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

51. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski) to President Carter¹

Washington, July 8, 1977

SUBJECT

• NSC Weekly Report #20

1. Opinion

A Time of Testing

I believe that your first period of true testing in international affairs is now upon us. With the Soviets, with our European Allies, and with the Middle East, you confront important obstacles to achieving the objectives you have set for yourself and for carrying through the lines of policy which you have publicly articulated.

How you handle each of these issues will have an important impact on all of them in terms of how other world leaders assess the nature of your statecraft. It is worthwhile to examine each of these issues separately in some detail.

Brezhnev and SALT

For reasons that are in part tactical but which may have more profound motivation, the Soviets have sought to put you in a box. While we are conducting “business as usual” on many fronts (CTB, the Indian Ocean, Scientific Cooperation, etc.), the Soviets, including Brezhnev, have been publicly unresponsive to our many initiatives and, indeed, have claimed our relationship is poor. They have tied an improvement in these relations quite specifically to SALT, making our acceptance of their position the litmus test. At the same time, since May they have, in effect, adjourned the substantive discussion of major SALT issues until September at the earliest, while continuing their public attacks on our SALT position and dismissing the B–1 decision.² Their strategy appears to be to put maximum pressure on you at the eleventh hour of the existing agreement and, in the meantime, keep up a drumfire of public pressure in the hopes that American opinion will cause you to compromise on key points.³

Looking backward, it may well be that the Soviets have misinterpreted our willingness to compromise last May on a three-part SALT agreement.⁴ Coming only six weeks after we tabled our comprehensive proposal they may have felt that the rough treatment they gave us at the time paid off and may believe that further public pressure along those lines may pay off again. They seem to be adopting a similar attitude on the summit: we wanting it and they putting it off.

Our Nervous Allies

Our European allies are always anxious. If we do not get along with the Soviets, they are concerned about the threat to them. If we get along well with the Soviets, they fear condominium over them.⁵ The allies are particularly anxious with a change of Administrations. The Soviets traditionally have sought to drive a wedge between the United States and the Europeans at each change of Administration by suggesting either that we will not defend their interests or that we are incompetent to do so.

The Soviets are making the same effort again. Their opportunities are enhanced by the political and personal insecurities of several West European leaders. That this is, in fact, a campaign is clear by the fact that they are using the human rights issue on which Schmidt, in particular, is vulnerable because of his desire to liberate ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

The human rights issue is being portrayed by the Soviets as a campaign which you undertook “out of the blue.” It is important to bear in mind that we have had indications that make clear that there was a basic decision to crack down on Soviet dissidents in the middle of last year.⁶ In fact, Sakharov’s letter to you was provoked by widespread fear among the dissidents that the Soviets were about to launch such a campaign.⁷ While the reasons for the antidissident campaign are not clear, and are most probably domestic in nature, the effort to blame your Human Rights policy is a Soviet tactic to drive a wedge between you and our allies.

The Middle East

There is no question but that your objectives and your approach in the Middle East face a serious test in the next several weeks. There is strong Israeli and domestic opposition to the objectives you have set forward and the way in which we have sought to stimulate movement. The delicacy of the issues, and the fact that the Arabs and the Israelis interpret the same things differently, has made the need for a steady U.S. course all the more important if our policy is to remain clear. For example, it is unfortunate that we are now receiving reports that your efforts to explain our position to American Jewish leaders yesterday is being interpreted by some of them as signifying that pushing you hard enough pays off.⁸

The Challenge

In SALT, the Middle East, and on human rights, it may well be that ultimately we will have to adjust our objectives and our approach. However, the way we do this is extremely important.⁹ If we appear to be responding to the latest pressure, we will simply invite greater pressure, and unfortunately each area impacts on the other. Everyone is taking our measure and assessing our steadfastness: the Soviets in general, the Middle Easterners in regard to their problem; our allies because of their dependence on us; and even the Chinese are talking tough.

Personally, I do not believe that any significant alteration in our approach is yet required on any of these issues. But if we should decide to make changes, it is crucially important that we do so in a deliberate manner.

Thus, in the next several weeks, we should give extraordinary care to public as well as background remarks concerning SALT, the Middle East, and our relations with our allies. We should spread the word throughout the government that we wish to convey a patient, determined, yet relaxed attitude toward these major issues. Also, you should take the time to lay out at some depth your views to our allies (like Schmidt), so that they sense their larger strategic dimension instead of just listening to them. As for possible modifications in our approach, you will have an opportunity to consider them when you receive the results of the PRC’s work on the Middle East,¹⁰ Human Rights,¹¹ and separate memoranda being prepared for you on US-Soviet relations (the assessment and the list of your initiatives).¹²

Whither the Federal Republic of Germany?

The second of the two opinion pieces this week was written by Colonel William Odom of my staff. Bill served a total of 8 years in both East and West Germany. He was also an Assistant Army Attache in Moscow from 1972 to 1974. His opinion piece is interesting—and timely—reading in light of Chancellor Schmidt’s impending visit.¹³

“The division of Germany at the end of World War II put the major issue of Europe in this century on ice: the emergence of German power and the relative decline of Britain and France. Furthermore, the Federal Republic broke with the traditional ambivalence about Germany’s place in the East or the West by choosing the West. In the intervening three decades, many political leaders in the West have come to assume that indeed the Federal Republic is irreversibly part of the West as well as a rooted democracy. Development in three areas could throw those assumptions into doubt: (1) The reassertion of German power; (2) the domestic and inter-German political crisis; (3) U.S. policy toward Europe and the USSR.

German power, military and economic, is once more a source of concern in Europe. The NATO alliance has increasingly become a U.S.-German military affair that inspires thinly veiled concern among the NATO allies, especially France and Britain. The European Community has its economic center of gravity in Germany. The FRG stabilizes the EC and plays a key role in the international monetary system. German economic wealth causes no less concern in both Eastern and Western Europe than Germany military power. Thus, the possibility of German political pre-eminence in Europe is again a shadow haunting Europe.

The FRG domestic political crisis has several sources. First, economic prosperity, the German salve for defeat in the last war, has recently been threatened by the specter of inflation and unemployment, seriously undermining the public confidence. Even a change of political leadership will not likely change the popular mood. Second, the SPD Ostpolitik has not produced the kinds of results that were promised, either in inter-German relations or in relations with Moscow. That makes the SPD vulnerable to attack by the German right, especially the southern German CSU which is Catholic and anti-Communist. Moreover, the SPD is ex-Marxist and has a northern Protestant following, making the SPD’s cultural ties to the East German populace suspect as being more natural than ties to Bavaria. Third, some FDP members of the SPD coalition are already openly dealing with the opposition CDU/CSU. The weakness of the SPD’s political base is now also reflected in the loss of control of the Bundesrat. Thus, Helmut Schmidt is in serious political trouble, but the CDU/CSU does not offer a strong alternative.¹⁴

U.S. policy toward Europe and USSR puts additional pressures on the FRG at a time when its ability to manage them is declining steadily. The nuclear energy question, of course, touches the issue of economic prosperity for the Bonn leaders no less than our demand that they risk inflation by loosening up credits and stimulating imports. In the MBFR negotiations, we have recently joined with the NATO participants to overcome Bonn’s resistance to tabling manpower strengths by national totals, a move Genscher (of the FDP) has opposed because it could be one more step toward allowing Soviet eventual success in using MBFR to put a lid on FRG military forces levels (something the German right can associate with the Versailles Treaty limitations). Moreover, German paranoia is encouraged by what may look like a tacit negotiating arrangement between NATO and the Soviets intended to keep Germany weak and divided. At the same time, Schmidt acts as if detente were were his private preserve and openly castigates the U.S. human rights policy.

The three interacting developments—(1) German military and economic power combined with political weakness, (2) the crisis of Ostpolitik, and (3) the tensions created by U.S. policies—make Bonn uncomfortable with the West and frustrated by the East. This is a step back toward the traditional German predicament of being in the middle. At the same time, the interaction of external and domestic political factors could damage the fragile roots of West German democracy. Economic deprivation, fear of Communism, and growing disillusionment with the Western democracies, including the U.S., could in the long run feed anti-democratic and authoritarian sentiments in schizophrenic Germany. The Soviet Union, to be sure, will attempt to exploit the emerging opportunity to loosen Bonn’s ties with the U.S.”

[Omitted here is information unrelated to foreign policy opinions.]

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Brzezinski Office File, Subject Chron File, Box 125, Weekly National Security Report: 7–9/77. Top Secret; Sensitive. The President wrote “Zbig. J” in the top right-hand corner of the first page of the memorandum.
2. Reference is to the administration’s decision to discontinue deployment of the B–1 bomber, which the President announced at a June 30 news conference. For Carter’s remarks, see Public Papers: Carter, 1977, Book II, pp. 1197–1208. See also Congress and the Nation, vol. V, 1977–1980, pp. 131, 134–135.
3. In the left-hand margin next to this sentence, the President wrote: “The public is with us so far.”
4. Vance and Gromyko met in Geneva May 18–20 to discuss SALT II. For additional information about the three-part framework, see Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXXIII, SALT II, 1972–1980, Document 167.
5. In the left-hand margin next to this sentence, the President wrote: “True.”
6. An unknown hand drew a vertical line in the left-hand margin next to this sentence and wrote: “Let’s have a brief on this.”
7. Presumable reference to Sakharov’s January 21 letter to the President; see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. VI, Soviet Union, Document 2.
8. In the left-hand margin next to this sentence, the President wrote: “That’s Amitay’s claim.” Reference is to Morris “Morrie” Amitay, AIPAC Executive Director. On July 6, the President met with U.S. Jewish leaders at the White House. In his diary entry for that day, the President noted: “We approached this with trepidation, but the meeting came out well. I reassured them that our basic commitment was the preservation of Israel as a secure and peaceful and sovereign nation. We were insisting that the Arabs commit themselves to implementing peace in its fullest sense, that my own preference was that the Palestinian state or entity should not be independent but part of Jordan.” (White House Diary, pp. 67–68) For the memorandum of conversation, see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. VIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, January 1977–August 1978, Document 49.
9. In the left-hand margin next to these two sentences, the President wrote: “Now I see no need to change.”
10. The Policy Review Committee met on July 12 to discuss the Middle East. For a summary of this meeting, see Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, vol. VIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute, January 1977–August 1978, Document 50.
11. Presumable reference to the preparation of the response to PRM/NSC–28; see footnote 11, Document 26.
12. According to an undated memorandum from Vance to Carter regarding the June 26 memorandum prepared in the Department (see Document 46), the President had, on July 6, requested further refinement of the proposals contained in that memorandum. Vance indicated that the Department had followed this directive and offered five additional initiatives: Soviet involvement in North-South issues; expansion of scientific, academic, and cultural exchanges; visa policy; civil aviation; and U.S.-Soviet working groups on various topics. (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Office File, Outside the System File, Box 48, Chron: 6/77)
13. Schmidt visited the United States July 13–15.
14. In the left-hand margin next to this paragraph, the President wrote: “I’m not an expert on German politics—Some of the initials are confusing.”