Carter Takes Charge

Buoyed by victory in Iowa, he issues a major warning to Moscow

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.

-- Thomas Paine

For Jimmy Carter, these were indeed the times that try men's souls. For weeks he had been striding angrily around the White House, frustrated over his inability to free the 50 American hostages in Tehran and outraged over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He had been uncharacteristically short-tempered with aides, sometimes snapping at them for no good reason. On occasion he seemed distant and depressed. He prayed more often than usual. Finally, this phase of Jimmy Carter's time of trial seemed to end last week as he emerged from the White House to try seriously to take charge of the nation's fortunes.

In the first real test of his campaign for reelection, he gave Senator Edward Kennedy the walloping of his life at the Iowa Democratic presidential caucuses. Without a doubt, as once predicted, Carter did "whip his ass." Then, standing in the glare of TV lights in the House of Representatives, the President sent the Soviets a forceful warning in his State of the Union address: "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." To make that warning more credible, Carter reversed a policy of just a few months ago and decided to ask Congress to authorize the registration of young Americans--perhaps including women--for the draft.

The sense of decisiveness that Carter projected in his speech was reinforced throughout the week. The House voted 386 to 12 to back the President's request that the Summer Olympics be moved from Moscow, canceled or boycotted by the West; the Senate is expected to follow suit soon. Congress granted China most-favored-nation status, which has long been denied to Moscow, meaning that tariffs on Peking's goods will be reduced to the lowest rates levied on imports from other U.S. trading partners. The Defense Department announced that the U.S. is now willing to sell China military equipment, including trucks, communications gear and early-warning radar, but no weapons. The Air Force flew several B-52s from Guam over Soviet ships in the Indian Ocean to demonstrate U.S. ability to project military power in the area. Said a Pentagon official: "If that message was lost on them, their hearing aids were turned off."

There had been advance speculation that the President was drawing up a "Carter Doctrine," something comparable to Harry Truman's 1947 decision to aid Greece and Turkey in resisting Soviet expansionism. Carter's speech was hardly that. There were too many ambiguities, too many loopholes, too many major things that should have been faced but were not. Nonetheless, the speech marked a turning point in U.S. global policy. For the first time since the Viet Nam War, a President was stating his willingness to send troops to defend U.S. vital interests in a faraway place. In explicitly extending the U.S. defense shield to Southwest Asia, Carter was officially laying to rest the so-called Nixon "Doctrine" of 1969, by which Washington was supposed to rely mostly on regional allies to protect themselves and American interests.

For Carter, this was a deep and difficult change. He had entered office believing that detente meant cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He had promised to cut military spending, withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea, reduce arms sales abroad and demilitarize the Indian Ocean. In May 1977, Carter stood in cap and gown at the University of Notre Dame commencement and exulted that the U.S. was "now free of that inordinate fear of Communism, which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear." Henceforth, he said, the U.S. would try "to persuade the Soviet Union that one country cannot impose its system of society upon another [through military force]." Despite arguments over human rights and various conflicts in Africa, Carter clung to his faith and emotionally embraced Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev when they signed the SALT II agreement at last year's Vienna summit.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Brezhnev's at best misleading explanation on the hot line to Washington struck Carter as a personal betrayal. Many said he had brought the crisis on himself, that his policies conveyed an impression to the Soviets of weakness and indecision. If that was the Soviet impression, Carter was plainly determined to wipe it out.

As the President struggled to define a U.S. response to the crises in Tehran and Afghanistan and formulate his new position on Soviet adventurism, aides found him extraordinarily preoccupied. He uncharacteristically left to them most of the day-to-day details of his re-election campaign. He came as usual to the Oval Office at 5:30 a.m., often brooding alone and scribbling notes at his big carved oak desk. He summoned outside foreign policy experts, such as former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and former U.N. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, to supplement the views that he was getting from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Almost daily, the President asked aides to obtain old Government reports and history texts on how his predecessors handled international crises. He consulted by phone with foreign leaders.

In the evening, he often worked in his living quarters until midnight, cutting back on his sleep by about an hour, to no more than five hours. Though he seemed well rested in the morning, he tired noticeably by the end of the day. He had less time for jogging, about three miles a day instead of his usual four or five.

When Rosalynn was at his side, in between her repeated campaign forays to Iowa and New England, she continued to perform her extraordinary role as the President's most trusted adviser. Around the White House she is known as a "Brzezinski-liner" because she has long shared the security adviser's hawkish views, both on the Soviets and on the plight of the American captives in Tehran. She has warned that Soviet assurances of future cooperation should be mistrusted. She has also argued that persuasion has no effect on the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, and as far back as when the hostages were first seized, she favored blockading Iran's ports.

In preparing his State of the Union speech, Carter followed his normal practice of asking aides for suggestions, then meeting with them individually and in groups to discuss their ideas. It quickly became apparent that even though he was beset by inflation and other economic problems at home, he wanted the speech to be devoted mostly to foreign policy and that he wanted to take a stronger approach to Moscow than had previously been favored by the State Department.

One major debate within Carter's inner circle was over whether he should call for revival of draft registration, which ended in 1976 when Congress put the Selective Service System in hibernation (see box). Carter was opposed to restoring the draft itself, but Vance and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued that by resuming Selective Service registration, Carter would underscore his intention to stand firm against further Soviet expansionism. Carter was still not persuaded, and draft registration was not part of the speech that he took with him to Camp David on the weekend before he was to deliver his address.

At the presidential retreat, with 10 advisers but his wife, Carter practically rewrote the entire speech. On Saturday he inserted draft registration to give the address more bite.

By the time Carter returned to Washington on Monday, he had a new speech that an aide described as "tougher than what went with him to Camp David." It was a hard, anti-Soviet address that largely reflected Brzezinski's views, rather than those of Vance. Said a senior State Department official: "Zbig's finally got his cold war." Indeed, it struck some foreign policy experts as ironic that Brzezinski's longstanding advocacy of a tough line had apparently been vindicated by a crisis that his arguments, his Moscow-baiting and his tilt toward Peking may have helped to cause.

That evening, Carter took a break to watch the caucus results from Iowa on TV. At 9:30 p.m., Appointments Secretary Phillip Wise phoned to congratulate Carter on his overwhelming victory. The President and his wife were ecstatic. Said an aide: "You could practically hear him grinning from ear to ear." Rosalynn was even more emotional. Said another staffer: "She was so excited that she was just flying." Next morning, Carter greeted a top adviser with "the biggest smile that I've seen in a long time," but he quickly got back to the speech. When another aide raised the subject of politics later in the morning, the President snapped: "Get out. Stop bothering me. I don't have time to talk about it."

By then, some key aides were objecting that the address drew too specific a line against the Soviets and contained too many details. It described, for example, how U.S. forces would eventually be based at defensive facilities around the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean (the U.S. is negotiating for use of ports and airfields in Kenya, Oman and Somalia). It was argued that by making the speech more ambiguous, the President would retain more flexibility on critical questions, such as what specific Soviet actions would constitute a threat against U.S. interests in the Gulf region and how the U.S. would respond. Another debate was over how Carter should refer to the area he was proposing to defend. He finally decided that "the oilfields" sounded too crass, and settled on "the Persian Gulf region."

By Wednesday morning Carter had slightly blurred the speech, disappointing the hawkish faction among his White House advisers, who feared that the Soviets would view it as mostly rhetoric. One of the President's aides took consolation in describing the speech as "forcefully ambiguous." Vance was also unhappy with the rhetoric, but for a different reason. According to a close associate, he was concerned that the language was too flamboyant, giving the impression that Carter was overreacting and raising the danger that he would not be able to deliver on his threat of repelling a Soviet assault in the Persian Gulf.

That evening, as Carter stood at the polished walnut lectern, he looked nervous for only a moment, first licking and then biting his upper lip. Then he began moving somberly but smoothly through the 32-minute address, before a packed audience of top Administration officials, Supreme Court Justices, Congressmen, Senators and diplomats--and a TV audience of tens of millions.

Among his key points:

> He is firmly opposed to sending a U.S. Olympic team to Moscow because of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan. (This was greeted with 15 seconds of applause, the longest ovation of the speech.)

> The long-pending CIA charter must be enacted to improve U.S. intelligence. The legislation would tighten the agency's control over sensitive information and broaden the range of covert activities that it could conduct without specific presidential approval.

> Energy legislation left from last year, including the windfall profits tax, must be passed promptly. U.S. dependence on foreign oil is "a clear and present danger to our nation's security," said Carter. But he did not call for any new energy measures, and he failed to emphasize the obvious need for an all-out drive to cut U.S. oil consumption.*

All in all, it was one of the best-received speeches of Carter's presidency. It was firm, measured, strongly felt. He was stopped by applause 20 times. As he left the House chamber, he waved exuberantly, grinned broadly and plunged into the crowd like a campaigner, grabbing for arms with both hands.

Reaction to the speech in Congress was sharply partisan. Democratic Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, a proponent of increasing military strength and generally no Carter ally on foreign policy issues, called the address "a good beginning on hammering out a doctrine [on Southwest Asia]."

South Dakota Senator George McGovern, who favors less military spending, described the speech as "a good and constructive effort." Florida Democrat Richard Stone, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on the Near East, said that Carter outlined "a clear containment doctrine, and, if it means what it implies, it is the strongest statement that any President in recent years has made." By contrast, House Minority Leader John Rhodes of Arizona accused Carter of "rattling the scabbard without anything in it." Said Senate Acting Minority Leader Ted Stevens of Alaska: "If the Carter Doctrine had been in effect before Afghanistan, we'd be at war with the Soviet Union now. We're attempting to speak strongly while carrying a short stick."

The initial Soviet reaction also involved sticks. Said Soviet newspaper Izvestia: "The Carter Doctrine is an attempt to revive President Theodore Roosevelt's 'big stick' policy. [It portends a] rapid and global interference with a view to suppressing the national liberation movement of the peoples and protecting the colonial interests of the dollar empire."

Among U.S. allies in Europe, only Britain, which has consistently backed the U.S. in the Afghanistan crisis, expressed immediate support for Carter. With Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher nodding agreement, Deputy Foreign Secretary Sir Ian Gilmour declared in the House of Commons: "We and our American allies will use all possible measures to contain this [Soviet] threat." A West German Chancellery official complained that Carter's "warning about the Gulf states could have been made more subtly. A lower, very steady tone would be better than stridency." Many foreign diplomats in Washington agreed. Said a French diplomat who represents the Common Market: "Carter's rhetoric is tough, but the program is not." Added an official in the British embassy: "The proof of Carter's intentions will be in the execution. If you don't follow up, you risk inviting Soviet influence into the area."

That may be, at least in the short run, a critical deficiency in Carter's policy. The U.S. at present does not have the military forces to repel any Soviet invasion of the Persian Gulf area. The U.S. now has 21 warships, including two aircraft carriers, in the Indian Ocean. But their planes can be used only for lightning strikes. Pentagon officials admit that the U.S. would require at least a month of preparation before landing units that could fight for any length of time. The problem is primarily one of supply. The troops could be moved in quickly, but the U.S. lacks the ships or the planes to deliver all the equipment required by a modern army: from tanks and trucks to food and fuel.

The President decided last fall to assign 100,000 men--basically members of the Marine Corps's 1st and 3rd divisions and the Army's 82nd and 101st airborne divisions--to a Rapid Deployment Force that eventually will be able to respond quickly to emergencies anywhere in the world. The force will be supplied by a fleet of 15 ships, most of them stationed near areas of crisis, and an undetermined number of new cargo planes probably based in the U.S. Total cost: about $10 billion. But the ships and planes exist only on drawing boards. The force is not expected to be in operation for at least three years. Scoffs Richard Helms, the ex-CIA director and former Ambassador to Iran: "What is a doctrine without power?"

Another uncertainty about Carter's policy is his unwillingness to define the extent of the Persian Gulf area or what U.S. "vital interests" really are. A senior Administration official tried to make a virtue out of this imprecision, maintaining that it gives Carter room to maneuver. Moreover, if Carter went so far as to draw a clear line against the Soviets, he might inadvertently encourage adventurism on the other side of that line. But the Soviets are just as likely to regard Carter's ambiguity as a sign that he himself is unclear about the area covered by his warning.

The minimum U.S. interests in the area are obvious. Raymond Hare, a ranking U.S. ambassador in the Middle East in the 1950s, summed them up as "right of transit, access to petroleum and absence of Soviet military bases." But how willing are the countries involved to have the U.S. intervene to protect those interests? A quarter of a century ago, the U.S. tried to answer that by helping to organize a Southwest Asian defensive alliance that included Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, but the fall of the Shah last year brought the end of that alliance.

As Carter considered the prospect of some new alliance, he could only be vague. Said he: "We are prepared to work with other countries in the region to share a cooperative security framework that respects differing values and political beliefs, yet which enhances the independence, security and prosperity of all."

The statement had its origins in a policy memorandum that Brzezinski sent Carter in February 1979, after the Shah's fall. Brzezinski proposed that the U.S. form a protective umbrella over North Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. It would include signed understandings with several governments in the area--at the very least with Egypt, Jordan and Israel--and an American military shield that would stretch as far west as Morocco. If Carter is still thinking along those lines, the shield now has been extended as far east as Pakistan.

Because of rivalries and internal instabilities in the region, no alliance in the NATO mold is even remotely possible. But a senior White House adviser insisted last week: "There could be a variety of relationships, depending on the nature of the security interests of the countries concerned, their relationships with us or one another." These might include economic and military aid, permission for the U.S. to use airfields and seaports, or promises of mutual assistance in the event of attack. Still, Carter's "security framework" seems an idea that was launched with only the hope that support for cooperative arrangements with the U.S. would grow with more obvious Soviet threats.

It is far from certain that this will happen. Says James Akins, a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now a consultant on Persian Gulf business: "It would be a grave error to think that the moderate Arab nations regard the Soviets as the enemy. At this point the consensus is that the superpowers are equally evil." Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah criticized both Washington and Moscow last week and urged Arab countries to develop "a common strategy to stand up to superpower pressures." He added: "The occupation of Arab territories and Jerusalem by Israel, with American support, is no less worrisome than the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan." In the United Arab Emirates, the newspaper al-Ittihad complained: "The big powers only want us as a market for weapons, a source of oil and an experimental battlefield." Said a top Western diplomat in the Middle East: "The Gulf states want to be securely defended, but they also want any U.S. presence to be beyond the horizon."

As Akins and other experts note, any U.S. defense agreement with the Saudis and other Arab countries is probably impossible until the Palestinian problem is settled or until there is a clear sign of major progress. The so-called autonomy talks between Egypt and Israel on the future of Palestinians in the West Bank are as of now hopelessly stalled. Both sides are talking of the need for a new Camp David summit to break the deadlock. Yet Carter, who will have to exert more pressure on the Israelis if there is to be any progress, recommended no policy changes in this crucial matter--the one that could most quickly win U.S. support in the Persian Gulf area.

Carter's speech also failed to deal with the complexity of potential crises in the Persian Gulf area. The threat to the U.S. is not so clear cut as a Soviet invasion of the oilfields. Hardly anyone expects that. Instead, the U.S. faces the same kind of challenges in Southwest Asia that have frustrated Washington for several years: local revolts, radicalism, tribal rivalries, religious extremism and instability bordering on anarchy. The oilfields of the Persian Gulf are in jeopardy not so much because of Soviet tanks in Afghanistan as because of local outbreaks like the dissident Arab invasion of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca and the Iranian militants' seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The biggest disaster that has befallen Western interests in the area in the past decade remains the collapse of the Shah--for which Moscow was not responsible. And the worst threat to Western interests in the near future is a spread of turmoil to Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, for which the Soviets might or might not be responsible--and for which Carter's proposals offer no remedy.

This does not mean, of course, that the area is beyond salvation. In a negative sense, Soviet aggression often brings a sobering new sense of the need for defensive action. The Saudi monarchy, the Pakistani military government and the crisis-prone leaders of Turkey may be sufficiently frightened by the example of Afghanistan, and impressed by the new look of the Carter Administration, to become more amenable to U.S. efforts to protect them and help them put their houses in order. Perhaps the Saudis will be more receptive to American pressure for a crackdown on corruption, one of several slow-burning fuses in Riyadh. Perhaps Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq will allow the U.S. to push him more quickly toward restoring a broad-based democratic government.

But for these things to happen, Carter will have to mount a long diplomatic campaign on several fronts. Observed a top aide: "Our program is for tomorrow more than today, and it calls for a sustained effort, not just a single knee jerk."

To build his prestige in the Persian Gulf region, Carter could try new approaches to solving the hostage crisis in Tehran; he took a step in this direction last week by urging Iran to recognize the Soviet Union as by far its greatest threat. To win respect and influence throughout the Muslim world, he could lean on Israel to settle the Palestinian problem. He also could push harder for American energy independence, which would free the U.S. from OPEC blackmail. At the same time, he could plan on eventually resuming his campaign for Senate approval of the SALT II pact, for stabilization of the superpowers' strategic capabilities would benefit the U.S. as well as the Soviet Union, and the longer that treaty is delayed, the more inevitable will be a major new nuclear arms race.

In international relations as in domestic U.S. politics, perceptions can be almost as important as actions, and image can be almost as important as reality. Is the President perceived to be tough, decisive, realistic? Is the U.S. perceived to be standing up to the Soviet Union? Until recently, the answer was no. Last week Carter sought to correct those problems of perception and image, and in large measure he succeeded. As Commander in Chief, he made the U.S. sound as though it is determined, in a way that it was not before, to stand up to the Soviet Union.

*Carter also blamed imported oil for much of the U.S.'s inflation problem. Three days earlier, on NBC's Meet the Press, he had claimed that "all the increases [in prices] for practical purposes of inflation rates since I have been in office have been directly attributable to increases in OPEC oil prices." It was a stunning misstatement, which he corrected in his State of the Union address, in which he accurately described OPEC's price hikes as "the single biggest factor in the inflation rate last year." Carter's chief inflation fighter, Alfred Kahn, told a congressional committee last week that 2.2 percentage points of last year's 13.3% inflation rate were directly due to higher energy prices.

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