The Flood Tides of History

There is a growing belief in this country and around the world that the U.S. is losing control of events and faltering in its role as the free world's leader.

That is now a concern at least as grave as inflation. Even with the protesting farmers making trouble in Washington these past few days, and the biggest snowstorm in five years diverting the capital's attention, the debate about U.S. strength and resolve is emerging on almost every level.

Jimmy Carter called a secret meeting to try to get the State Department to quiet internal dissent about foreign policy. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown worried out loud on the Hill that the U.S. had no way to counter such surrogate Soviet forces as the Cubans in Africa. Chagrin hit the State Department when Chinese Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, after his exuberant sojourn in the U.S., stopped in Tokyo on his way home and told the Japanese that America has shown indecision and "lacks direction" in handling the Iran crisis. Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger declared that the crisis could affect our oil supplies more severely than the embargo of 1973.

At the Republican Tidewater Conference, hyperbole crept into the resolutions ("Decay of American influence and the decline of American military power"); but there was a fact of Government life underlying what Senator Howard Baker characterized as the abandonment of "traditional bipartisanship in foreign policy." As the likelihood of a bruising and even bloody debate over the SALT 11 treaty approaches, politicians and technicians in both parties who support the treaty by itself are now questioning SALT II because of perceived Soviet advances around the world, and the U.S. failure to counter them successfully. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for one, believes this "geopolitical decline" now confronts us with the possibility of dangerous crisis by as early as 1980.

If those were only the isolated musings of a man out of power, it might not be important.

But Georgia's own Democratic Senator Sam Nunn echoes the message. The world has moved, and Nunn believes the U.S. lacks "a SALT philosophy" in a tune when events seem to be slipping out of our grasp. Republican Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr. sat on one of his Maryland hillsides as long ago as April and heard Pakistan's brilliant ambassador, Sahabzada Yaqub-Khan, prophesy chaos in Iran. The ambassador has gone to Moscow, after telling his friends that his government believes the Soviets to be the dominant world force now because the U.S. cannot be counted on to lead.

Most of those who express concern blame no single party or single President for the end of an era in which America was predominant. But it is now President Carter's job to deal with the situation. Washington's Senator Henry Jackson went down Pennsylvania Avenue a few days ago to talk with Carter and came away believing more than ever that the White House has little notion of how to orchestrate developments abroad. Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson has called Carter "embarrassingly weak." Stevenson declared that he would like to see "the U.S. stand up to Russian imperialism, but not with irrelevant weapons systems and indigestible words about human rights." Stevenson feels that the U.S. could start by being more assertive in the use of its advanced technology, not only in the military but also in worldwide economic competition.

Perhaps, as many of Carter's advisers believe, the President has no other alternative than to adjust American response to "the new realities" of world power. That, however, is a difficult thought to assimilate in a nation so rich and capable. Worried about the national spirit, Author James Michener was in town a few days ago to urge further space exploration. He eloquently posed the longer concern that is now in our national dialogue: "There seem to be great tides which operate in the history of civilization, and nations are prudent if they estimate the force of those tides, their genesis and the extent to which they can be utilized. A nation which guesses wrong on all its estimates is apt to be in serious trouble if not on the brink of decline." A serious thought--but we are heading into a serious year.

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