INNOCENCE ABROAD: JIMMY CARTER'S FOUR MISCONCEPTIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900095-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 95
• Publication Date: May 1, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301900095-8
ARTICLE APPIltatta READER'S DIGEST
O l'AGE,_2(2 MAY 1980
Innocence Abi d:
j immy,arte-r.'s
Jour Misconceptiot.
Vance's resident Soviet expert.
The only dissenter within the Ad-
ministration was National Security
Adviser Zbignie?,v Brzezinski, who
? harbored no illusions about the Cold
\Var being ended. But he was sur-
s rounded by advers'aries, 'and he
lacked both bureaucratic skill and
Oval Office backing. Brzezinski did
not even control the critical function
of naming his own National Security
? Council staff.
' Meanwhile, Carter was develop- ?
? ing a peculiar empathy for Soviet
? President Leonid Brezhnev. He
seemed to view Brezhnev as a fel-
low politician harassed by pressure
groups, rather than as the master of
? ? , Russia who had sent his legions roll-
him that his agile mind had mastered ing into Czechoslovakia a decade
the great game of diplomacy. ' 1 earlier.
Others were not so sure. The Nor was he prepared to dwell on
trouble with Carter, Henry . Kis- Soviet violations of detente. When a
singer told a friend early in - the military - junta seized power in Af-
Carter Administration, was not that glianistan in April 1978, one of the
he did not understand foreign af- President's national-security aides
fairs, but that he did not understand handed a reporter highly conficlen-
thas he did not understand. -tial information about close ties be-
Jimmy Carter is by no means the tween the Soviet Union and the
solitary author of the present weak- leaders of the junta. It proved that
ened state of U.S. foreign policy, rivers of blood had flowed in their
Toward the end of the Vietnam war ? seizure of power. The reporter's
and in the years that followed, Demo- 1 question was obvious: "Why doesn't
cratic Congresses began slashing ? the State Department publicly reveal
away at the defense budget. Republi- these facts?" "Because," the bureau-
can Presidents timidly accepted this. crat replied with bitter sarcasm, "it is
Nevertheless, our increasing vulner- ? afraid the Soviets might not accept
ability derives very substantially from our next concession.
the steady reinforcement of four ba- - Those "concessions,, were being
sic misconceptions that Carter car-, - made in the SALT negotiations. No-
red into office with him: ' ' ?body pretended that this was an
Misconception No. I: The Cold equitable step toward arms control,
Wars over. The pronouncement was but key Carter aides insisted that the
imade four months after the inaugu- "process" must be maintained. "I
ration in Carter's commencement would like to say to you," Carter told
address at Notre Dame University: a joint session of Congress on June
"Confident of our own future, We 18, 1979, following the signing of
are now free of that inordinate fear of SALT ti, "that President Brezhnev
communism, which once led us to and I developed a better seriie of
embrace any dictator who j9Ined: us each other as leaders and as inen...... I
in our fear."- . . ? . believe that together we laid a foun-
In giving voice to this innocence dation on which we can build a more
he was merely endorsing the then stable relationship between our two
popular sentiment that ideological countries." :. ...: _ ? .
conflict between democratic Amer-, . The Soviet sweep into Afghani-
_
ica and totalitarian Russia was no stan was only six months away. _
longer relevant. That view prevailed
? among Such foreign-policy advisers .1
tr61101it MITI
as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance',
chief disarmament negotiator Paul- \
Warnke and Marshall Shulman, '
Tough rhetoric from the President
followed the SOviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Yet questions persist
BY ROWLAND EVANS' and ROBERT NOVAK
N JANUARY 12, 1977, eight I
days before his inauguration
as President, Jimmy Carter
was briefed by Washington's leading
military and national-security ex-
perts. Carter asked if studies had
been made on how a major reduction
of long-range missiles would affect
the U.S.-Sovie,t military balance.
Gen. George Brown, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, quickly
responded, "Oh, yes, Governor." He
referred to studies that analyzed
a reduction of long-range missiles
from the proposed SALT II level of
about 2400 to perhaps 2000 Or SO.
This was considered a radical cut-
back. "I'm ,not talking about 2000,
General," Carter repIied in his soft
Georgia accent. "I'm: talking about
200 or 300."
Silence followed. Finally Harold
Brown, Carter's incoming Secretary j
of Defense, pointed out that such an
immense redaction in America's
strategic arsenal would pose a funda-
mental risk to the nation's security,
all but destroying the U.S. nuclear
"shield." It would also expose Eu-
rope to the Soviet Union's vast supe-
riority in conventional arms.
Carter's pre-inaugural interest in
radically reducing the U.S. arsenal set-
a pattern that persisted until the
Soviet military takeover of Afghani-
stan last December. It was born of a
peculiar innocence, coupled with
genuine self-confidence. His expe-
rience as a junior Naval officer, Car-
ter felt, established his military ex-
pertise; in the two years ofter his
single term as governor of Georgia,
his membership on the newly formed
Trilateral Commission convinced ,
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I 2
MisconceptioW No: 2: Military Not until defense-oriented Sena- . had come to regard the CIA's great
\
spending can and should be reduced. . tors tied their support for ratification feats of the 1950s?the overthrow of
When Carter pledged in his 1976 ! of SAI:r li to higher defense spend- , a pro-communist regime in Guate-
campaign that "we can reduce pres- ' . ing did Carter change his public ! mala and the restoration of the Shah
.
ent defense expenditures by about tune?a change now dramatically ac-
in Iran?as cause for shame. Carter
$5 billion to $7 billion annually," celerated by the Afghanistan inva- said at Notre Dame, "For too many
he was merely registering the Demo- sion. Even so, Carter's new proposals years, we have been willing to adopt
cratic Party's post-Vietnam consen- ' cannot possibly catch up with origi- the flawed principles and tactics of
sus of "reordering priorities." That ? nal military plans until 1985 at the our adversaries, sometimes abandon-
consensus, in turn,' reflected the
loathing of all things military that
grew out of Vietnam. By deed,
-though not by word, Carter soon
began to accept the argument of
many advisers that a nation's arsenal
_could become too great for its own
good.
Although a cutback of $5 to $7
billion a year in "present" defense
earliest and, given Soviet weapons ina our. values for theirs.
progress, even then we will fall far "'Carter decided not to retain
short of attaining parity with the 'George Bush as CIA director but
Russians. Moreover, danger persists! instead to Single out for. that job a
that.the mixture of rising inflation! Lading critic Of the intelligence sys-
and rising pressure to balance the ? tern, Theodore C. Sorensen. When
1981 budget will reverse Carter's the Senate forced Carter to with-
pledge to increase defense spending; draw Sorensen's name, he responded
despite all the bold talk. . . with a man far less controversial:
Misconception No. 3: Human Adm. Stansfield Turner, an old An-
spending was patently impossible, must be the cornerstone of U.S. napolis classmate with excellent
Carter moved in that direction: On forelgn policy. Carter made clear brains but faulty judgment.
June 30, 1977, he announced oppo- from the start that his crusade for Turner began by summarily abol-
,
sition to the new B-1 bomber. human rights was (Erected not just at ishing 82o Jobs in the clandestine
On April 3, i978, he deferred pro- the Soviet Union but against "any, service. His callous order forced out
duction of the neutron warhead. I dictator who joined us" in our-"inor: men and women with priceless and
On August 17, 1978, ' he vetoed dinate fear of communist*" That irreplaceable expertise. Some of
Congressional authorization of a nu- inevitably led him into a policy of these operatives were in mid-career
clear aircraft carrier. In 1979, he k maximum U.S. pressure _against and ineligible for retirement pay.
delayed production on the cruise- ! friendly tyrants. At the same time, Morale plummeted and many of the
missile', the Trident-s..,bmarine and Soviet _experts in the State Depart- best CIA personnel have since quit in
the SSN-688 attack-submarine oro-
ni'ent gradually subdued ?Carter's disgust. Among Turner's casualties:
grams. The Trident II missile system
human-rights pressure against Mos- the agency's top experts in counter-
was postponed. cow, for the sake of detente. insurgency, in Iran, the People's
!
II his first three years in the White ,The damage to long-standing Republic of China, the Kremlin
,
U.S. relationships came quickly. Bra: power structure and the vital Middle
House, he cut $38 billion from
spending called for by President zil canceled a 25-year-old military-,: East. ,
Gerald Ford's last five-year defense assistance treaty with the United' Combine' that with Congressional
States. American relations with Ar-?, -shackling of covert operations, and it
program. Naval shipbuilding lan- ! .
!
guished. Development was delayed gentina and Chile deteriorated. is no wonder Sen. Daniel Patrick
of a mobile-basin.g system for the The peak of human-rights zealot- ! Nloynihan (D., N.Y.) suggested that
MX missile to protect the U.S. land- my came last year in Nicaragua and the analytical functions now left to
based deterrent from the dramatical- I Iran. The rvult in Nicaragua is a the CIA might well be performed by
ly improved accuracy of the big pro-Marxist regime that did not even !
Soviet missiles. Aircraft production join the United States and the vast !
MVP T TTITTM
did not even cover attrition. Morale majority of the United Nations Gen-
declined as pay for experienced tech-
eral Assembly in condemning Soviet
nicians and officers lagged well be-
aggression in Afghanistan: The re-
hind inflation. .sult in Iran is Ayatollah Khomeini:
huiiiili-
All of this overlooked two hard and anguished months, of .
facts of life: first, that ever since ation for the United States.
iSconaption No. 4: In the'neto
Russia's humiliation in the 1962 Cu-
M ?
ban missile crisis, the Soviet Union tvogd, there is no need jOr covert
had been 'carrying on the greatest 710' horn ce a cvrv-Tr.--"Tr"--ie
peacetime arms buildup in thc histo: brought into high oice by Carter
my of man; second, that U.S. military
might had suffered by financing the
Vietnam.war through the deferral of
vital weapons modernization.
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the Library of Congress. He was ex-
aggerating only a little. The CIA has
ceased to function as the intelligence
service of a great power. It cannot
even aid anti-communist insurgen-
cies in Angola and Afghanistan.
WITH U.S. DIPLOMATS imprisoned
for months as hostages in their Own
embassy in laeran, and with Soviet
troops pouring into Afghanistan,
Jimmy carter began re-election year
1980 by appearing to reject each of
his misconceptions. He forthrightly
confessed after the Afghan invasion,
"My opinion of the Russians has
changed more drastically in the last
week than in even the previous 21/2
years." Ile re-declared the Cold War
with his pronouncement of the
"Carter Doctrine," guaranteeing the
territorial integrity of Persian Gulf
nations; he set aside his cherished
sALT II; he raised defense spending;
he began to unshackle intelligence
and counter-intelligence activities.
Yet, questions persist: Why are
negotiations with the Soviet Union
on European force reductions and
on a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban
treaty continuing? Why is the SAir Ii
Treaty still on the Senate calendar?
Why is the Office of Management
and Budget still resisting desperately
needed programs such as Naval
modernization and career-pay im-
provements? Why are the B-1 and
the neutron warhead still in moth-
balls, the fate of the MX mobile
missile still uncertain? Why is the old
team of top Carter advisers still on
the job if its policies had been wrong
and now appear rejected?
And, finally, can a rational person
explain, much less excuse, the incom-
petence demonstrated when Carter
disavowed the recorded U.S. vote in
the U.N. Security Council in the
bizarre matter of Israel's settlements
policy? Such sophomoric antics
would be funny as slapstick comedy
if they did not tear away at the
confidence and credibility of the
presumed leader of the \Vest.
The early innocence may be gone,
but what has replaced it? Tough
rhetoric makes good headlines, but
there 'is abiding reason to doubt
whether the old misconceptions
have truly been swept away.
NEXT MONTH in The Reader's Digest,
Roving Editor William E. Griffith, po-
litical-science professor at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, will spell out
the changes in U.S. policy that are nec-
essary to check new expansionist thrusts
by the Soviet Union.
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