An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy

10. SALT AND THE SENATE

107 10 SALT AND THE SENATE Jimmy Carter’s plane from the Geneva StrategicArms LimitationTreaty (SALT) talks landed on June 18, 1979, at Andrews Air Base. Two hours later the president was addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress, urging support of the treaty he had just brought back with him fromVienna.The SALT IITreaty,he explained,was not a favor the United States was doing for the Soviet Union. It was a move to serve U.S. goals of security and survival. Militarily, he noted,“Our power is second to none.”Economically, diplomatically, and politically, he said, the United States was so strong that “we need fear no other country.”A nuclear war would bring“horror and destruction and massive death that would dwarf all the combined wars of man’s long and bloody history.”1 Even with powder to hide the fatigue under his eyes, and dressed in a fresh suit, Carter appeared tired and the assembled audience greeted his speech halfheartedly. Only when he condemned the war and urged Congress to keep U.S. defenses strong and to counter Soviet expansionism was there any applause.2 The outlook for favorable action on the treaty was not positive at this time. U.S. Senate Majority Whip Alan Cranston (D-CA) said he had only fifty-eight votes, nine short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Partisans on the right were suggesting that they would amend the treaty to death—a possible rerun of the tactics used to deflect Woodrow Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles. Partisans on the left suggested that the new agreements had not accomplished much in the way of arms reduction.3 Polls, moreover , revealed no strong public sentiment for SALT that the president could build upon to win over senators on the borderline. Anti-Soviet feelings in the country had increased in 1978 and early 1979. After the Vienna conference, opposition to the treaty increased. Eighty-two percent of the public had heard about the treaty, but only 39 percent of these supported it, while 22 percent were against it and 21 percent had no opinion.4 The administration had contributed to the tepid political climate. Carter’s decision not to deploy the neutron bomb and his cancellation of the B-1 bomber were widely viewed by hawkish critics as indicators that he was too“soft” in countering the Soviet military threat.5 And his characterization of the USSR in the Horn of Africa as an atheistic nation and a strategic threat to the United States reinforced this anti-Soviet sentiment in the public. Indeed,as Senator Frank Church toldAnatoly Dobrynin in 1978,theWhite House had come to depend on a primitive anticommunism, a tactic that hurt the administration ’s aims to get a SALT II agreement through the Senate.6 In one of his letters to Moscow, Dobrynin explained quite clearly what was going on: 108 EARLY COMMITMENTS Flirting with the conservative moods in the country (the strength of which he at times clearly overestimates), Carter frequently resorts to anti-Soviet rhetoric in order to, as they say, win cheap applause. The danger is found in the fact that such rhetoric is picked up and amplified by the means of mass communication, in Congress, and so forth. Ultimately, as often happens in the USA, the rhetoric is transformed, influences policy, and sometimes itself becomes policy.7 Carter had also deferred to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA), enhancing his considerable influence in Washington political circles. Carter needed Jackson for his energy program, but the president’s consultations with Jackson on Soviet foreign policy had been counterproductive. He would never win Jackson over to a SALT II agreement that the Soviets would sign. Indeed, Carter’s initial SALT proposals were close to a long memo of Jackson’s, providing public markers that opponents of SALT II could portray as appeasement.8 Even then, in November 1977, Brzezinski had to tell the president that he should not personally meet with Jackson.9 There were other reasons for this lack of public support. The administration had been slow in its attempt to counter the growing anti-SALT efforts of organizations such as the Committee on the Present Danger. In the spring of 1977, Hamilton Jordan’sdeputy,LandonButler,hadpushedfortheestablishmentof aGeneralAdvisory Committee on SALT and suggested possible contacts with both hard-line and progressive leaders.10 But, as the administration focused its efforts on the Panama Canal issue, months went by without anything being done. Movement on...