The Difficult Year Ahead

Carter's agenda--and a sense of his priorities for 1979

The problems that land on a President's desk are often so pressing and immediate--rioting in Iran or a threat from Moscow--that he is in danger of losing his perspective on the long-run effects of his policy. In an effort to remedy that, Jimmy Carter asked National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to outline the global problems and prospects for the coming year, and late in December Brzezinski provided him with a thick black dossier. Brzezinski declines to discuss the specifics of that report, of course, saying only that it is concerned with "trying to create a framework for wider global accommodation." This, along with European defense concerns, will presumably be one of the main topics when Carter meets late this week with his chief European allies--British Prime Minister James Callaghan, French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt--on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.

Although the Brzezinski report was not made public, here is an estimate of what is on the President's foreign policy agenda and a sense of his priorities:

Barring some sudden crisis in the Middle East, the issue at the top of the President's list is the normalization of relations with China, which goes into effect this week. A key ingredient of this new policy is the visit to Washington this month of China's peppery Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, and it poses a ticklish problem for Carter. He must make Teng feel welcome without at the same time alarming the Soviets. Any missteps that aggravate Moscow's apprehensions about the rapprochement between the U.S. and Peking could further delay that other vital item on Carter's list of New Year's resolutions: completing SALT II and pushing the treaty through the Senate.

MIDDLE EAST. Carter has staked considerable prestige on the prospect of a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, but the artificially imposed Dec. 17 deadline came and went with nothing but recriminations from both sides. Cairo and Jerusalem remain publicly optimistic about an eventual peace treaty, yet the Israelis, who have been the more inflexible, have shown no willingness to give in on the points that divide the parties, chiefly the question of Palestinian self-rule on the West Bank. Dismayed at the impasse, Carter has threatened to abandon his mediation efforts in the Middle East. But the threat is probably an idle one. Instead, Carter may search for some dramatic move to get the negotiations moving again.

PERSIAN GULF. Poor intelligence and diplomatic shortsightedness have trapped the U.S. in an increasingly difficult position in Iran. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi could fall any hour, yet Carter has found no course but to continue supporting him, at least publicly. The fall of the Shah, which many now predict, would change the equations of power, from Egypt and Ethiopia all the way east to Pakistan. The helplessness of the U.S. to shape events in Iran is beginning to sap Saudi Arabia's confidence in the ability of the U.S. to protect the region from Soviet penetration, a hazard that some American officials fear is every bit as threatening as the Soviet thrust into Europe of the late 1940s and early 1950s. As a result, the Administration intends to deliver a stern warning to the Soviets through private channels not to exploit the situation.

SOUTHERN AFRICA. The State Department last week expressed strong approval of South Africa's latest promise to cooperate with the U.N. plan to grant independence to Namibia. But the Administration's attempt, with British help, to bring all parties together to settle the civil war in Rhodesia seems on the verge of collapsing. The Administration's next move might well be to let the problem languish for a while in the U.N.--to let "the dust settle," says Assistant Secretary of State Richard Moose.

LATIN AMERICA. On Valentine's Day, Carter will hold talks in Mexico City with President Jose Lopez Portillo. His aim: to begin work on an agreement for the U.S. to purchase Mexico's oil and natural gas, and to ease the strains caused by the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. In Nicaragua, meanwhile, months of patient U.S. diplomacy were thrown into question when President Anastasio Somoza Debayle last week rejected a U .S. proposal for internationally supervised elections aimed at ending civil strife over his rule.

One of Carter's biggest challenges in 1979 will be persuading a skeptical Congress to go along with a foreign policy that many critics believe is too adventurous. Conservatives are already planning to ambush him on China when he asks for legislation to establish a budget for an embassy in Peking. They also will challenge his request for measures to alter the cultural and economic ties between the U.S. and Taiwan. In addition, Carter will reopen in part the Panama Canal debate when he requests legislation to carry out the terms of the treaties signed last year to turn control of the canal over to Panama by the year 2000. On both China and Panama, however, the Administration is confident of eventual victory.

The President also must reckon with a new force on Capitol Hill: Idaho Democrat Frank Church, who will take over as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has vowed to make the committee a significant force in U.S. foreign policy. Says Church: "I don't want the committee to be second-guessing the President. But on the other hand, I don't want it to be subordinate to the Administration."

Jimmy Carter has surely marked that fact on his foreign policy agenda too.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.