Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Conclusion

Gerald Ford becomes president after Nixon resigned in the midst of the Watergate Scandal. Upon assuming the presidency, Ford immediately pardoned Nixon while Kissinger remained Secretary of State. Ford and Kissinger attempted to negotiate arms reduction agreements with the Soviets in 1975 and yet Congress at this time distrustful of the potential for the unilateral abuse of the Executive office after Nixon, refused to ratify the treaty. Further attempts at détente were creating a heightening of Cold War escalation in which the Soviets began to produce huge hydrogen missiles and both super powers intensified their hegemonic energies towards the third world. The case of Vietnam had not stopped the US practice of intervention in the third world to maintain the economic status quo, rather it led to a proliferation of US led smaller scale counter insurgency campaigns and low intensity conflict doctrines which proliferated throughout the US military intelligentsia and on the battlefields of the third world as well. In general these new military conflicts were based on small scale regional civil wars between nationalist third world factions, and foreign sponsored puppet regimes, installed to facilitate the free flow of western capital investment.

Kissinger would maintain that the failure of détente had to do with a ‘weakened’ Ford Presidency; the power to negotiate had been frustrated by a distrustful congress. The Legislative branch had come to view the evolution of the increasing power of the executive branch as it had increased during the Cold War as a growing affront to the intentions of the framers of the constitution. Furthermore, Détente had actually led to an escalation of US involvement in Vietnam due to the increased bombings of North Vietnam, and Nixon had openly toyed with the idea to use nuclear weapons to end the war. Détente when combined with US foreign policy seemed to engender a volatile brood of amoral politics. Ultimately, Ford was unable to contend with stagflation, a factor that was residual to the earlier ‘Nixon era’ Arab OPEC embargo that led to his defeat in the 1976 presidential elections.

THE CARTER DOCTRINE

"The overwhelming dependence of Western nations on vital oil supplies from the Middle East, and the pressures of change in many nations of the developing world constitute a threat to global peace, to East-West relations, and to regional stability and to the flow of oil."

Jimmy Carter is elected in 1976 relying on his image as a Washington outsider. He advanced the nation that he was bringing the moral high ground back to US foreign policy. Essentially, Carter was planning to use human rights as diplomatic leverage with the USSR and as a prelude to intervention in the third world in support of anti-leftist regimes. Carter’s agenda often contradicted with his politico-moral stance which stands to reason why now he is a better diplomat then a former head state.

Yale Historian, Gaddis Smith argues that Carter was more interested in creating clear cut foreign policy agendas then focusing on a clear cut program for human rights. However, the moral implications of the real politic weighed heavily on Carter and so he would often waffle from his original policies of strict humanitarian interventionism, in favor of US military strategic goals. However, Carter did set an important precedent in US foreign policy one of US military’s role as the world’s humanitarian police man, an ideological agenda that would endear itself to in one form or another to the rhetoric of further Presidents to come.

Lafeber and James Bill describe how Carter continued to trade with the Shah of Iran despite the repeated human rights abuses by the Shah’s SAVAK, secret police. “"In the Middle East, as James Bill has argued, the Shah of Iran was one of the world’s worst offenders against human rights, but Carter ignored the Shah’s transgressions because he needed Iran’s oil and military cooperation.”"(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 152) Carter’s waffling wasn’t just confined to Iran it also extended its sway into Latin America. In 1979, when Salvadorian troops killed four American women he imposed some sanctions. When a leftist revolt happened in El Salvador in 1980, Carter supported the same anti-leftist regime with US military hardware to keep the new leftist faction from assuming power.

Carter with the urging of his NSC advisor, Zbigniew Brezinski also wanted to maintain a system of détente with the Chinese and the Russians. However, Cyrus Vance, his secretary of state maintained that there was little to be derived from Sino-American cooperation, in that such a proposal catered to Soviet paranoia of being engulfed by a Sino US alliance. In 1979, the US formally recognized the PRC and in the UN, China was formally admitted to its position on the UN security council. The motivating factor for Sino-American accommodation stemmed from Soviet attempts to exert spheres of influence in Ethiopia, which the US reciprocated by extending their influence into Somalia. The Conflict is resolved when the SALT II treaty is signed, in the same year. However, in this same year the Soviet’s began their version of the Vietnam War with the invasion of Afghanistan, a 10 year war that led to a stalemate and a Russian withdrawal. However, the SALT II treaty never accomplished its entire target goals on arms reduction and arms proliferation continued throughout the nineteen eighties. Lafeber notes that while Carter is pressing for more arms control with the Soviet’s he is singularly calling for,.."”the largest new US weapons program in 30 years.”"(American Age, 701)

The Failure of SALT II occurred before the ink had dried on the agreement when the Soviet’s invaded Afghanistan in efforts to establish a continuing theme of gaining a foothold in the oil rich middle east. America’s economy was beginning to falter as well at this time due to increased dependence on foreign energy supplies. Carter’s response to this is twofold. One he establishes a new cabinet level post, the department of Energy, and the other was his announcement of the Carter Doctrine, which closely resembled the Eisenhower doctrine, in the way regional stability was a means to an end, so as to prevent Soviet hegemonic control over Arab oil states, which would undoubtedly have affected oil prices in the US, and vicariously the rest of the US economy as well. Carter imposed economic sanctions against the soviet’s and tried to bind Europe and Japan to take America’s initiative and impose sanctions as well. These countries generally rebuffed such attempts, to forge trade solidarity after Vietnam had taxed their currencies, hence the US muffed under Carter when he attempted to lobby for liberal unilateralist monetarist policies. During this time he also had the CIA begin supplying the Afghan Mujahadin rebels with arms and munitions.

Carter also tried to implement a Trilateral Commission comprised of American, W. European, and Japanese businessman who would regionally act in concert to preserve the economic status quo. Lafaber describes the objectives of the trilateral Commission: “Itr aimed to bridge foreign policy differences among the three most powerful hubs in the world, and to work coordinated economic trade policies before trade wars erupted.”(American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 155) However, Japan continued to rely on trade protectionism and its trade deficit with the US rose to 12 billion dollars by 1980.

The commission also ran into a number of pitfalls in its attempt to economically isolate the Middle East from the USSR, when Japan and Europe continued to trade with Moscow in defiance of US sanctions. Furthermore the Soviet’s began deploying 180 mobile SS-20 nuclear missiles that targeted all the major European cities. Europe’s leaders doubted that the US would sacrifice Chicago, for Bonn, Germany. Carter also approved the US military creation of the neutron bomb that registered low blast yields and high radiation levels designed to wipe out populations, but ostensibly designed to preserve material infrastructure.

In perhaps a bright moment of the Carter Presidency the Camp David Accords, brokered in March, 1979 managed to achieve a brief cease fire between Egypt and Israel as a result of their 1967 war in which Israel had secured portions of the Gaza strip and the West Bank as recompense for that earlier failed Egyptian offensive. The USSR is also pushing for a peace settlement and Carter managed to beat them to it bringing the Arabs to the American negotiating table first. However, to add a note of futility to the Carter Presidency, Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian President is assassinated by Arabs who see peace with Israel as the ultimate sellout to Arab identity.

Meanwhile during this time Iran is in the middle of a revolution. In 1979 the Shah is deposed by the Ayatollah and he pleads with the US for asylum and medical treatment for his terminal cancer. Carter allows him to enter the United States sparking mass riots in Tehran. This problem was exacerbated further by oil prices being ‘increased by 56% and to add further levity to the situation Iranian militants stormed the American embassy taking 76 hostages. This will cause Carter to lose the 1980 Presidential elections allowing Ronald Reagan to broker the hostage release upon assuming the Presidential office.Gary Sick one of Carter's National Security advisers maintained that he had credible evidence that the Reagan Bush election campaign had brokered a secret deal with Iran that they should wait to release the hostages until after Reagan was elected president. Sick's theory is shocking in the assertion that National Security policy is not always objective and can be partisan.

In all Carter failed to win domestic and international consensus for his foreign policy objectives. This was in part due to his being an outsider to Washington politics as well as his morals not being able to meet his politics, especially in his selective application of his human rights policy, often supporting the repressive status quo in the name of economic order and stability. Carter started out optimistic and then in the end as Gaddiss Smith notes, he then made the ‘return to militarism’ when his ideas failed him. He shifted back into the traditional Cold Warrior stance of confrontation and unknowingly cost himself the 1980 election. His increasing defense budget would set the tone for Reagan’s massive rearmament campaign as well as provide the bureaucratic impetus for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI - Star Wars.

REAGAN"S S&L Approach to Empire