Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVII, Energy Crisis, 1974–1980

276. Telegram From the Department of State to All Diplomatic and Consular Posts¹

Washington, July 9, 1980, 2239Z.

180781. Subject: Highlights of Venice Summit, June 22–23, and Follow-Up Action. Ref: (A) Secto 04021, (B) State 177830.²

1. The Venice Summit was a well-prepared, highly successful, and harmonious event. The sessions were marked by a strong sense of unity—“we are all in the same gondola”, as the Japanese Foreign Minister said—and an awareness that the difficult decisions that will need to be taken in the period ahead will be less difficult if the industrial democracies act together. Energy dominated the economic discussions and Afghanistan the political. Participants reached a common assessment of the strategic importance of these and related challenges facing the Western world, as the communiqués make clear. Their language is strong, forthright, and unambiguous; the positions and decisions are fully consistent with, and indeed supportive of, US policies. Whether the long-term goals the principals endorsed at Venice will be given effect will depend on sustained follow-up action by all the Summit countries.

2. The communiqués are being repeated to all diplomatic and consular posts: the “Declaration of the Venice Summit”,³ which is the major statement on key economic issues; the separate political communiqué on Afghanistan, Secto 04021; the statements on hijacking, and on refugees.⁴ Posts have already received the Summit declaration on the taking of hostages, State 177830.

3. For the first time since the economic summits were initiated in 1975, one of the main sessions in the two-day period was set aside for political discussion. The other two sessions were devoted to the economic agenda. In addition, the participants took their meals together, the Heads of Government in one group, the Foreign Ministers in another, and the Finance and Energy Ministers in a third group, at all of which there were useful wide-ranging informal discussions. The Summit also provided opportunities for bilateral meetings. President Carter met separately with each of the Heads of Government and with the President of the EEC Commission.⁵ Thus the value of the Summit meeting lies not only in the decisions reached but also, and equally important, in the expanded contacts and understanding among national leaders that the two-day meeting encouraged. It lies also in the benefits derived from the preparatory process and follow-up. The work of preparing this Summit began in February and served not only to resolve contentious issues which would otherwise have required the attention of heads of government, but also gave impetus and direction to other international activities, particularly the IEA and OECD Ministerials. As a result, Summit participants were free to spend a larger part of their limited time together discussing broad policy issues. Further, the preparatory process involved frequent discussions among a range of officials from the Summit countries covering all of the issues covered in the communiqué. This process fosters a higher level of mutual understanding and compromise than would be the case without the Summit. Organized follow-up is also an integral part of the Summit process, helping to assure that commitments undertaken by Heads of Government are pursued. The Summit series will continue with the seventh Summit meeting scheduled to take place in Canada in 1981.

4. Political Discussion. The introduction of a separate political discussion at the Economic Summit was natural, given the strategic importance of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the opportunity the Venice Summit offered the Heads of Government to share their assessments of this event face to face. The principals confirmed the strong Western reaction to the Soviet aggression. The advance work on the political agenda and communiqué prepared the leaders to deal promptly and directly with the Soviet ploy in announcing the withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan on the eve of the Summit. The result was solid Summit unity in calling for complete Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

5. Economic Discussions. Energy was clearly the central issue. As the President said on arriving at Andrews Air Force Base, “the one word that permeated all of the discussions was oil.”⁶ It occupied more than 75 percent of the time devoted to the economic agenda. “Unless we can deal with the problems of energy, we cannot cope with other problems” says the Summit Declaration in its opening paragraph. It recognizes OPEC’s responsibility for exacerbating inflation, recession, and unemployment in the industrialized world, and undermining and in some cases destroying the prospects for growth in the developing countries. The Declaration lays out at some length the essential elements of a strategy agreed among the seven nations to free themselves from their excessive dependence on imported oil within this decade. The main elements are conservation of oil in all sectors of their economies where substantial savings in the use of oil are possible, and reliance on fuels other than oil to meet the energy needs of the future—coal, nuclear, synthetics, and renewable sources—whose potential to increase supply is estimated at the equivalent of 15–20 million barrels daily of oil by 1990. By carrying out the agreed strategy, the participants expect that the share of oil in total energy demand will be reduced in the Summit countries from 53 percent now to about 40 percent by 1990, that collective energy use will increase only 60 percent as fast as GNP (the ratio used to be one to one), and that collective oil consumption in 1990 will be significantly below present levels. The Declaration notes the mutual dependence of the industrialized democracies, the oil exporting countries, and the non-oil developing countries for the realization of their economic aspirations, and adds, as the Western countries have said many times before, that the participants “would welcome a constructive dialogue . . . between energy producers and consumers in order to improve the coherence of their policies.”

6. On his return from the Summit, President Carter said of the energy talks, “We recognize that we must break the relationship between economic growth in the future and our dependence on energy; in other words, to have more growth for less energy . . . Obviously our over-dependence on foreign oil takes away our own basic security, the right that we have to make our own decisions . . . Oil politics is literally changing the interrelationship among nations. We must stand united, cooperate whenever we can, and meet a common challenge to the security and certainty of the future brought about by rapidly increasing uncontrollable prices of oil, and excess dependence by all of us on imports of oil.”

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to energy.]

Muskie

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, D800329–0967. Limited Official Use; Immediate. Drafted by Ruth S. Gold, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs; cleared by Hormats and Treat and in EUR/RPE, EA/J, S/P, E, and the Treasury Department; and approved by Cooper.
2. Telegram Secto 4021, June 22, contains the Political Communiqué from the Venice Summit. (Ibid., D800303–0574) Telegram 177830 to all diplomatic and consular posts, July 6, contains the Venice Declaration on the Taking of Hostages. (Ibid., D800324–0816) All of the statements issued at the Summit, the Final Declaration of June 23, and Carter’s interview in Venice with reporters at the Summit’s conclusion are printed in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1980, pp. 1170–1204. For Carter’s personal recollections of the Summit, see White House Diary, pp. 439–442.
3. Transmitted in telegram 192218, July 21. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, D800349–0815)
4. Transmitted in telegram 184724, July 13. (Ibid., D800336–0955)
5. Carter’s notes from the Summit are in the Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Subject File, Box 38, Presidential Memoranda of Conversation, 5/80.
6. For the full text of his remarks on June 26, see Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1980, pp. 1234–1236.