian governments notorious for their assault on human rights. Breaking sharply from Kissinger's tacit support, the Carter administration criticized Augusto Pinochet's gross human rights violations and cut back military aid. Pinochet responded by refusing to extradite three Chileans charged with murdering a political opponent in Washington. In Brazil, President Ernesto Geisel terminated the U.S. military aid program before it could
be used as an instrument of pressure. Only in Argentina did the new approach achieve even limited gains. Human rights violations were especially egregious there, and Carter shortly after taking office cut U.S. foreign assistance by almost one-half. Responding to liberals in Congress, the administration also reduced military aid, blocked loans from an inter-American fund, and imposed trade restrictions. General Jorge Videla promised to restore civilian government, a commitment he did not keep. He did free some political prisoners.
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In terms of changing conditions in individual countries, the Carter human rights campaign, much as in Latin America, had very limited impact. To its credit, the administration put human rights issues high on its agenda and institutionalized them by creating units in the bureaucracy to monitor abuses and recommend action. In 1978, it drafted a comprehensive statement of policy. Carter's emphasis on human rights contributed to improving the global image of the United States. It gave the issue international credibility, helping to set the agenda for world politics for the next decade.
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The beginning of the end for the Carter administration came in the fall of 1978 when revolution erupted in Iran. This first U.S. clash with Islamic radicalism—an unmitigated disaster for the nation and especially its president—was totally unexpected.
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When Carter took office, Iran appeared one of America's closest and most reliable allies. Put in power by a U.S.-British sponsored coup in 1953, Reza Shah Pahlavi had used his nation's oil revenues to build up a modern military machine and initiate a top-down "White Revolution" that seemed to bring Western-style modernization to one corner of the turbulent Middle East. The shah maintained close ties with his U.S. patron and used Iran's strategic location and precious oil reserves to extort massive aid. Nixon had made Iran a pillar of American security interests in the Persian Gulf, fueling the shah's ambitions and filling his arsenal. Iran served as a key U.S. listening post to monitor Soviet nuclear tests and missile launches. Forty-five thousand Americans worked there. Carter had aroused concern in Tehran with his talk of promoting human rights and curbing arms sales, but, as in other geopolitically important areas, practicality trumped principle. Shortly
after taking office, he approved the sale of seven high-tech AWAC intelligence aircraft and 160 F-16 fighters. The shah visited Washington in late 1977 and greatly impressed the president, although on one ceremonial occasion they had to fight off tear gas wafting across the street from Lafayette Park, where police combated anti-shah demonstrators, most of them Iranian students. On New Year's Eve 1977, at the shah's sumptuous palace, Carter offered an effusive toast whose words would come back to haunt him: Iran, "under the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world."
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Even as Carter spoke, rumblings could be heard of the revolution that within little more than a year would sweep the shah from power. The White Revolution enriched the few at the expense of the many. A lagging economy caused widespread distress among Iranians. Popular anger was fueled by opulent displays at the shah's court, rampant corruption among his inner circle, and the brutality of his secret police. Westernization threatened Islam and angered the clergy. A profound religious revival brought forth emotional protest; many Iranians in the face of rampant societal change turned to Islam for order and spirituality. Rioting broke out in 1977 in several cities and gradually spread across the country. The shah's attempts to silence dissent with brute force brought thousands of deaths and further outrage. His efforts to contain unrest by shuffling top officials, in the words of one of his diplomats, was like using first aid "where immediate surgery was required."
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Because the United States had put the shah in power, helped keep him there, and encouraged his modernization policies, it became a handy target for revolutionaries. America was the "Great Satan" in the eyes of Islamic militants; the shah was "the American king."
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Ill with cancer, the shah fled to Egypt exactly one year after Carter's toast, leaving behind a caretaker government. By this time, Iran verged on anarchy. Students ran the universities, workers the factories, and armed mobs exacted retribution. A series of moderate governments presided uneasily over the political maelstrom. Behind them loomed the scowling visage of the charismatic and bitterly anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile, the nation's most revered religious leader and increasingly its most powerful political figure.

"President Carter inherited an impossible situation," historian Gaddis Smith has written, "and he and his advisers made the worst of it."
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Americans initially assumed that the shah, as before, could control the uprising. They disagreed whether he should use force or conciliation, Brzezinski not surprisingly favoring the former, Vance the latter, a debate that quickly became irrelevant. Even after the shah left the country, some top officials expected him to return; others counted on the military to take power. When neither happened, the administration sought to maintain contact with the moderates who succeeded the shah, not perceiving their lack of staying power or that ties with the United States could be fatal to them. The dispatch of a U.S. Army officer on a typically confused mission perhaps with the goal to engineer a military takeover seemed to confirm Iranian suspicions. The Islamic component of the revolution was beyond American comprehension. Ambassador William Sullivan urged the president to "think the unthinkable," but he refused to authorize contacts with Khomeini. As things went from bad to worse, U.S. officials played the blame game with each other. In truth no one knew what was happening or how to respond. With the country virtually in a state of anarchy, Khomeini returned to Tehran on February 1, 1979, to the adoring cheers of millions of well-wishers.
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Although probably nothing could have been done to head off or control the revolution, the United States might have done more to mitigate its anti-Americanism. It could have minimized its presence in Tehran—no more than "six men and a dog," one sensitive diplomat quipped.
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It could have remained silent. But as Iranians increasingly denounced the United States, Americans responded in kind. Top U.S. officials issued threats. Congress passed anti-revolutionary resolutions. Senator Jackson again demonstrated a penchant for the perfectly mistimed misstatement by publicly proclaiming the revolution doomed. The most damaging mistake, made for the most humane of reasons and after months of agitation by such luminaries as Kissinger, David Rockefeller, and John McCloy, was Carter's reluctant October 1979 decision to admit the dying shah to the United States for medical treatment. That ill-fated move aroused profound suspicions among paranoid Iranian radicals of another 1953-like countercoup and provoked wild demonstrations in Tehran. Shortly after, Brzezinski met with moderate Iranian leader Mehdi Bazargan in Algiers, fueling revolutionary outrage and anxiety.
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The revolution abruptly changed from a serious problem for the United States to an all-out crisis on November 4, 1979, when young radicals
stormed the U.S. embassy—the "Den of Spies"—and took hostage the sixty-six Americans still residing there. The immediate provocation was Carter's decision to allow the shah into the United States, but the hostage-takers also feared a CIA plot to restore him to power, suspicions encouraged by Jackson's statement and the Algiers meeting. Some former hostage-takers now admit, moreover, that their real purpose was to push the Bazargan government in more radical directions. They had no idea the takeover would lead to a prolonged crisis; some now concede it to have been a mistake.
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Khomeini at first opposed the takeover, but when he recognized its popularity he exploited it to get rid of Bazargan and solidify his own power.

The crisis quickly took on a life of its own. Iran made demands for the hostages' release that Washington could not have met if it had wanted to, including the return of the shah for "revolutionary justice" and the surrender of his fortune. Threats from the United States only exacerbated tensions; the cessation of oil purchases and freezing of Iranian assets accomplished nothing. The crisis became the object of close international media scrutiny, keeping it constantly in the public eye. United States television news broadcasts solemnly counted off each day of captivity. Carter unwisely staked his political future on the outcome, vowing not to rest until the hostages were safely home. The more importance Carter attached to it, the more valuable the crisis became to the revolutionaries and the less likely any kind of settlement.
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While Brzezinski pushed him to use force, the president explored without success every conceivable diplomatic channel. Americans at first rallied around their leader, as at the start of a war. His approval ratings rose. But as the crisis dragged on with no sign of an end, popular anger surged. Coming on top of America's failure in Vietnam and a steadily worsening economy, the hostage crisis came to symbolize for Americans a rising sense of impotence and belief that the nation had lost its mooring. The United States itself seemed hostage to forces it could not control.
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The crisis aroused a fury that Americans directed first toward Iran and especially Khomeini, then against their unlucky president.

The hostage crisis came at a low point of Carter's chronically embattled presidency. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) raised oil prices four times in five months in 1979. Shortages
forced hour-long waits at gas stations. Increases in gasoline prices fueled price hikes across the board, causing inflation to rise at an annual rate of 14 percent. The liberal wing of his own party denounced Carter's budget proposals calling for austerity to combat inflation. Congress routinely shredded the administration's domestic programs. First brother Billy Carter, who carefully nurtured his redneck image and exploited his family connections, caused a mini-scandal (called, naturally, "Billygate") by maintaining dubious—and profitable—contacts with terrorist-sponsor Libya and speaking critically about Jews on national television.
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The president's efforts to deal with the emerging crisis only highlighted his seeming inability to do anything about them. In the early summer, the White House announced a major speech on the energy crisis only to cancel it thirty minutes before airtime. When finally given on July 15, the so-called malaise speech offered a remarkably candid assessment of what the president called a "crisis of confidence"—a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul of our national will." The speech earned good reviews from pundits, but its gloomy tone did nothing to lift the nation's spirits. A clumsily executed reshuffling of the cabinet and White House staff in the summer of 1979, while getting rid of troublemakers and incompetents, seemed further evidence of a government in disarray. Polls for the Democratic presidential nomination showed potential challenger Edward Kennedy leading Carter by a wide margin. The Carter presidency was "malleable and weak," pundits complained. The president would likely be a lame duck before the primaries began.
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Carter's foreign policy also came under fire. The administration did register major accomplishments in 1979, completing the process of normalization with China and making progress on SALT II negotiations with the USSR. But each of these gains came with domestic political costs. Chaos in the global economy, the Iranian revolution, the assassination of U.S. ambassador Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan in February, China's invasion of Vietnam later the same month, and the subsequent outbreak of civil war in Nicaragua created for Americans the sense that the world was both dangerous and hostile, the United States increasingly vulnerable.
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During the last half of 1979, Carter's critics zeroed in on SALT II. At a Vienna summit in June, Carter and Brezhnev finally signed the long-delayed treaty. Upon returning home, the president launched a major
campaign for its ratification. Critics wasted no time responding. Liberals protested that the treaty did not do enough to reduce nuclear armaments. Carter's inclusion of a new and enormously expensive missile system to appease Senate conservatives further angered liberals. The Committee on the Present Danger led the conservative charge. The CPD included leading hard-line Democrats, such as Nitze, who had been passed over by Carter for top-level positions and went after the treaty with a vengeance. Critics warned that SALT II put the United States at a disadvantage militarily and might lull Americans into a false sense of security. They questioned whether it could be properly monitored. In the Senate, the balance of power had shifted from those liberal internationalists who had bedeviled Ford to a loose, bipartisan coalition of conservatives whose ranks were strengthened by Republican and conservative gains in the 1978 elections. Howard Baker, who helped secure passage of the canal treaty, came out against SALT before Carter returned from Vienna. Democrat Sam Nunn of Georgia demanded sharp increases in overall defense spending in return for his support. Jackson predictably denounced the treaty as "appeasement in its purest form." Approval of the treaty was doubtful from the start; the embassy takeover further lowered its chances.
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