Among the more engaging features of the American political system is the custom of extending wide indulgence to every incoming administration, both in foreign policy and in domestic affairs. For its part, every new administration also observes certain time-honored rituals, chief among them being the promise that under this dispensation all things will be different. Thus, it seemed only natural for President Carter upon assuming office to announce a “new American foreign policy for a new world” and for the new Secretary of State to proclaim a radical reversal of his predecessor’s foreign policy (“highly compartmentalized and essentially static détente”) as well as an end to what Mr. Brzezinski called “ideological warfare.” The new administration in fact not only promised new solutions but also uncovered new problems and promised to solve them as well. The old conflicts (we were told) had become less acute, and there was a need to turn away from them and face the future.
Not all these pronouncements were purely ritualistic in origin. Many of the men and women who came to Washington in January of last year had been genuinely critical of U.S. foreign policy for years and were sincerely convinced that, given the opportunity, they could improve it. And this they still seem to feel themselves capable of doing. If at the end of his first year in office the President expressed surprise at the “intransigence and complexity” of a number of international problems, there have been as yet few similar admissions by his aides, most of whom seem to be satisfied with their policies and reasonably happy with their own performance
Their enthusiasm is not, however, shared by the majority of the American people, 52 per cent of whom, according to a recent Harris poll, have taken a negative view of the new administration’s foreign policy. There have been growing complaints, most of them justified, about quick diplomatic successes that turn out to be spurious, about policies that show more consideration for America’s enemies than for its allies, about a retreat from the high idealism of the early days to an aimless and inconsistent pragmatism.
The human-rights issue is as good an example as any of this kind of retreat. The President mentioned human rights no fewer than three times in his inaugural address, and soon thereafter he affirmed in a letter to Andrei Sakharov that “Human rights is a central concern of my administration. . . . We shall use our good offices to seek the release of prisoners of conscience.” An Office of Coordinator for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs was set up, with a staff of some thirty people. Thus far, the office has been involved mainly in lodging complaints with various Latin American governments and the government of South Korea, and in advising cuts in assistance to countries like South Africa, Uruguay, Ethiopia, and Argentina. As far as they go, these are worthwhile efforts. But the real problem is not how to deal with South Korea; it is how to deal with countries like Uganda or Cambodia, in which there are no “prisoners of conscience” because the government simply murders its opponents, and with countries like the Soviet Union and some of its allies, in which the violation of human rights is an integral part of the political system.
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That the human-rights policy would cause displeasure in the Kremlin was clear from the start. But it has also aroused opposition here at home from those who said that the new policy carried with it the risk of endangering détente, and that nothing was worth that risk. Thus, in one widely reprinted speech, David Riesman warned that an emphasis on human rights would inevitably revive the cold-war mentality, and all the dangers to humanity therein entailed. For this reason, much as he admired the courage of the Soviet dissidents, and much as he shared the values that inspired a man like Sakharov, Riesman said, he had consistently refused to sign petitions or to lend his name to any manifestation of protest in behalf of Russian dissenters.1 Similar views, albeit more cautiously phrased, have been expressed by others, among them leading members of the administration, all of whom share the basic assumption that an emphasis on human rights in U.S. foreign policy must somehow make a nuclear conflict more likely.
If this assumption were correct, the case of these critics would be unassailable, since human survival should obviously take precedence over other considerations. But the assumption happens to be wrong. The Soviet leaders do not regard the American human-rights policy as a form of warmongering, but simply as a counter-attack in the ongoing ideological struggle, and one that is quite inconvenient from their point of view, putting them, as it does, on the defensive. Soviet leaders have said countless times that, détente or no détente, ideological warfare with the West will continue unabated, but they regard this struggle as a one-way street: while they have the right, and indeed the duty, to attack the political and social system of the West, the West has no right to respond in kind, for its arguments are by definition mendacious and demagogic. American critics of a strong U.S. posture on human rights have tacitly accepted the Soviet interpretation of détente and simply refuse to recognize that a lasting understanding between the superpowers (as opposed to the short-term measures now envisaged) will become possible only after the Soviet political system has become more open. No one can say with confidence whether this will happen in our time, but it certainly will not be brought about by giving back to the Soviets their monopoly in the conduct of ideological warfare.
Critics of the administration’s early emphasis on human rights were concerned not only with the supposed threat it posed to détente, but also with the supposed disruption it would cause in the balance of power within the Kremlin itself. Brezhnev, so the argument went, might soon be forced out of office by his illness, thereby giving more power to other, harder-line factions in the Soviet military-industrial complex. But the fact is that Brezhnev will not last forever in any case, and even if he should be replaced by a less moderate faction, there is no reason to assume that his successors would feel bound by earlier agreements. Moreover, although there are, to be sure, certain tactical differences among contending parties in the Kremlin, these differences do not affect essential Soviet policy. One can think of a great many arguments for or against stressing human rights in foreign policy, but to make one’s stand depend on the state of Brezhnev’s health, or on hypothetical power shifts in the Kremlin, is to reduce political debate to the kindergarten level.
The United States, in any case, has retreated very far from its original position on the human-rights question—this, despite the fact that European governments, after an initial half-heartedness, showed themselves quite willing to cooperate with President Carter’s initiatives, and despite the fact too that public opinion throughout Europe was sympathetic to the human-rights issue from the very beginning. No one expected the new policy to produce quick results, and no one demanded that human rights be made the one and only condition of dealing with foreign governments. But some foresight and consistency, not to mention a bit more courage, could have been expected.
What, then, has been achieved so far? In a recent interview with U.S. News and World Report, Secretary of State Vance maintained that “anybody who has watched and seen what we have done and what the results have been—particularly in Latin America—would recognize that very substantial progress has been made.” But has it? It is true that the lot of a handful of individuals imprisoned in a few countries has been alleviated, and that the new Office of Human Rights helped stall a loan to El Salvador until that regime moderated some of its practices. But these achievements have been purchased at a price that far outweighs the good they may have done.
No great courage is needed to denounce the crimes committed by South Africa—the United Nations does it once a week. But wherever the slightest risk has been involved, and occasionally also when the risk involved has been small or nonexistent, the administration has tended to retreat from its declared purpose. The Shcharansky case is a good example. Once President Carter had formally denied the allegation that Shcharansky was a CIA agent, there was nothing to prevent the U.S. from taking a strong stand against the Soviet treatment of this dissident, for instance by threatening not to participate in the Belgrade talks over the Helsinki accords; there is no doubt that the Soviet authorities would have retreated. Instead the Russians were given to understand that American public opinion would not tolerate a severe sentence for Shcharansky, and the decision was made to proceed with the Belgrade charade. The administration was tested, and it failed the test. As a result, there have been more arrests in the Soviet Union, and the situation of political prisoners has actually deteriorated. The Soviet Union has learned that the United States is not really serious about human rights.
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If the balance sheet on human rights after Carter’s first year in office is thus far negative, what about the larger question of U.S.-Soviet relations in general?
From their first days in office, President Carter and his advisers declared that too much time and energy had been expended by past administrations on East-West relations. By now, however, there are clear signs that the administration recognizes that U.S.-Soviet relations impinge on most aspects of world affairs, and that the old problems will not vanish simply because a new set of officials would like them to. Thus, Washington is once more preoccupied with issues which have become, if anything, even more highly charged than they were previously.
One such problem, which can no longer be overlooked, is that of arms control and the Soviet military build-up. As the most recent Brookings Institution study on the subject puts it—in a tone of genuine bewilderment—“With each passing year it has become more difficult to explain the continuing momentum in the Soviet defense build-up.” Indeed, the Soviet build-up is impossible to explain, at least on the basis of assumptions cherished by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists or the Harvard-MIT arms-control seminar—namely, that there is no such thing as superiority in the arms race, and that the Russians, in any case, are not seeking it. To this day, the Secretary of State continues to maintain that the Soviets merely want nothing more than strategic parity—a view echoed by Professor George Kistiakowsky in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, in which he warned that the baseless nightmares of the Committee on the Present Danger and other “hardliners” about Soviet intentions were leading the country into great peril. Professor Kistiakowsky urged the U.S. not to take too seriously the writings of Russian military experts about a winnable nuclear war, and advised the administration not to deploy new weapons systems lest they destabilize the situation and make mutual monitoring impossible. Instead, the highest priority should be given to a total nuclear test ban.
The weakness of this argument is that the Russians simply have not shown much interest in reducing their nuclear arsenal, as was demonstrated last March by their brusque reaction to President Carter’s suggestions for mutual arms reductions. Nor have the Russians been troubled by the possible consequences of destabilization; whenever they could do so, they have introduced new weapons systems into the picture. In short, if some rough equilibrium of forces still exists between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it is based not on Soviet actions, but rather on American technological superiority. If a new treaty were to be arrived at, permitting the Soviet Union to maintain its growing advantage, the resulting asymmetry would not only be immediately disadvantageous to the U.S., it would also make future arms agreements that much more difficult to obtain.
After the Soviet rejection of the original Carter plan last spring, the administration came up with a more modest formula calling for much smaller reductions in the arms ceilings, prohibition of mobile missiles for a three-year period, and a limitation over the next three years on the cruise missile, the one weapons system in which the U.S. still has a significant advantage and which is vital to the security of Europe. This new proposal was leaked to the press, thus causing a violent outcry on the part of the administration and some Senators and Congressmen—a curious response since the leaks, after all, did not involve national security but concerned matters that would soon be made public in any case. Those who complained most loudly, moreover, were the very people who only a short time before had been the sharpest critics of governmental secrecy, and the most passionate upholders of the public’s right to know. What they apparently feared was that premature release of the new proposals would provoke opposition, and this in fact was exactly what happened.
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For once, the opposition was not restricted to the United States, nor could it be attributed solely to the allegedly dubious motives of American hardliners. In Britain, especially, reaction to the news of a proposed limitation on cruise missiles was sharp. Thus, the Economist wrote on September 24:
The U.S. is in the position of many great powers before it: it has to choose between an accommodation with its adversary and the confidence of its allies. It can stand ready to share the cruise missile, or it can run the very real risk of damaging the alliance on which its own security, as well as Europe’s, depends.
And again even more emphatically on October 22:
If this treaty results in a Russian missile strength not very different from what it probably would have been without any agreement at all (which is what the figures suggest) at the price of starting to unravel the Atlantic alliance, then the treaty will not be bad, but disastrous.
The London Times wrote on December 10:
What is important at the moment is that Soviet-American negotiations should not preempt decisions which deeply affect European interests and require European participation. This has not happened yet, but it could happen in the future. . . . They [the Europeans] have good reason for being unsure.
Professor Lawrence Martin, one of Britain’s leading military experts, said in an article last October that
West Europeans should note that many Americans pushing for a complete ban really want to “denuclearize” U.S. alliance policy, limiting any use of nuclear weapons only to deter direct aggression against the United States. And Americans eager for nonproliferation should ponder what their allies might do for protection if American guarantees weakened.
And lastly, Lord Kennet, a Labor peer, in a letter to the London Times (December 15):
[Western Europe, Israel, Japan, India, etc.] are threatened by a class of weapons which does not threaten the U.S. If the United States does not choose to upset Russia by talking about the matter, we had better do so ourselves.
Similar voices were heard in other European countries, all expressing unease (to put it mildly) about the direction U.S. policy was taking.
The administration, in its turn, tried to reassure its allies and urge them not to overreact. Thus, Leslie Gelb, director of political-military affairs at the State Department, warned that “If you paint the Russians as ten feet tall, you have accomplished the basic purpose of Soviet foreign policy without their having to lift a finger.” This is good advice as far as it goes, but beyond the issue of how Soviet might is perceived, there is, alas, the issue of hard facts and figures. When due allowance has been made for exaggeration and “worst-case analysis” on the part of the administration’s critics, it is still true that in the last few years the Soviet Union has achieved advantages over the U.S. in throw-weight, megatonnage, and numbers of missiles and bombers; that in 1977 they gained advantages in equivalent weapons; and that under the SALT II proposals, the last U.S. advantage (in number of total warheads) would pass to them within no more than five or six years’ time. To talk of the need for recognizing “the legitimate security interests of the Soviet Union” under these circumstances is pure anachronism; the Soviet Union’s security interests were taken care of a long time ago, unless of course one happens to believe that the Soviet Union will not feel secure until it has a clear superiority all along the line. There can be no question about the desirability of a strategic arms agreement, but the administration, in its wish to conclude a treaty as quickly as possible, seems to have made concessions which serve neither American interests nor, for that matter, the cause of arms control.
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It has been said, and not without some truth, that mistakes in the field of defense planning need not be fatal; the consequences of such mistakes will not be felt for a number of years, and there may well be a chance to correct them somewhere along the way. The decisive issues in U.S.-Soviet relations are not, however, the purely technical ones described above. Rather, they concern our basic assessment of Soviet policies and intentions. Confusion in these areas is potentially far more dangerous; and some recent statements by administration spokesmen tend to confirm the impression that there is indeed a great deal of such confusion.
Take, for instance, two recent statements by Marshall Shulman, who is both special adviser on Soviet affairs to the Secretary of State and head of President Carter’s Interagency Committee on Soviet policy, and whose pronouncements therefore must be taken as a key to thinking in the White House and the administration. In an article in Foreign Affairs published in 1976, Professor Shulman provided advice on “Learning to Live with Authoritarian Regimes.” The article was not, as one might have supposed from its title, devoted to Afghanistan or Morocco, but rather to the Soviet Union. It is hard to believe that this blurring of the enormous difference between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes was an accident, or that it was unconnected with the general drift of the Carter administration’s position in world affairs. A more recent policy statement by Professor Shulman before the House International Relations Committee (October 31, 1977), though couched in more cautious terms, included assumptions about our relations with the Soviets that simply will not survive critical analysis:
At the philosophical level, we believe that there can be a useful dialogue between societies that start from the needs of the society and emphasize the fulfillment of material needs, and those that start from the dignity and worth of the individual and emphasize the fulfillment of political rights.
Now, there may indeed be room for agreement on any number of matters between the two superpowers. But can it seriously be maintained that a “dialogue” is at all feasible between two societies, one of which is open and the other closed? Professor Shulman may meet with Dr. Arbatov or some other spokesman of the Soviet dictatorship at Pugwash or some other place, and may indeed have a discussion with him over issues of policy, but no dialogue is possible between the two societies, since Soviet society cannot freely express itself. It is ironic that a few weeks after Professor Shulman’s statement, U.S. diplomats in Moscow were instructed by the State Department to limit their contacts with Soviet citizens so as not to endanger overall diplomatic relations. So much, then, for the famous “dialogue.” Still more dangerous is Professor Shulman’s contrasting of individual human rights and “economic” rights as though the two were mutually exclusive. Democratic government, by definition, cannot possibly neglect the “needs of the society,” whereas a dictatorship can do so with impunity. It would be interesting to know what the result would be if Soviet society were given the choice between missiles and consumer goods—but unfortunately Soviet society is not consulted about its “needs.”
To belittle the crucial differences between a free society and an unfree society is a serious matter. The Soviet Union may be weaker than we think, it may even be less aggressive, or its economic performance may be stronger than we think, but it certainly is not more open than we think. Politicians may ignore the views of their advisers, they may even sometimes reach correct conclusions on the basis of false premises (just as a mysterious force sometimes protects sleepwalkers). But to build a policy based on misconceptions about the Soviet political system is bound to cause trouble.
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European misgivings about the future of the Atlantic alliance stem from the belief that sooner or later the defense of Europe will have to be based on the cruise missile and that Washington seems either to ignore this fact or not to care. Some of these fears were dispelled, temporarily at least, by the Secretary of Defense on his trip to Europe last November, but uncertainties still remain about American intentions and particularly about American economic policies. Indeed, economic issues are among the most urgent problems facing the U.S. in its relations with allies. Concluding his economic summit meeting last May in London, President Carter reported complete unanimity between himself and European leaders. No such unanimity would be possible today, with the dollar having dropped some 11 per cent in proportion to the Deutsche mark and about twice as much in comparison with the yen during the last year.
Although this drop does not concern them overly since it facilitates American exports, administration spokesmen have offered various explanations for it. The fall of the dollar, they say, is the result of speculation; the yen and the mark were undervalued; Japan and West Germany, in contrast to the U.S., have not done enough to reflate the world economy. Some of these arguments contain a grain of truth, but the American policy of “malign neglect” (to quote unkind critics) has also been quite shortsighted and irresponsible. The upward valuation of the mark and the yen can hardly contribute toward a reflation of the world economy. What it can do is help reduce American losses caused by the growing U.S. trade deficit (about $30 billion at present), which is itself the result of still increasing oil imports. Indeed, continuing American dependence on these imports is an unmitigated disaster whose effects are bound to be felt abroad no less than at home. Such dependence has made it more difficult to freeze the price of oil; if the value of the dollar falls even further, and if the price of oil goes up, the countries mainly affected will be the ones least able to afford it.
What if the European banks, having supported the dollar in the past, were to use their holdings to buy up American corporations? Such a development might be welcomed by some in the U.S., but it would surely be resented by many others, and it would certainly cause further complications in relations between the U.S. and its allies. The policy, in other words, of viewing the depreciation of the dollar as an “offshore problem” can perhaps be justified as a short-term palliative; but if this policy is maintained for any length of time, it is bound to create a worldwide currency crisis with incalculable economic and political consequences.
There are legitimate conflicts of interest between America and its main trading partners which will not be easily resolved, if in fact they can be resolved at all. But so far, the attempt has not even been made—the dangers of protectionism and a shrinking in world trade have simply been ignored. President Carter has recently promised intervention to prevent a further decline in the value of the dollar. It remains to be seen whether this declaration will be followed up by determined action.
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Turning from Europe to the Middle East, one cannot deny that American freedom of action there has been rather severely curtailed. But even granting the limitations built into the Middle East situation, the performance of the administration must be judged as gravely wanting.
While the Middle East situation is certainly dangerous, and bound to remain so for a long time, this is only in part because of the Arab-Israeli conflict. On the other hand, it has been obvious for quite a while that there is no imminent danger of war in the Middle East except perhaps at the fringes, between Algeria and Morocco, say, or in the unlikely event of direct Soviet intervention. The Carter administration must be aware of this, yet official Washington has nevertheless relentlessly turned out speeches, declarations, and admonitions to the effect that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most burning issue on the international scene (in a speech in California not too long ago, President Carter even put it ahead of the SALT talks in his list of priorities). And all this at a time when a real war was under way in Africa, and when there was a danger of political changes in Europe having far graver potential consequences than anything that could conceivably happen in the Middle East.
This single-minded concentration on the Arab-Israeli conflict at the expense of all other problems did not, of course, begin with President Carter, but his administration has approached the conflict with even greater zeal and more glaring misconceptions than those of its predecessors. Though it should have been clear that the step-by-step approach chosen, perhaps instinctively, by Henry Kissinger was the only way to reduce tensions in the area, the new administration, under the compulsion to come up with novel approaches, opted for a policy which would at best have led to an impasse, and at worst to disaster. Geneva was the worst possible forum for peacemaking in the Middle East; the inevitable failure there would almost certainly have increased tensions in the area.
If the road to peace does not lead through Geneva, it has been clear for a long time that there was a chance to break the deadlock if Israel were able to reach a modus vivendi with one Arab country; and it was equally clear that, given the weakness of Jordan, this country could only be Egypt.2 It is perhaps regrettable that the initiative came from Cairo rather than Jerusalem, but perhaps—again—it could not have been otherwise. This is not to say for a certainty that the present negotiations will prove successful, or that, even if they do, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved. But even if the present talks should fail or be sabotaged, they surely indicate the proper direction for future peace-making efforts in the Middle East.
As for bringing the Soviet Union into the process (a step for which no one in Washington seems at present eager to claim credit), this remains altogether incomprehensible, even with the benefit of hindsight. A comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East may well be impossible without the Soviet Union, but since the Soviet Union has no interest whatsoever in any such peace, except perhaps on terms that would be unacceptable not only to Israel but also to the other main participants, including the United States, what point could there have been in reintroducing the Soviets into the situation? If nothing else, the Soviet reaction to President Sadat’s recent peace initiative (comparing him, among other things, to Hitler) should have provided a salutary lesson. The Soviet leaders may have suffered a temporary setback in the Middle East, but at least they, in contrast to Washington’s Arabists, have mastered the elementary lesson of politics: to support one’s friends, rather than trying to be on good terms with all the participants in a conflict.
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Why did the administration assume that the Russians would be “helpful”? Why did it fail to realize that the overall aim of U.S. policy in the Middle East should have been the prevention of war, rather than the pursuit of a goal which, under present circumstances, was a mere chimera? At the moment these questions may be purely academic, which makes them no less disturbing. For what is at stake are not just some tactical errors of judgment but a basic misreading of the Middle Eastern situation. To be sure, there have been signs of a more realistic approach in U.S. policy in the Middle East in the form of a new understanding that since the Rejection Front does not want a peaceful settlement in any case, no time should be wasted in futile efforts to gain its good will. But not everyone in Washington has arrived at this new understanding, and backsliding is still possible.
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If the Carter administration’s Middle East policy has suffered from a surfeit of misguided activism, its policy in the Far East seems to have suffered from the opposite. The charge of having neglected Japan, made by Zbigniew Brzezinski and other members of the Trilateral Commission against the former administration, can be made with equal validity against the Carter administration in its first year in office. If anything, unease in Japan has actually increased under the present administration, following President Carter’s decision to withdraw all American ground forces from Korea over the next few years. The impending withdrawal is regarded not only as the possible prelude to another Far Eastern war, but also as the beginning of an American retreat from the Western Pacific—a policy which, whether deliberate or not, is bound to lead to a realignment of forces in the Far East, with Japan moving into either the Soviet or the Chinese orbit, or perhaps opting for heavily armed neutrality.
Such scarcely trifling consequences have not, however, been sufficient to deflect the advocates of withdrawal from their course; if “most Koreans” are seeking a peaceful, reunited Korea, the argument goes, who are we to insist on a divided Korea? The fact that “reunification” is unlikely to be peaceful has not often been mentioned. More recently, the administration’s Far East experts seem to have accepted what should have been obvious from the beginning—namely, that even a neo-isolationalist policy like the proposed U.S. withdrawal requires an overall strategy, and that more is required for the accomplishment of an orderly retreat—in both the military and political arenas—than a bit of tinkering here and there.
U.S. policy toward China has similarly suffered from an absence of clear guidelines. Yes (it was said), recognition of Peking is our aim, but not an urgent one, and yes, we also have a commitment to Taiwan. Secretary Vance journeyed to Peking, but the purpose of his trip is not quite clear to this day—it certainly has not contributed to an improvement in relations between the two countries, or even to a clarification of the issues under dispute. To the thorny issue of Taiwan there is admittedly no easy answer, but Taiwan, so far as the Chinese are concerned, can wait; they are far more interested in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, about which there has thus far been no meetings of minds. According to U.S. envoys, the Chinese take, or pretend to take, the Soviet “threat” far too seriously. The Chinese, on the other hand, as they made clear to subsequent visitors, believe that the makers of American foreign policy are either not very bright or not very brave, and that little will be gained by establishing closer relations with the United States—with the possible exception of the economic field.3
It has been said that the greatest changes in U.S. policy during the Carter administration have taken place in Africa, but this is an exaggeration, for present American policy in Africa was first outlined in Kissinger’s Lusaka address in April 1976, in which he criticized South Africa and declared the Rhodesian government to be illegal. To be sure, this African policy has been further elaborated under the present administration. It is now maintained that Africa should be supported as a whole rather than allowed to break into fragments, and that Africa should be left alone to solve its own problems. These are both desirable prescriptions, but, unfortunately, African nationalism is fragmented—the Afras, for instance, are even now turning against the Issas (and this despite the fact that no one had heard of either one until last year). Nor is the decision to leave Africa alone solely in our hands. In the existing power vacuum, the pressure of a few hundred, let alone a few thousand, foreign “experts” or soldiers can make a world of difference, as was shown by the case of Angola. Zaire, too, in the absence of American support, might well have been taken over but for the decision of the French and the Moroccans to step in. Meanwhile, there has been fairly massive Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa, and the Cubans show every indication of staying where they are.
We have been told by Andrew Young not to get paranoid about a few Communists, but how few are few? According to Ambassador Young, their number in Angola was at one time around 50,000, which by Chinese standards may not be many, but by the standards of warfare in Africa is a massive force. We were assured that the Soviet Union would not reap major gains in Africa but would, on the contrary, get trapped in a quagmire as the U.S. had done in Vietnam. Moreover, to cite Ambassador Young again, once the fighting stopped and the trading began, we would be the beneficiaries, for many African countries would then move from the Soviet Union toward the United States. Some of this has in a sense come to pass: since the Soviet Union cannot provide the economic and technical assistance many of its African clients need, they are only too eager to obtain it from the United States, presumably with Soviet blessing. But if talk of “Marxism” in Africa is foolish, so is the idea that the Soviets have suffered any setbacks there. Rather, the Soviet Union—because it has had no hesitation about engaging in intervention by proxy—has considerably strengthened its position in many parts of Africa whereas the United States, except where South Africa is concerned, has adhered to a strict policy of nonintervention. It is one thing to argue that America’s policy of passivity in Africa has been unavoidable, given the mood of Congress and the predictable outcries in the media. But to claim that this policy has been a huge success is fatuous nonsense.4
So far as policy toward Cuba itself is concerned, one can express little but bewilderment. If a reasonably persuasive case could have been made for recognizing Cuba and renewing trade (a euphemism for subsidizing the Cuban economy and alleviating the Soviet burden) before Cuba decided to interveneé in Africa or was commissioned to do so, no such case can be made now—or so it would seem. Yet amazement must be recorded at the administration’s continued willingness to normalize relations with Cuba even after the massive involvement in Angola was under way. It took several months before policy-makers reluctantly accepted the fact that little progress could be expected on the diplomatic front so long as the military intervention continued. Meanwhile, the U.S. delegation in the United Nations has worked closely with the Cubans in preparing a resolution condemning Chile for various human-rights violations. Such condemnation may well be deserved, but it issues forth rather strangely from Cuba, a country with more political prisoners, and less freedom, than even Chile can boast. Which takes us back to where we began—the assertion by Secretary of State Vance of “very substantial” progress on human rights, especially in Latin America. . . .
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Can anything be said to the credit of the administration’s record in foreign policy? The obvious answer is that the world cannot be changed in a year, and that certain of the Carter initiatives—like the Panama Canal treaty, for instance—ought to be welcomed. The administration has been on the right track in trying to slow down nuclear proliferation and the arms trade and cannot fairly be faulted if these attempts have not been successful. Nor can the State Department or the White House be held responsible for all the setbacks in foreign affairs. While Congress may have saved the administration from making mistakes on the SALT negotiations, its inability to agree on an energy program, combined with the pressure of the protectionist lobby, has certainly weakened the U.S. posture abroad. A measure of blame, too, for certain policy failures undoubtedly lies with America’s allies who still are not pulling their weight in the economic field (Japan) and in defense (Western Europe). Finally, despite setbacks, NATO is in slightly better shape now than it has been in years past. There is even a growing awareness in Washington that the Soviet Union will only agree to halt its military build-up when it realizes the other side is determined to match it.
And yet there remains reason for concern, for thus far, at least, it is difficult to discern any clear idea of America’s role in world affairs. In fact, what makes it so difficult to comment now about U.S. foreign policy is the absence of any clear concept; instead one faces vague trends and contradictory statements at frequent intervals, a source of bewilderment to friend and foe alike. Though neo-isolationism seems to have fallen out of fashion in recent days, there is a great deal of confusion as to what America is legitimately entitled to do in defense of its vital interests.
A new generation is making its presence felt in the upper and middle echelons in Washington—the generation whose outlook was largely formed by the experience of the Vietnam war. While many of these young policy-makers have come to realize that the world is different from Senator McGovern’s vision of it, others have not yet achieved such wisdom. It is not so much the lack of intellectual brilliance or original ideas which is worrisome, though these qualities do not seem to be in very ample supply. The problem lies elsewhere—in a kind of crisis of adaptation, one might say. The dead hand of Vietnam still weighs heavily on the American memory, and the fear of involvement in some dubious foreign adventure still clouds much of the thinking of official Washington. It is the old story of the cat which, once burned, never approached a stove again.
Apart from the Vietnam trauma, a curious parochialism seems to be in the American air, a tendency to analyze world problems solely in terms of the American experience which ends up muddying rather than clarifying the issues. The dividing line is no longer between hardliners and doves, between “interventionists” and those opposed to intervention. Rather, it is between the acceptance and the rejection of political reality as the basis for political action. One can only hope that something short of a major crisis will bring a sense of political reality into play for those who still need to learn a proper respect for its intractable force.
1 Quoted here from Commonweal, November 11, 1977.
2 This argument was developed in these pages in my article “Peace with Egypt?” (March 1974).
3 For a fuller discussion of these matters, see Chalmers Johnson's “Carter in Asia: McGoveinism without McGovern” in last month's issue of COMMENTARY.
4 See the article by Bayard Rustin and Carl Gershman “Africa, Soviet Imperialism, and the Retreat of American Power,” in the October 1977 issue of COMMENTARY.
