SYMPOSIUM WONDERS WHAT'S HAPPENED TO U.S. WORLD ROLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100850005-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: January 27, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100850005-4 STAT
ARTICLE AI'Fi i 2.1-
I'AGN
Will Tehran Beige .
9n'Time Prove to Be'
Blessing in. Disguise?.-!
-By Vernon A. GuidryJr.
? Washington star staff writer
AUSTIN, Texas-The Russians are
'in Afghanistan, the Iranians are in
our embassy, the dollar is in tatters, {
nearly all the world's exportable oil
is in the. Arabian peninsula and
America.is in decline.
"How'the hell-did we get here?"
wondered Walter Cronkite, the CBS
anchor man, who was on hand to
give the keynote speech at a sym-
posium called "The International
ChaIlengge of the '80s Where Do
We Go From Here?"
The symposium was sponsored by-'
the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
and the University of Texas. While.
students joked feebly about register-
ing next semester at "the other
U.T.," the University of Toronto. the
group of American-opinion makers
gathered here last week in an audi-
torium under the massive, marble li-
brary found America's placa in the.
world no laughing matter. .
Cronkite recalled some: recent
'American history and' observed;
"Aftel- Vietnam we' turned 'away
.from foreign aid, foreign issues and
foreign challenges as.Inuch as we
could, but.the world today will not
permit such withdrawal, as we so'
rudely have been reminded."
The notion that Iran 'and th
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan are a
warningi to America became some-
thing of a theme for the symposium:..
`.'Not only have they united us as
-nothing has done in 20 years, they
have awakened us," Cronkite said.
"If the mess in central Asia does not
produce catastrophe, we may one
day be able to say; with the people in
those commercials, .'Thanks, we
needed that.'
"
There was disagreement on how
the warning should be read andwhat America should do about it.
Norman Podhoretz, editor of the
magazine. Commentary; said he' be-
THE WASHIffCTON STAR
27 January 1 Q8')
lieved. the Soviet Union would not
have moved into Afghanistan unless
it believed the balance of power
with the United States had tipped in
its favor.
Cronkite, said Podhoretz, "seemed
to identify what we needed. as a
resurgence of the old emphasis on
the North-South problem,,the resur
gence of American determination to?
do something about the _ interna-1
'tional order, problems like poverty
and famine and. overpopulation and
polution."
The editor disagreed with that for-
mulation, saying the struggle was
not primarily between the have-nots
of the southern hemisphere and
haves of the northern, but was still
between the old adversaries, East
.and West.',"What we needed was a
lesson in the consequences to us of
the decline of American power and a
rise in Soviet power," Podhoretz
Asia, Bundy saw greater dangers
that the oil nations would them-
selves withhold oil from the West or
even disintegrate as functioning na-
tions. .-
Bundy cautioned against the no-, tion that unleashing the CIA could
make a dramatic ditterences in the
cirmcumstances.
said, adding that Iran and Afghanis-''i
tan supplied such a lesson. i
The United States, he went on,
must now'"reassert the kind of lead-
ership . against the threat of the
new barbarism .. which is Soviet
totalitarianism and everything. it
represents."
.McGeorge Bundy, former national
security adviser to Presidents John
son and John F. Kennedy and for-
mer head of the Ford Foundation,
said there were more reasons for the
U.S.predicament than the decline of
U.S. power: ?
? Bundy said-the Third World could.
be expected to'be more assertive of
its own interests and that power was?
now more diffused-. around. the
world.. ,.,,., .
"We do not haye_and never did
have the kind of strength that would
allow our conventional forces to sur-
round the borders of-the Soviet
Union," said Bundy., "Afghanistan
has never been within any Ameri-
can parameter.".ti - ' - -
' For Bundy, the lesson. of Afghanis-
tan was that the Soviet Union has "a
brutal contempt for world opinion
and part of the current effort is to
teach them that that kind of brutal
contempt has a cost."
While Podhoretz saw the Soviet
Union aiming directly at the oil sup-
-plies of the West with its, moves in
"There have een very important
changes," he sai tae were
still at its-best it could not run the
'crowds in Tehran today as it did to
some degree 25 years ago.
"The tides o sentiment have
changed too much, for that, and
there is no way of creating a mysti-
cal secret capability by legislating
it," Bundy said.
President Carter's handling of for..,
eign affairs came in for no criticism
in the house that his last Democratic
predecessor built. There were some
oblique references to the length of
time it has taken him to learn his
job, but beyond that he picked up
some explicit support.
W. Averell Harriman, former
governor of New York and a fixture
in U.S. foreign policy for decades, i
tossed away his prepared speech,
saying Carter's State of the Union ad-;
dress had made it obsolete. "I fully'
support the president's positions;";
said Harriman. -
Harriman said he hopes that after
this election year Carter and the
Congress may return to the non
partisan approach to foreign policy
that characterized Washington dur-
ing World War II and the years that
followed. '
As a counterpoint to the serious
and gloomy estimates that solemnly
occupied most, of the panelists,
Barbara Jordan, a former congress- 4
woman. from Texas and now a
professor here, offered her own pre- j
scription.
"The future is inevitable," she
-told the large crowd that by that
time needed a laugh.':, ; .. ,,
Beyond. that, Jordan' said that
peace, too,'is inevitable "if we get
people of conscience and good will.
working together..
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100850005-4