"More Subtle Shades"

Jimmy Carter last week defended his conduct of American foreign policy before a group of newspaper editors and broadcasters assembled in Washington. Some excerpts: "Recent events, particularly in Iran and Southeast Asia, have touched off a national debate about what America's role should be in dealing with turbulence and in trying to guide inevitable change.

"As the world becomes more complex, it is more important than ever before that we do not oversimplify events abroad. Bad analysis inevitably leads to bad policy. Instead, we need to be aware of the deep historical forces at work in other countries. To ignore these realities or fail to understand them would lead us into taking actions that might be ineffective or irrelevant or even dangerous.

"We need to resist two temptations: to see all changes as inevitably against the interests of the U.S., as a kind of loss for us or victory for them; or to imagine that what happens in a country like Iran will not have consequences for us. We need to see what is happening not in terms of simplistic colors, black and white, but in more subtle shades; not as isolated events but often as part of sweeping currents ... Stability in some countries is being shaken by the processes of modernization, the search for national significance or the desire to fulfill legitimate human hopes.

"For us in the U.S., change itself is not the enemy. Our concern is twofold. We must work to dampen conflict, to maintain peace, and we must make clear that it is dangerous for outside powers to try to exploit for their own selfish benefits this inevitable turmoil.

"The U.S. continues to be the most powerful nation on earth--militarily, economically and politically. I am committed to preserving and even enhancing that power. We will make responsible use of that power where our interests are directly involved... I hope that need will never arise.

"We must be very clear about where our true interests lie. In Iran, our interest is to see its people independent, able to develop according to their own design, free from outside interference. In Southeast Asia, our interest is to promote peace and the withdrawal of outside forces, and not to become embroiled in conflict among Asian Communist nations. And, in general, our interest is to promote the health and the development of individual societies, not to a pattern cut exactly like ours in the U.S., but tailored rather to the hopes and the needs of the peoples involved."

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