The Question of Who's in Charge

By Robert Ajemian

Backstage rivalries trouble the foreign policy team

"Not good" was Ambassador Robert Strauss's verdict on his own mission to the Middle East. He openly complained about the instructions that had been given him and asked who was in charge of U.S. policy on the Middle East. It was an astonishing question for a U.S. diplomat to raise in public. TIME Washington Bureau Chief Robert Ajemian provides at least part of the answer in this report:

There is a dangerous disarray these days in the management of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. When the State Department was compelled to deny formally that there was any split among Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and Middle East Ambassador Robert Strauss, the statement only confirmed the continuing struggle among the three men. White House senior aides have been troubled for months about the infighting, but the President has helped both to create the problem and to nourish it.

The three advisers are an odd mix. Vance and Brzezinski have never really got along or understood each other. It has to do with temperament: Vance is more cool, methodical, even slogging, than the nimble, aggressive Brzezinski. Though the Secretary in the past has been bitterly opposed to Brzezinski's hard-line approaches, he has remained curiously passive, allowing Brzezinski to acquire more and more power. The President has been accused (as Nixon was in the early days of Henry Kissinger) of creating a mini-State Department in the figure of his Security Adviser.

The introduction of Newcomer Strauss into the Middle East summitry shook the State Department to its foundations. That Carter would reach around Vance and Brzezinski and pick the glad-handing Texan, a lawyer, politician and trade negotiator relatively inexperienced in diplomatic affairs, stunned the department professionals. The move further diminished Vance's standing, removing a principal foreign policy area from his direction. It not only disillusioned the whole State Department but also aggravated the long-term power struggle between State and the National Security Council. Brzezinski saw Strauss's appointment as both a weakening of Vance's authority and a reinforcement of his own.

Carter's chief reason for appointing Strauss was to have a high-level official primarily responsible for dealing with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. In the wake of the Camp David summit, the two leaders were constantly turning to Carter for counsel. The President had made up his mind that Vance was not strong enough to control the volatile peace negotiations, and he was not satisfied that Brzezinski was able to make decisions on his own. "Cy can't hold Begin and Sadat away from me," Carter complained to his closest White House confidants, "and Zbig is into my office every 15 minutes." The President told his aides somewhat gloomily that he believed he could not be re-elected if the peace talks collapsed. He first considered Henry Kissinger for the job but decided that the former Secretary of State could not be trusted to protect Carter's interests.

So although Carter was already depending on Strauss to direct his re-election campaign, he chose the Texan as his special envoy to the Middle East last April. Once again the narrow limits of Carter's talent pool were revealed, for Strauss had little cachet in the diplomatic field, but he would bring the President a more audacious and political style in the Middle East. "I don't care whether Cy likes it or not," Carter told his aides, anticipating a protest from Vance. The President made certain to tell Brzezinski explicitly that he wanted Strauss's role enlarged beyond that of an ordinary ambassador, no matter how it upset Vance.

It upset Vance quite a bit. The normally imperturbable Secretary was badly shaken by the decision, especially when he learned that Strauss had insisted he report directly to the President. Strauss, before he accepted the job, presented Carter with a long memo of understanding, declaring that he would not work directly for Vance or Brzezinski. Carter was startled. He told intimates that it was the first time he had ever received written conditions about an assignment from the man who was about to get it. He went along with Strauss's terms but turned over to Hamilton Jordan the delicate problem of how to resolve matters with Vance.

As soon as Vance heard the news, he rebelled and threatened to resign. That set off a back-room tempest in the Administration. The principals, Vance, Strauss, Jordan and Vice President Walter Mondale gathered that night, at the end of March, in Mondale's living room. Vance insisted that he had already yielded too much to Brzezinski in the past couple of years, as Vance put it, to protect Brzezinski against his own large insecurities. "It's not personal, it's institutional," maintained the Secretary. "It will be a terrible blow for the State Department." Mondale tried to be the peacemaker. The group stayed up until 3 o'clock in the morning with the distraught Vance refusing to budge. Strauss periodically left the room while Jordan and Mondale tried to persuade the Secretary to see it the President's way. Vance, as ever the loyal compromiser, finally went along. "He was humiliated by it," said one close friend who knew Vance's private feelings, "especially the way Strauss was trumpeting around that he didn't report directly to State."

The Strauss appointment dispirited Vance for months. Never a conceptual person, more a man to work patiently toward a solution, Vance had found the constant sparring with Ideaman Brzezinski to be wearing. He had resisted Brzezinski's combative line toward the Soviets and opposed his successful campaign to speed up normalization with China. Whenever Vance chose to challenge Brzezinski by going directly to the President, as he did over the adviser's repeated alarms about Cubans in Africa, Vance always won. But such challenges were rare. "Cy's not a good infighter," conceded one of his admirers. "He's abdicated whole subject areas to Zbig." It was that very willingness to compromise, to negotiate interminably, that eventually dampened Carter's high opinion of Vance.

Now Vance has a new nemesis in Carnivalman Strauss, who has become an indispensable ally to Carter and the Georgians. That alliance may be put to the test in the next few weeks. The ambassador is exploring the possibility of serving as a dollar-a-year man for the Government and at the same time acting as a consultant for his law firm, which has among its clients many of the country's largest oil companies. Carter and the Senate will have to decide whether this dual position might represent a conflict of interest; Strauss says he will abide by that judgment.

Strauss showed from the start that he would tolerate no mistreatment from State. In the beginning officials snubbed him, neglected to invite him to key meetings and several times actually tried to alter his outgoing cables to Begin and Sadat. A couple of months ago, the Texan was not included in a meeting with Egyptian Vice President Husny Mubarak. This infuriated the short-fused Strauss. He called one of Vance's deputies and blasted State, saying the next time he would take the issue right to Carter. "Strauss is in business for himself," said a top State Department official who is appalled at Vance's plight. "He doesn't give a goddam what Cy says."

Strauss slowly consolidated his power. He started receiving scores of calls from Jewish leaders who used to deal directly with State. Begin and Sadat were in direct touch with him. Strauss thought things were going fine when he got into his plane for the trip to Egypt and Jerusalem.

He knew there had been disagreements about a proposed U.S. resolution at the United Nations that would stress broadened support of the Palestinians. Vance and Brzezinski, in agreement for a change, had urged the President to take a tough approach. Strauss wanted to be more flexible; he wanted simply to float the idea to the leaders because he was afraid they would fight it. Strauss knew that Carter had come down on the side of the Vance-Brzezinski approach. But he was stunned when he got aboard the plane and was handed a sealed envelope that contained a rigid list of instructions about the Palestinian resolution. He had been given no room to bargain or maneuver, and his authority was reduced. The instructions were all in the name of the President but Strauss saw in them the fine hand of Brzezinski.

It was soon obvious to Strauss that the hard-line approach was not going to work. First Begin, and then, to everybody's consternation, Sadat, ridiculed the President's proposal. Sadat nervously warned Strauss that all of Carter's success in the Middle East would be destroyed if the U.S. pushed any further on the Palestinian issue. Both leaders also viewed Carter as so politically weakened at home that they questioned his determination. Strauss, now convinced that the binding instructions had weakened his own credibility with Begin and Sadat, returned home angry at his rivals.

When he got back he insisted on a meeting, and that was swiftly arranged. Vance interrupted his vacation on Martha's Vineyard; Brzezinski, about to leave town, delayed his departure. The three gathered in the Situation Room of the White House, along with Mondale, who was asked by Carter to represent him. With some heat, Strauss accused Brzezinski of writing the restrictive language in the sealed instructions, and the National Security Adviser confirmed that he had done so. Strauss bluntly laid out his understanding of his role: he had been placed in an intolerable position, and that could never happen again. He insisted that he be allowed to operate more freely. The failure of the mission left Vance and Brzezinski with no argument to make. It was jointly decided that they would recommend to the President that he submit to the U.N. no new resolution on Palestinian rights. Asked by reporters who was in charge of Middle East policy, Vance said tartly, "That remains the responsibility of the Secretary of State. Bob is in charge of the peace negotiations."

Up to this point, Brzezinski had not been displeased about Vance's distress over Strauss. The feisty Security Adviser had told intimates that he believed Strauss would eventually falter because of his lack of international experience, and this could only enhance his own standing. With Vance having already declared he would leave his job next year, and Carter devoting far less time to foreign policy, Brzezinski had become even more influential. White House aides contend privately that Brzezinski wants to succeed Vance, and he sees Strauss as a rival.

Many view Brzezinski as a loose cannon, overeager and self-promotional to a fault, but the fact is that Carter's foreign policy accomplishments are his single political strength. Brzezinski comfortably accepts a great deal of the credit. He is the principal architect of Carter's human rights policy, identifying the U.S. with developing forces of change around the world. His views on the MX missile prevailed. He was the Administration's key operator on Nicaragua and pushed his firm line for Anastasio Somoza's ouster.

Nonetheless, Brzezinski's bristling rhetoric--diplomacy by bluster, some called it--kept his colleagues nervous. Kissinger, for one, tried quietly through various Cabinet members to convince Carter that he should get rid of Brzezinski. Carter never went along, although White House senior aides say the President has developed a healthy skepticism about Brzezinski's steady stream of proposals. During the final spasms of the Iranian crisis, for instance, it was first decided that Brzezinski, not Vance, should fly over to try personally to bolster the Shah, a mission Brzezinski eagerly pushed. At the last moment, Carter was talked out of the plan, finally agreeing that it was too risky. Brzezinski was just as anxious to journey to Moscow when the SALT II negotiations stalled. "These State Department guys are too soft," he told one of his associates. "I can make the Soviets sit up and listen."

Vance, Brzezinski, Strauss: the dilemma is the President's. Whatever the values and drawbacks of these three men at the top of his foreign policy team confronting one another, hard questions remain for Carter. Is he finally going to be able to clarify the line in the chain of command? Is he going to be able to deal with the conflicting ideas and approaches and ambitions of these men, each of whom, with good reason, thinks his counsel is most closely relied on? Perhaps the troubling answer is that in trying to make use of the varying gifts of all three. Jimmy Carter has not really been willing to take charge himself.

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