U.S. Foreign Policy in the Carter Years, 1977-1981

One week after Carter’s inauguration, this memo from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance showcases two high-profile national security issues in Latin America: the Panama Canal treaty negotiations and Brazil’s nuclear program. Other issues covered include the Israeli reaction to the presence of Syrian troops in Lebanon, Vietnam MIAs, Rhodesia, and Egypt’s economic crisis.

On the Panama Canal negotiations, which would be one of the president’s main diplomatic achievements, Vance tells Carter that the NSC Policy Review Committee has recommended that his administration reaffirm the “Tack-Kissinger principles” negotiated by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Panama’s foreign minister, Juan Antonio Tack. (The statement of principles is attached at the end of this memo.) Carter’s handwritten annotation observes that “Tack outtraded Kissinger to begin with.” On Brazil, Vance tells Carter that he “sent a personal message” to the foreign minister telling him that “we, of course, recognize the Brazilians’ pressing energy needs and are ready to discuss ways in which they can be met without running substantial dangers of nuclear proliferation.”

Regarding Lebanon, Israel’s foreign minister, Yigal Allon, told Vance that Israel viewed the presence of Syrian troops “as a threat to Israel’s security” but that Israel would allow the Syrians “several days grace to achieve a withdrawal.” In the meantime, Israel would “increase their readiness in the area.”

This relatively lengthy memo from Vance to the president, with several of Carter’s handwritten notations, starts off with a topic that was high on Carter’s list of policy priorities – human rights. The Democrats had made the issue a centerpiece of their presidential campaign in 1976 to play on public distaste for the policies of the Nixon and Ford administrations (closely tied to the approach of Henry Kissinger). Here, Vance offers an early (just two weeks into the presidency), highly positive assessment of the impact of Carter’s new attitude on South Korea and Indonesia, two allies regularly disparaged for their poor records on the issue. He even notes reports that Indonesian President Suharto adjusted his own thinking after reading Carter’s inaugural address. Carter writes “good” next to the entry. Unfortunately, time would show that the problem of human rights would be much harder to crack as friendly regimes from Latin America to Asia persisted in many of their most reviled practices and the Carter administration came under fire for appearing to do more to continue U.S. support for them than to live up to campaign promises.

The rest of Vance’s memo gives a flavor of the variety of issues that typically cross a president’s desk on a daily basis – in this case ranging from events in southern Africa to presidential appointments (Carter writes “I’m proud of this” next to an item about ambassadorial appointees), to Soviet human rights violations to arms sales to the treaty making process.

The U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were a major foreign policy priority of the Carter administration. The last administration had failed to complete negotiations for SALT II, and President Carter believed that an agreement restricting strategic arsenals was important for ratcheting down superpower tensions and reducing the threat of nuclear war. (Brzezinski was more skeptical and tended to see arms control talks as a test of Soviet intentions.) Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev eventually signed the SALT treaty in June 1979. Here, reflecting his typical wariness about treaty negotiations with Moscow, Brzezinski underscores several points about SALT that were raised during a meeting of the NSC’s Special Coordination Committee (SCC), which he chaired.

The talks constitute a “long-term process requiring our patient efforts to try to achieve an agreement,” according to this memo. The U.S. “should play down the significance of the May meeting between [Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei] Gromyko and the Secretary of State,” Cyrus Vance, Brzezinski adds, and the SCC should “undertake a detailed examination of the phasing of [arms] reductions in the comprehensive proposal … to determine the sensitivity of changes of individual elements and how they would impact on U.S. and Soviet interests.”

This memo from Secretary of State Vance to Carter comes at a tense time in U.S.-Soviet relations. The administration entered office just a few months earlier seeking simultaneously to reduce tensions with Moscow and to rein in Soviet behavior both at home and abroad. Indicative of the high priority of the relationship, Carter had written a personal letter to Brezhnev in February, and in March Vance undertook an early visit to Moscow. But the Soviets reacted very negatively to what they saw as unacceptable demands by the Americans—on the one hand to make deep cuts in Soviet weapons systems and on the other to directly address their human rights problems. It would be years before the Americans fully understood how poorly their demands had resonated in the Kremlin.

This gap in mutual understanding comes through in Vance’s memo to Carter in which he seems somewhat at a loss as to why the Soviet press has been leveling attacks on the U.S. president and why relations in general are so sour. Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin is basically in favor of improving the atmosphere and has some suggestions to offer in that vein. His “personal reaction” to the idea of a U.S.-Soviet summit meeting is that it “would be desirable because he believed that the two of you [Carter and Brezhnev] would get along well once you met face to face and this could serve to dispel the mutual suspicions that appear to exist” between the two superpowers. On the ever-present topic of human rights, Vance raises the matter of detained Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, saying he told Dobrynin that to prosecute him “would surely create a bad view of the Soviet Union in the eyes of world opinion.” In a handwritten annotation, Carter writes, “You may tell them officially that S. has never been CIA.”

Among the most consequential achievements of the Carter administration was the signing of the Camp David Accords between President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel. Sixteen days before that event, this memo captures some of the complexities involved in the process, raised during a NSC meeting among President Carter, Brzezinski, CIA Director Stansfield Turner, Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Secretary of State Vance, and others held to prepare for the upcoming talks. The discussion covers a number of interesting topics, including the personalities of each leader, the roles of their advisers, the Saudi view of the talks and possible reaction to an agreement, the consequences of failing to reach an accord, and a possible U.S. military role in security guarantees connected to an agreement. Other records from the newly published collection describe further details about the Arab-Israeli conflict, including assessments of the key players and issues that threaten to obstruct an accord.

One of the epic foreign policy disasters Jimmy Carter faced was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas day 1979. The Soviet move shocked the world, but the U.S. administration came under especially heavy criticism from the right because of accusations that its soft treatment of the USSR and foreign policy weakness in general had opened the door for what many saw as naked Soviet aggression. The invasion was closely connected to what was arguably the administration’s most profound political crisis (combining both foreign and domestic elements) – the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Afghanistan’s neighbor, which had occurred less than two months before. Thus, this important SCC meeting was convened to cover both subjects.

The first part deals with the impact of the hostage saga – specifically the question of oil prices, the likelihood that American captives would be put on trial in Iran, and the fascinating conclusion of the group that neither U.N. sanctions being contemplated nor even a total embargo would “be a major economic blow to Iran.” The second part of the discussion relates to Afghanistan, most significantly the decision to provide covert assistance to Afghan rebel forces opposing the invasion. Against the backdrop of the Iran crisis, there is concern about the safety of American personnel still in Afghanistan. Reflecting both his foreign policy inclinations and his awareness of the political dimension of the situation, Brzezinski, a hardliner within the White House, urges “that we must make this costly for the Soviets very quickly. Within three days we will see growing criticism of the U.S. for doing nothing and being afraid to act.” The discussion ends with the quixotic expression of hope that the invasion might help resolve the Iran crisis.

Of particular interest, the SCC summary includes an attachment – a Presidential Finding signed by Carter, authorizing “lethal military” aid to “the Afghan opponents of the Soviet intervention.” This is a key piece of the ongoing historical question about the nature and extent of support the Carter administration provided to the Afghan rebels. A Finding is a legal document required by statute to signify presidential authorization for any CIA covert operation beyond intelligence collection. It is unusual for such a sensitive record to be declassified.

The U.S. opening to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1978-1979 was another landmark accomplishment of the Carter administration and is treated in several records published in the National Security Archive’s latest publication. In this flattering memo to President Carter assessing his administration’s China policy, former NSC staffer Michel Oksenberg says that he feels “confident future historians will see your China policy as the most enlightened and effective one our country every had.” Oksenberg cautions Carter not to play “the so-called ‘China card,’” advising him to avoid using China “tactically” in the U.S.-Soviet confrontation. He suggests that Carter carefully plan the next phase of China policy: “We have reached the end of the road map, and if we are to avoid the ‘ad hockery’ that plagues us elsewhere, you must demand now that planning begin for your second term.” Carter’s marginal annotation reads: “We should not push now for new achievements with PRC.”

In a sprawling and fascinating memo that indicates the scope of some of these newly published records, national security adviser Brzezinski outlines the ways that President Carter can use foreign policy powers “in a manner that could significantly influence the outcome of the [1980] elections.” Lacking the pretext for a “sudden and dramatic stroke,” Brzezinski says he “cannot offer a prescription for a major Presidential initiative … that would have significant electoral effect.”

Instead, the national security adviser proposes that Carter, 1) emphasize the “distinctive character of the Carter foreign policy,” 2) attack the Reagan foreign policy approach as “escapist and dangerous,” 3) prepare for a quick response to potential international crises, and 4) consider a number of bold policy initiatives, in Iran and Afghanistan, for example, that might raise the president’s profile.