Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume I, Foundations of Foreign Policy

150. Memorandum From the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Lake) to Secretary of State Muskie ¹

Washington, June 21, 1980

SUBJECT

• Issues for the Coming Months

This memorandum suggests a way you might wish to order priority issues for the remainder of this year. It represents my personal views; I have not had time before your trip to clear it with others.²

I have divided these issues into three categories:

(1) core issues which deserve your close personal attention;

(2) priority issues you could delegate but should monitor closely;

(3) secondary issues for which responsibility should be clearly fixed, and which need only be monitored by you in a general way.

I suggest that, however you decide to order these issues, you use a listing such as this to make sure that responsibility for each issue is clearly fixed among Chris, the Under Secretaries, and the Assistant Secretaries.

I hope this listing of issues also provides useful background in deciding on specific accomplishments to pursue and in choosing speech topics.

Presidential campaigns are not periods conducive to grand accomplishments. This period is no exception. The Soviets, the Europeans, Middle Eastern leaders and others—as in similar periods before—will prefer to wait for our election results before committing themselves to us on most issues.

But much can still be done:

—In a few areas, tangible accomplishments are possible.

—We can position ourselves—and, to some degree, events—for early accomplishments in the second term.

—As an essential means to this positioning, you are in an extraordinarily strong position to explain publicly our policies in important areas, clearly and directly.

Unhappily, the specific accomplishments which might be possible—e.g., in southern Africa, in Law of the Sea negotiations—do not generally lie in areas of current, central concern: our relations with our allies, East-West relations, our position in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and the state of the international economy.

Despite this fact, the major problems we face in these central areas require your putting them at the core of your personal agenda.

We must give our allies, our adversaries and our public a clear sense of a strategy for dealing with expanded Soviet capabilities and involvement; with the economic challenges afflicting the industrial democracies; and with the Third World instabilities and tensions that involve the interests of the superpowers and their allies.

By the end of the year, we can realistically seek to be in a position in which:

—We and the allies are closer to agreement on the strategic implications of Afghanistan. There will not be complete agreement and we will still need to be pressing on them our view of the relationship between deterrence and detente, but the current trans-Atlantic sniping can at least be muted. The temptation to score points off each other in our and some of our allies’ electoral campaigns will continue to be strong; succumbing will continue to be shortsighted and, in the long run, politically damaging.

—The Soviets (and our allies) understand that progress in East-West relations is possible if Moscow shows restraint, and that we remain committed to arms control.

—And, perhaps most important, we will be able to move rapidly on the two key issues that can unlock other doors: SALT II and the Arab-Israeli negotiations.

One caveat before turning to a discussion of these core issues: while they should be given priority attention in your public statements, we must avoid giving the impression that these issues now represent the sum and substance of all our foreign policies. To the degree that we have made our response to Afghanistan synonymous with our foreign policy in recent months, we have made the Russians seem stronger than they are; the U.S. weaker than we are; our allies concerned that there has been a basic American shift back towards a bipolar view of the world; and our foreign policy appear more reactive than it is.

At Tab A³ is a summary of broader themes you may wish to review as background for your coming speeches.

[Omitted here is the remainder of the memorandum.]

1. Source: Carter Library, Staff Office Files, Donovan Files, Box 1, Foreign Policy Study, 1980–85 [CF, O/A 706]. Secret; Nodis. Printed from an uninitialed copy. There is no indication that Muskie saw the memorandum.
2. Reference is to Muskie’s departure for the Venice Economic Summit (see footnote 6, Document 145). Following the meeting, Muskie traveled to Ankara to attend the NATO Ministerial meeting and to Kuala Lumpur to meet with ASEAN Foreign Ministers.
3. Not found attached. Tab A, a 3-page paper entitled “Themes,” is attached to a draft of the memorandum in the National Archives, RG 59, Policy and Planning Staff—Office of the Director, Records of Anthony Lake, 1977–1981: Lot 82D298, Box 18, TL Sensitive Six Months Project 5/80.