THE U.S. GETS TOUGH

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000101020067-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 4, 2011
• Sequence Number: 67
• Publication Date: January 21, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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,IBTICLIS &MARX0
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NEWSWEEK
21 January 1980
GES
.
tions on the Soviet Union's southwestern
flank. Word leaked out that the U.S. and
Egypt had conducted joint air exercises,
and that the British had agreed to permit
the U.S. Navy to beef up its depot on Diego
Garcia in the Indian Ocean. In Washing-
ton, the Pentagon was busily ironing out the
last wrinkles in plans to acquire new mili-
tary "facilities" in Kenya, Somalia and
Oman. And in Peking, Defense Secretary
Harold Brown and China's Deputy Prime
Minister Deng Xiaoping were exploring
new, "down-to-earth" ways of countering
Russian expansionism in Asia.
The assorted military maneuvering
ranged from the China Sea to the Mediter-
ranean (map), leading some to wonder
Dinner was over, and the East Room at the
White House grew quiet. The guests-80
senior congressmen and senators--craned
forward as Jimmy Carter began his brief-
ing on Iran and Afghanistan. The Presi-
dent sat in a Hepplewhite armchair, his
foreign-policy counselors arrayed at his
sides, a colored map of Southwest Asia on
the easel at his back. Roughly 6,500 miles
to the east, the 50 American hostages
languishing at the U.S. Embassy in Tehe-
ran were approaching their twelfth week in
captivity. And just over the border in
Afghanistan, 85,000 Soviet troops, looking
very much like they meant to stay, were
clearing the roads westward from Kabul
toward the Iran border. So the President
didn't mince any words last
week. Looking at his guests,
he said: "The Soviet invasion
of Afghanistan is the greatest
threat to peace since the sec-
ond world war."
The language was harsh and
perhaps a bit hyperbolic; no
Korea, Cuban missile crisis or
Vietnam seemed at hand. But
transfixed by the unraveling
chaos in Southwest Asia,
the President clearly meant
to change his approach to
the Soviet Union. Along the
U.S.S.R.'s southern periphery,
he sketched the first outlines of
a tough new posture. Last
week Turkey agreed to let the
. continue to use Z mili-
tary and intelligence insta a-
The guns of Kabul: A test for grab-and-hold politics
STAT
whether Carter was dusting off Truman-
Eisenhower-era notions of containment.
Asked about that last week, a senior Ad-
ministration official refused to coin a new
catchword. "I don't want to talk about
drawing lines or not drawing lines," he said.
But the President did seem determined to
put an end to America's Vietnam self-
doubts and to counter the unchecked for-
eign-policy adventures that have pushed
the Soviet Union over the past five years
from Angola to Ethiopia to Cambodia to
Afghanistan. The most immediate casualty
of the new get-tough strategy was Carter's
once bright hope of putting arms control
ahead of all the foreign-policy objectives.
The sea change in Carter's world view
promised to carry him farther
away from what White House
hard-liners deride as "the
romantics" of the State De-
partment toward the trust-no-
Russians diplomacy favored
by national-security adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski.
S W IPES: The President's mani-
fest intent was to encourage the
Russians to think twice before
adventuring any farther in
Southwest Asia. Toward that
end, he tightened his vise eco-
nomically and diplomatical-
ly as well as militarily. In ii
the United Nations General
Assembly, U.S. Ambassador
Donald F. McHenry nudged
the Third World toward calling
for the withdrawal of all foreign
STAT
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troops from Afghanistan, a symbolic ges-
ture if nothing else. In a second swipe at
Soviet amour-propre, Carter encouraged
speculation that the U.S. might boycott the
Summer Olympics in Moscow, or try to
move the Games to another country. He
extended his trade embargo to all agricultur-
al produce, not just grain; he suspended all
licenses for technology exports
pending a review of U.S.-Soviet
relations. And his men let it be
known that in the future he
would favor more" x
flexibility" in the use of the CIA
for covert operations.
The sanctions were tenta-
tive; the President left the ma-
chinery of detente in place, if
U.S.-Egyptan Joint
exercises with AWACS
command plane.
the support of U.S. allies and in part on
whether U.S. farmers, businessmen and
politicians would stay the course. Politick-
ing in Iowa, Sen. Edward Kennedy com-
plained that the embargo would "hurt the
farmer and the taxpayer more than the
Soviet transgressors." U.S. allies in West-
ern Europe were not eager to beard the
not in use. He also left himself U.S. Air Force
the option of stepping up the The unfriendly skies of AWACS: Keeping an eye on the Persian Gulf
Russians. But a Gallup poll suggested that
six in ten Americans believed Carter was
handling himself well. And it seemed likely
that the new course he was setting would
shape U.S.-Soviet relations. for the rest of
his Administration-and perhaps for the
rest of the decade.
The President's impulse to check Soviet
U.S. pushes multination
deal to arm Pakistan.
expansion was based on a
strain of American mistrust
running back to the end of
World War II. The Russians,
Winston Churchill once told
U.S. Navy Secretary James V.
Forrestal, "will try every door
in the house, enter all the
rooms which are not locked,
and when they come to one
that is barred, if they are un-
successful in breaking through
Visiting Peking, Defense
Secretary Brown moves the
U.S closer to China and
discusses 'parallel' aid
to Pakistan.
Msslrah
Island
INDIAN'
OCEAN
4New facilities
discussed
with Oman,
Somalia and
Kenya.
TWO U.S. carriers
patrol the Indian
Ocean near Iran.
Carter obtains British
approval to expand
Diego Garcia bass.
s_PACIFIC r.;
OCEA.N??
AMERICA'S
RESPONSE
Answering Moscow's
invasion of Afghani-
stan, President Carter
took the first tentative
steps toward a new re-
gional containment
policy.
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pressure if Soviet behavior grew significant-
ly worse. Still, Tass dismissed his campaign
as "a hopeless undertaking" bound "to
flop"; and the Russians showed no inclina-
tion to budge from consolidating their grip
on Afghanistan (page 34). Soviet Ambassa-
dor Oleg Troyanovsky also threatened to
veto a U.S. resolution calling for U.N.
sanctions against Iran, and the U.S. hos-
tages remained imprisoned in Teheran
(page 36). But for all the show of Russian
defiance, the evidence suggested that lead-
ers in the Politburo had underestimated
Third World anger over the Afghanistan
invasion-and Carter's own resolve. "They
feel they have gained more than they lost,"
said one candid Soviet source in Moscow.
"But they lost more than they expected."
A NEW COURSE: The President's long-range
gamble was that his sanctions would work a
change in the Kremlin's thinking-if the
embargo lasted long enough. That depend-
ed in part on the state of the Soviet economy
and the whims of the Politburo, in part on
it, they will withdraw and invite you to dine
genially that same evening." That sense of
suspicion led to the Truman Doctrine and
the Marshall Plan and was borne out dur-
ing the Cuban missile crisis. But as a policy,
it collapsed during the late'60s. "The end of
the global policy of containment came with
Vietnam," says a Pentagon topsider. "The i
public and Congress got fed up with the
war; the trouble was, they got fed up with
the policy, too."
ARGUMENTS: The result, hard-liners con-
tend, was to leave the Soviet Union unchal-
lenged through a string of operations that
ran from Czechoslovakia in 1968 to Af-
ghanistan now. Henry Kissinger tried to
slow the drift of things by demanding good
behavior from Moscow in exchange for the
benefits of detente: arms control, trade
deals, technology sales. Rejecting "link-
age," Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev
The Kitty Hawk: Flexing muscles at sea
U.S. Navy
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HANISTAN5
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Coast Guard Vice Adm. Robert Scarborough maps the curb on Soviet fishing, a boycotted Russian ship in Baltimore
maintained that detente did not bar the
Soviet Union from helping "progressive"
governments. abroad, a euphemism for
crushing dissent in the Soviet bloc and fan-
ning revolution in the Third World. Hawks
now argue that with the fall of Saigon, the
passing of Kissinger and the arrival of Presi-
dent Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance, the last vestiges of linkage disap-
peared: the Soviets dispatched their Cuban
surrogates to the Horn of Africa, their
North Vietnamese allies to Cambodia-and
their tanks to the streets of Kabul.
The problem all along has been to find a
way to counter such aggressive thrusts,
without risking a nuclear Armageddon.
The Administration was trying not to use
the cold-war buzzword "containment" to
describe its objectives. "The basic reality of
our policy remains the same," Brzezinski
insisted. But he added: "It's important to
contain Moscow's expansive drives, and
this has now become a more urgent issue."
Brzezinski uses the word "contestation" to
describe the emerging U.S.-Soviet relation-
ship in the 1980s. The outlook for increas-
ing strain in the years ahead contributed to
the Administration's decision to increase
the U.S. defense budget by an average,
after-inflation 5 per cent during each of the
next five years; to install a new generation
of medium-range nuclear missiles in Eu-
rope, and to build a rapid-deployment force
of 100,000 troops for quick action in flash
points like the Persian Gulf.
TOUR: Even before the Afghanistan inva-
sion, the U.S. policy of evenhandedness to-
ward the Russians and Chines was in tat-
ters,but Secretary ofDefense Harold Brown
tilted further toward Peking last week.
Brown's eight-day trip was the first visit by
an American Secretary of Defense to China
since the Communists took over in 1949. "If
somebody told you a year ago you would be
walking through a Chinese submarine yard
with a U.S. Secretary of Defense, you
wouldn't have believed it," chuckled one
member of Brown's party during a tour of
the Wuchang boatyard in Wuhan. Brown
spent hours conferring with Deputy Prime
Minister Deng, Foreign Minister Huang
Hua and Chairman Hua Guofeng. He
toured the Great Wall; he peered into an
aging tank of China's Sixth Armored Divi-
sion. "Have you ever been abroad?" a mem-
ber of his party asked one Chinese tank offi-
cer. "Yes-to fight in Korea," the officer re-
plied, adding quickly, "But that is history."
The trip's main value was a symbolic
warning to the Russians that- the Soviet
Union's eastern flank was badly exposed;
Troyanovsky: One more veto at the U.N.
Penelope Lockridge
but at least one intriguing deal was closed.
The U.S. agreed to sell the Chinese a
ground station for the Landsat-D earth-
surveillance satellite, which has tape re-
corders and computers that could have
military applications. The Chinese quickly
agreed not to put them to any such use, but
the sale of advanced technology to China at
a time when the lid is on with Russia could
hardly be missed in Moscow. The U.S. may
respond to further Russian challenges by
increasing technology transfers to China. A
final trump is direct arms sales. U.S. offi-
cials insisted that the subject of such. sales
didn't come up during the trip, but did not
rule them out in the future. "They are
probably only a matter of time," said one
U.S. official.
At the other end of the Muslim world,
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israe-
li Prime Minister Menachem Begin wound
up a four-day summit in Aswan as far apart
as ever on autonomy for the Palestinians-
but with a sense of common cause against
the Soviet Union. Egypt vowed to show
support for the U.S. by reducing the 300-
man contingent of Russian diplomats and
technicians in the country, cutting ties with
Syria and Marxist South Yemen and throw-
ing open camps to train Afghan insurgents
to fight the Russians. Both Egypt and Israel
publicly offered to let the U.S. use military
facilities on their soil. The U.S. politely
declined, in part to protect Sadat against
Arab outrage and in part to avoid stirring
up the Muslim world over. Israel.
LEAKS: As it turned out, the U.S. had been
using Egyptian facilities secretly for some
time. In Washington and Jerusalem, word
leaked out that Egypt and the U.S. had
conducted joint air exercises last month i
from an air base near Luxor on the Nile. By
one report-quickly denied all around-the
aircraft were high-altitude American SR-71
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reconnaissance planes, overflying the Mid-
dle East and the Persian Gulf. Egypt's De-
fense Minister Kamal Hassan Ali said the
planes were American AWACS command
and control jets, served by about 120 ground
personnel. Crammed with sophisticated
electronic scanning gear, the planes can
detect fighters and ships more than 230
miles away or direct a naval blockade-
handy resources if Iran deteriorates into
armed conflict. All conceded that the exer-
cises were "to make it easier for the air forces
of the United States to cross over our skies,
and to land at our bases."
DIEGO GARCIA: To make it easier to patrol
the Indian Ocean, a new zone of competi-
tion with the Soviet Union, the U.S. also
had plans to beef up its base on the tiny,
British-owned island of Diego Garcia. Brit-
ish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has
defense position with help from Turkey and
Pakistan. With the Soviet Union flexing its
muscles, and with the government in Anka-
ra a bit weak on its legs, Turkey agreed to let
the U.S. stay in 26 bases temporarily until a
final understanding can be drawn up. Paki-
stan posed a more difficult problem. For one
thing, Congress has banned military aid to
the Pakistanis, who are alleged to be build-
ing a nuclear bomb; for another, a Pakistani
mob killed two Americans and torched the
U.S. Embassy in Islamabad seven weeks
ago. To mend fences and discuss arms, Paki-
stan's President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq
sent Agha Shahi, his foreign-policy adviser,
to Washington for talks with Carter.
The U.S. President was set on pushing
arms for Pakistan, and perhaps even ex-
ploring ways of funneling weapons to Af-
ghan insurgents surreptitiously. Given the
recent U.S. embarrassments in the region,
Congress was more likely to countenance
way they did," said one high-ranking U.N.
officer. "It was really antediluvian, an
eighteenth-century imperialist move." The
corridors and the delegates' lounge even
began rumbling with rumors that Soviet
Ambassador Oleg Troyanovsky had had
doubts about the wisdom of the invasion.
McHenry's tactics called for keeping the
U.S. in the background while the Third
World carried the battle to the Soviet'
Union. In the Security Council, six Third
World nations sponsored a resolution call-
ing for the withdrawal of all foreign troops
from Afghanistan-without mentioning
the U.S.S.R. by name. Troyanovsky called
the tame measure "a flagrant intervention
in the internal affairs of a sovereign state"
and vetoed it. Mexico and the Philippines'
then sponsored a "Uniting for Peace" reso-
lution-a procedural device first used to
side-step a Russian veto during the Korean
War. That ploy took the measure to the
veto-proof General Assembly.
As one country after another
rose at the U.N. to denounce the
Russian invasion, a quiet sense of
triumph settled over the Ameri-
can Mission. "The Russians are
being shown .up for what they
are-aggressive, expansionist, a
power Third Worlders and every-
one else have to be wary of," said
an American diplomat. A West
European ambassador agreed.
"The Afghanistan situation may
have revived nonalignment in its
true sense," he said. "Before,
there was a lot of pro-Soviet nona-
lignment. I think Afghanistan has
opened some eyes. Maybe nona-
lignment will become nonalign-
ment again."
'WILL': President Carter also
moved ahead on a third major
front-lining up U.S. allies be-
hind his program of sanctions
against the Soviet Union. He
worked the phones; he twisted
arms; he was encouraged by his'
Bill Fitz?Patrick-the White House
Carter briefs 'opinion leaders' on the U.S hostages in Teheran: Settling in for a long wait
promised Carter than the British would
permit the Administration to double its
military construction on the island.
Somalia, Oman and Kenya have also
shown interest in granting the U.S. military
facilities. None of the prospective sites was
ideal. In return for the use of an old (and
unfinished) Soviet base at Berbera, the So-
malis will probably demand U.S. weapons,
including F- 15 fighters, for their border war
with Soviet-backed Ethiopia. The commer-
cial port of Mombasa ip Kenya is so far from
the gulf that some Pentagon officials wonder
whether it's worth much. Oman, controlled
by a royal family that is under leftist pres-
sure, could turn into a miniature Iran. "All
of these should be handled with some care,"
cautioned one U.S. official. "The U.S.
shouldn't let its press releases get ahead of
its policy."
U.S. strategists counted on shoring up the
eastern and western flanks of a forward U.S.
covert operations than in the past. It
seemed possible that Congress would re-
peal the Hughes-Ryan amendment, which
has effectively blocked secret missions by
requiring the CIA to report to no fewer
than eight separate Congressional commit-
tees first. In recent weeks, patience has
worn thin around the Hill for the long,
thoughtful process of intelligence review
and. oversight that Carter himself advocat-
ed when he first took office.
'ANTEDILUVIAN: The second major compo-
nent of America's get-tough strategy was a
full-scale diplomatic campaign designed to
persuade the Third World that the Soviet
Union had shown its true colors in Afghani-
stan. At the U.N., U.S. Ambassador Don-
ald F. McHenry energetically sought to
portray the Russian invasion as a threat to
the security of all Third World nations. He
had a 'good deal of success. "I'm amazed
that the Soviets went into Afghanistan the
first results. Canada, Australia and the
European Common Market all agreed not
to make up the Soviet Union's 17 million-;
metric-ton shortfall in grain. And when a
West German reporter testily asked White
House press secretary Jody Powell what
might be accomplished "by destroying the
American economy piece by piece," Powell
replied confidently: "The American econo-
my and the economy of Western Europe
can easily withstand the sacrifice. The situ-
ation that confronts the free world is not a'
question of ability-it's a question of will."
The key question was whether the allies
would choose to sell the Soviet. Union the
very technology that Carter had put under
embargo. The main concern was that, as
happened after the 1968 Czechoslovakian
invasion, business would return to nor-
mal within a few months. The allies
universally lent their moral support to the
President's campaign. But in practice,
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Afghan demonstrators march in New York: Hoping to stop the Soviets at Kabul
Japan was not eager for a showdown with
Moscow, and many Western European
leaders seemed to put a higher premium
upon detente than upon sanctions. France
and West Germany made it clear that they
would not impose sanctions on Moscow
that -might hurt their own economies. A -
top French official complained privately
that his country's position "smacks of
Munich." Despite their condemnation of
Soviet aggression, many West Europeans
did not want to force an East-West
showdown on their own continent. "You
cannot win in Berlin what you lost in
Afghanistan," said a senior West German
official.
CASKETS: Outwardly, the Soviet Union
seemed optimistic about riding out any
boycott. "Marxism understands capitalism
better than you do," one Soviet analyst told
an American acquaintance. "For most
Western countries, it is more difficult to
refuse to sell to us than not to; we are very
good buyers." Even so, Moscow seemed
surprised and puzzled by the furor over
Afghanistan. For ordinary Russians, the
shortage of information about the fighting
provoked anxieties and hurt morale. Mos-
cow churned with rumors of high, casual-
ties; there were report? of a shortage of
metal caskets-all the available ones hav-
ing been shipped to the front. "IQ's not like
Czechoslovakia, which most people here
knew about," said one troubled Soviet intel-
lectual. "Nobody knows anything about
Afghanistan. It's far away, and it's difficult
to understand why Soviet boys are dying
there."
The Soviets' underestimation of the
Western and Third World reaction to the
invasion led some diplomats to wonder
who was really in charge of Moscow. From
Bonn to Washington, there was specula-
tion that Brezhnev, 73 and ailing, had been
outvoted by hard-liners within the Politbu-
ro. Experienced Kremlinologists doubted
it. A believer in consensus politics, Brezh-
nev has always avoided putting himself out
on Politburo limbs. He is -a blunt, aggres-
sive man close to the Soviet Union's own
military-industrial complex, and he spon-
sored the move into Czechoslovakia in
1968. In Moscow, some diplomats specu-
lated that with the Afghanistan imbroglio
heating up, there might be pressure to
replace Brezhnev, who can no longer work
ten-hour days. U.S. strategists hoped that
Carter's military and economic measures
would prod a post-Brezhnev generation of
Russian leaders to rethink the Brezhnev
doctrine-and the politics of massive
intervention.
PARANOIA: That hope may he a bit naive.
Since the time of the czars, the Russians h ave
tried to expand beyond their borders, devel-
oping their own domino theory along the
way. Client states are held at all costs. As the
theory runs, an unchecked uprising in Af-
ghanistan could invite more trouble in Po-
land, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, perhaps
even the Ukraine and among the 30-million-
plus Muslims along the Soviet Union's
southern borders(following story). This tra-
ditional defensiveness, bordering on para-
noia, may have prompted the Afghanistan
invasion. A darker scenario saw the Soviets
working on a grand design that would put
their fighter planes within easy striking
distance of the Strait of Hormuz. While
Afghanistan -represented a watershed in
Jimmy Carter's perceptionsand foreign pol-
icy, it was probably just an extension of
classic Soviet policy: grab and hold.
Carter's get-tough strategy will not
change things overnight. Pessimists say the
sanctions won't work at all; optimists
maintain that the troubled state of the
Soviet economy has given the President an
advantage. The CIA now believes that
Moscow's $1 trillion economy has entered
a recessionary mode with serious problems
o energy and labor shortages and sluggish
productivity that could last a decade. The
Afghanistan expeditionary force will re-
quire the diversion of scarce transport,
fuel, high-quality steel, chemicals and tex-
tiles from other uses. "The Soviets will
have an increasing problem allocating
their resources," predicted an East-West
trade expert in Moscow. "There already,
are strains imposed by running two sepa-
rate economies-the military and the
civilian."
HoGS: The President's embargo on the
feed grains and technology, limited though
it was, could yet tip this already delicate
balance. The Soviets appeared taken aback
by the toughness of the grain embargo; the
U.S. had continued to ship grain to Iran,
and the Soviets believed Carter would not
risk angering farmers on the eve of the Iowa
caucuses. Now, for want of feed grains, the
Soviets will probably have to slaughter
hogs, poultry and beef, producing a long-
range crisis in meat and milk production
and a setback for the Politburo's standing
promise to improve the country's meager
diet. The embargo on oil-rig machinery also
was likely to hurt, since the Soviet Union
has been plagued with a marked fall-off in
petroleum production.
If Carter's new get-tough strategy doesn't
work, even more steely measures may lie
ahead. The worst-case scenarios for South-
west Asia were unsettling: that the Soviets
might cross the Afghan border into Pakistan
under the pretext of chasing Afghan insur-
gents; that Iran might fall - into civil
war, inviting a Russian march into Iranian
Azerbaijan; that Moscow would violate the
gentleman's understanding to observe
SALT II, touching off a new arms race.
Given the risks, themost sensible course was
to save the toughest U.S. options--restoring
the draft, for example, or canceling the
existing grain-sale agreement-for later.
"We are not burying detente; we are not at
war," said State Department spokesman
Hodding Carter. "Much hinges on the
future action of the Russians." If those
actions don't improve, the President may
eventually be forced to reconsider the kind
of containment Harry Truman and Joseph
Stalin understood so well.
TOM MATHEWS with FRED COLEMAN,
ELEANOR CLIFr, THOMAS M. DCFRANK
and KIM WILLENSON in Washington,
WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT in Moscow,
DAVID C. MARTIN in China and
RAYMOND CARROLL at the U.N.
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