NATO Divided, NATO United: The Evolution of an Alliance by Lawrence Kaplan

Author:Lawrence Kaplan [Lawrence Kaplan]
Language: eng
Format: epub

EUROPE AND THE CARTER INITIATIVES

The successful presidential candidacy of Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia offered a welcome change for the NATO allies. As with every president, Carter entered office determined to distinguish himself from his predecessors, and immediately did so. An outsider to the Democratic Party, President Carter had won a reputation for honesty and efficiency as governor of Georgia. A born-again Christian, he intended to apply moral principles to foreign relations in a manner that would contrast sharply with Nixon's or Kissinger's. Equally important was his conception of a seamless world in which every issue was interconnected. By this example, the United States would exhibit to the world that moral power could serve mankind. There would be none of the manipulation of power that had characterized American policy in the recent past.

A successful peanut farmer and an engineer educated at the U.S. Naval Academy, he fitted into no clear mold beyond a vague idealism tinged with populism. It is unlikely that he would have made his way to the White House if the Vietnam War had not turned the nation against the Washington establishment. Hardworking and intelligent, he was also obsessive to a fault about detail. Whether these qualities were sufficient guarantees for success in the management of foreign relations was quickly tested.

His troubles grew out of a lack of experience in foreign affairs that was reflected in his choices of secretary of state and national security advisor. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, a veteran of the McNamara Pentagon, embraced the president's wish to change the nature of America's foreign policy objectives. Rather than dwell on the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet bloc or even on the slow and uncertain steps toward detente, Carter intended to reorient the direction of American foreign policy from East-West to North-South problems. Following his moral compass, the president saw the source of future instability in the world arising from the inequality of wealth and resources between the First World and the Third World. In this reformulation of policy, the conflict with the Second World should be quickly liquidated as an impediment to the more pressing issues facing Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia. Nuclear weaponry in this context should be removed from the relationship with the Warsaw bloc as soon as possible. The rule of law should govern international relations.

Carter's inexperience in foreign affairs accounted for allowing his grand design to be translated into action by two able but conflicting personalities. His national security advisor was Zbigniew Brzezinski. A Harvard-educated professor of government at Columbia University, Brzezinski was knowledgeable and articulate about the problems of a multipolar world. With his European background and slight but impressive Polish accent he could not help but be compared with Henry Kissinger. Although he professed to share Carter's abhorrence of the former secretary's method of diplomacy, his deep suspicions of the Soviet role in eastern Europe colored his advice to the president and tended to keep East-West relations at the top of the administration's agenda.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.