ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Carter Adminstration, United States National Security PolicyUnited States President Jimmy Carter, left center, and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, right center, shake hands amidst applause in the Vienna ImperialHofburg Palace after signing the SALT II treaty, June 8, 1979. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.In the 1976 presidential election, the Democrats choseCarter, a one-term governor of Georgia as their standardbearer specifically because he could capitalize on the post-Watergate cynicism about politicians. A graduate of theUnited States Naval Academy, a born-again Baptist, and apeanut farmer, the folksy Carter spent the campaign stressingboth his honesty and his lack of inexperience in thebyways of Washington politics. He promised to use hisengineering education and his experience as an officer ona nuclear submarine to be a hands-on manager whowould establish systemization in government. In office,Carter’s strong concern with the minutiae of administrativeprocedure left him less able to assume the chiefleadership role among top levels of government.Carter sought to avoid the extreme centralization ofpower that had characterized the Nixon administration’ssecurity policy. He expected to serve as a policy initiatorand manager who would make decisions from the rangeof views presented to him by his senior advisors. He sawSecretary of State Cyrus Vance as the principal advisor forforeign policy, while the National Security Council wouldplay a less active and assertive role than in previousadministrations. In practice, the Carter administration hadtwo secretaries of state. National Security Advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski, a man accustomed to aggressive debate, provedparticularly adept at gaining the president’s confidence.He also became an outspoken advocate of the administration’ssecurity policy. Vance publicly competed withBrzezinski for the position of chief presidential advisor, asituation that left some congressional members confusedabout the chain of authority. Vance ultimately resigned in1980 in protest over the failed rescue attempt of theAmerican hostages held by Iran. His replacement, EdmundS. Muskie, had too brief a term to make a significant impact.While suffering from management strategy weaknesses,the Carter administration may have been troubledfrom the start by growing problems facing the UnitedStates. Dwindling resources had led to a severe energycrisis that worsened when renewed violence struck theMiddle East. This situation prompted Carter to issue a newforeign policy declaration that marked energy as a matterof national security. The Carter Doctrine stated that theUnited States would employ force if necessary to protectits continued access to the oil fields of the Middle East. Theadministration also pushed for the development of syntheticfuels, but Congress only partially funded this request.Like Nixon and Ford before him, Carter attempted toreduce tensions with the Soviet Union. The controversialStrategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) was similar toSALT I in that it did not do much to slow down the nuclear166 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security