Article published June 1978
In a recent interview with U. S. News and World Report, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski listed what he called the five “priorities” of the Carter Administration’s foreign policy. One comes to expect a fair amount of piffle when listening to `official spokesmen’ for any large organization, public or private. Such people find controversy at once painful and all too easy to come by, so they take care to sedate us with vagueness, irrelevance, and cant. (Those of us old enough remember President Eisenhower will recall his mastery of such techniques; once, when an aide worried about the possibility of hostile questioners at a press conference, Ike is said to have assured the fellow, “Don’t worry–I’ll just confuse them.”)
Dr. Brzezinski is no Eisenhower, but his piffle quotient surely makes many a functionary envious. The first priority he listed was “to infuse American foreign policy again with a certain measure of moral content.” This amounted to a slap at his predecessor, Henry Kissinger, whose alleged Metternichean realism offended liberals and conservatives alike. While one may have little admiration for Kissingerian moral gravitas–the gravitas is heavy but the morality isn’t–the Carter Administration’s “human rights” campaign’s “certain measure” of morality doesn’t have nearly enough of the right kind.
The second “priority” is to “concentrate on strengthening our ties” with allies and “with many regionally or internationally important powers that have surfaced in the last two or three decades”–this, “instead of being preoccupied with the contest with the Soviet Union”; Brzezinski quickly added, “that conflict still exists,” as indeed it does. But in view of the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union are the only genuine worldwide powers, such a redirection of emphasis obscures realty. One might well strengthen ties with old and new allies (Israel, for starters) with a view toward the underlying rivalry with America’s true opponent, but never at the expense of becoming distracted from that rivalry. The hackneyed but true observation that we live in a complex world necessitates more clarity of thought, not make-nice muddle-headedness. That isn’t the right measure of morality.
Speaking of muddle-headedness, the third priority is “to contain U. S.-Soviet competition, particularly through a SALT agreement that would inhibit the arms race.” “This,” Dr. Brzezinski images, “would help generate broader cooperation.” Beyond détente, it seems, Dr. Brzezinski envisions entente. At the risk of disturbing the dreamer, we must ask: cooperating on the basis of what? The extraordinary qualitative differences between the United States and the Soviet Union–moral, economic, social, legal, political, spiritual–simply offer little basis for genuine détente, let alone entente. That isn’t the right measure of morality, either.
Dr. Brzezinski claims that the Carter Administration “gives more direct attention to those crises in the world which, if left unattended, have the potential for escalating and generating a serious threat to world peace.” Insofar as this refers to the Middle East it is preposterous. One might object to the goals Kissinger wanted, and the means he used in attempting to achieve them; one cannot say he did not give as much attention to this region as Carter and Brzezinski do. Moreover, the United States government is now studiously ignoring the major Soviet-Cuban intervention in the Horn of Africa, satisfying itself with a mild protest or two, hoping that this will be “Russia’s Vietnam.” But Russia helped make America’s Vietnam by massive infusions of aid to the Hanoi government. We can only suppose that the present Administration prefers “developing closer relations” with those newly-emerged countries that the Soviets haven’t bothered to get around to, yet. What is the measure of morality in that?
Finally, the Administration would “sensitize world public opinion as well as foreign governments to the importance of such new globally significant issues” as nuclear proliferation and arms transfers. Fine: but a pattern appears. Of these five “priorities,” four have to do with comfortable self-preservation and its twin, the fear of violent death. Only the “human rights” issue, with its “certain measure” of morality, adds the leaven of self-sacrifice–or, more modestly, concern for anything other than our bodies–to this half-baked dough. “The central issue,” according to Dr. Brzezinski is that the United States is “again perceived” as “helping to shape a more congenial and decent world.” Congeniality and decency are the sort of pleasant virtues one finds at the cocktail parties Dr. Brzezinski attended when he was an academic. What participants in such gatherings frequently lacks counts more in world politics: the tougher, sharper virtues such as courage and justice that make a statesman less popular but better respected.
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