Recently we have discovered that our trust has been betrayed. The veils of secrecy have seemed to thicken around Washington. The purposes and goals of our country are uncertain and sometimes even suspect. Our people are understandably concerned about this lack of competence and integrity … it is time to reaffirm and to strengthen our ethical and spiritual and political beliefs. There must be no lowering of these standards, no acceptance of mediocrity in any aspect of our private or public lives.1
[Jimmy Carter, 12 December 1974]
Change you can believe in
Mario Cuomo’s truism that one campaigns in poetry but governs in prose would hit Jimmy Carter hard. The outsider from Georgia, untainted by the excesses, scandals and failings that had battered Washington, set out a stall calculated to emphasise the differences – in terms of policy substance and underlying principle – that he promised would reinvigorate American politics and restore the public’s trust in its elected representatives. At the heart of Carter’s platform lay a desire to find a new rationale for US power in an era where, increasingly, hard power capacity did not appear to equate comfortably with ‘usable’ power. As Hedley Bull put it:
Carter recognised the complexities of the Cold War struggle and appreciated, intellectually at least, the need for pragmatism in international politics. He was also convinced that a moral centre – what America was, what it stood for, what it offered to the world – was fundamental to overcoming the Soviet threat.3 Indeed, Carter owed a debt to (and had enormous personal sympathy for) the powerful urge emanating from the left wing of the Democratic Party, fixated on the promotion of human rights and zero tolerance of culpable (particularly rightist) regimes. In his estimation, these issues had been improperly and unnecessarily reduced to subordinate status.4 Many, in particular those who espoused Realpolitik, viewed idealism and pragmatism as incompatible. Carter, however, was convinced that they could and should coexist:
Thus, commitments to human rights, a focus on North–South politics and a tightening up of arms sales put the world – America’s enemies as well as her allies – on notice that there was a new way of doing business. Threatening as it did to de-legitimise the Soviet Union and overturn decades of difficult, often unpalatable diplomacy, the president-elect knowingly raised the stakes high:6
It was a bold move, calculated to get the attention of the American people. When Carter took office, they, and heads of state around the world, held their breath and waited to see if and indeed how this rhetoric would become a reality.
Translating words into policy was always going to be difficult and, from the outset, the new administration struggled under the weight of some of the apparent contradictions it had provoked. Although the criteria for arms sales were tightened up and aligned more closely with foreign policy goals, these transfers actually increased during Carter’s time in office.8 Moreover, while the president himself came to acknowledge that human rights was the lodestone of his administration rather than the sole determinant of policy, for many, the nuances (and compromises) necessary to enable this strategy to succeed were either beyond their grasp or their tolerance. The result, according to Stanley Hoffmann, was fragmentation, conflicting actors and centrifugal forces.9 This was most visibly on display in Carter’s national-security team which was deliberately constituted with a view to harnessing conflict. Carter brought in a doveish Secretary of State – Cyrus Vance – and a hawkish National Security Adviser (NSA) – Zbigniew Brzezinski – who were temperamentally and ideologically poles apart. Their clashes, perhaps somewhat exaggerated when it came to some issues, became legendary. As one analyst put it the ‘team had five ranking members with four different agendas’. Carter and his vice president Walter Mondale were focused on human rights, Vance on arms control, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown on cost effective military technology and Brzezinski on hitting the Soviet Union.10 Carter was convinced that he could manage this ambitious administration. Not everyone agreed. His presidency, perhaps predictably, was marked by accusations of double standards, naivety and incompetence.11 Few knew it in the earliest days of 1977, but it would be in connection with Iran that this criticism would burn most brightly.
On Iran, more of the same
For Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the contrast with the Nixon–Ford era was immense and, initially at least, deeply unsettling.12 He need not have worried. This ally, Carter quickly decided, required careful handling. Once elected, the president declined to depart from the legacy bequeathed to him for several reasons. America’s relationship with Iran existed in the context of the convergence of a series of wider foreign policy goals that included confounding the Soviet threat (what former National Security Council staffer Howard Teicher described as the ‘primordial’ force in US foreign policy), augmenting the US’s intelligence capacity, securing energy supplies (for the US and its allies), enhancing regional stability and the generation of arms sales.13 These – and a friendship underpinned by longevity – continued therefore to confirm Iran as an exceptional strategic asset in the Middle East. The Shah’s usefulness was demonstrated in numerous ways: the counter-insurgency assistance he provided in Oman, his active support for US goals in the Horn of Africa and in the buffer that Iran offered against the Soviet Union and a pro-Soviet Iraq. In short, the Shah was important for the reasons he had always been. As one senior official put it, he was ‘sitting on an area of the world we consider necessary for our own national security’.14 ‘I do not think it can be disputed’, Assistant Secretary of State Alfred Atherton added: ‘that a strong and secure Iran, sharing our objectives of global peace, stability and economic well-being, is essential to the peace and continued progress of the states in the Persian Gulf region and to our own interests there.’15
Carter noted in his diary, that he continued to do what other presidents had done before him, consider the Shah a strong ally:
The ‘clientitis’ this produced exerted a strong pull on those who had invested considerable time and energy on the high-maintenance monarch.17 Moreover, since the administration believed that Pahlavi was very much in control, Vance could write with confidence ‘we decided early on that it was in our national interest to support the Shah so he could continue to play a constructive role in regional affairs’.18 Carter’s instructions to William Sullivan, his new ambassador to Iran, confirmed the continuity in US foreign policy:
During this meeting, Sullivan asked Carter for guidance on three policy issues: military equipment sales, Iran’s request for nuclear-power plants and whether the president wished to see a continuation of the long-standing collaboration between the CIA and SAVAK. Carter was unequivocal about all three. He wished to be quite generous with the Iranians and told Sullivan there was nothing on their current arms shopping list (including the AWACS [airborne warning and control systems] that were still being introduced at the time into the US Air Force) that he regarded as problematic. Similarly, as long as the safeguards were observed, the president expressed contentment about Iran’s acquisition of atomic power. Finally, because of the intelligence the US received from the listening stations, Carter ordered that the CIA–SAVAK links should also continue.20
In addition to these incentives for maintaining a close relationship with Iran, a number of more negative factors further reduced the likelihood of the new administration shifting course. To begin with, in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, America’s options were perceived as being more limited than at any time in its recen...
