Rebuffs at Home, Flak from Abroad

World affairs took up more of Jimmy Carter's press conference last week than even his dramatic B-l decision. No wonder. His foreign policy is in some trouble at home and abroad. Such troubles are easily exaggerated by Washington (including the capital press corps), a community that pays compulsive, excessive attention to every blip of seeming success or failure. But in the past few weeks the President has been handed setbacks by a Congress reluctant to endorse his planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea and authorize U.S. participation in loans to Cuba, Indochina and several African nations. Said one senior State Department official: "I'm very worried about this congressional problem. These recent ones we were supposed to win. We haven't even come to the tough ones yet."

Carter's Administration last week took a firm stand on the need for Israeli concessions to bring about a Middle East settlement, which drew anger both from U.S. Jewish groups and Jerusalem (see THE WORLD). But the main questions about Carter's foreign policy involved relations with the Soviets and his human rights approach.

Through his envoys and during his visit to Paris, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev has let it be known that the sensitive and secretive Kremlin is furious about Carter's public approach to diplomacy. In Brezhnev's view, Carter's "ideological warfare" on human rights is hostile to detente. It appears Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance miscalculated when they reasoned earlier this year that their human rights offensive need not impede arms negotiations with the Soviets. Official Washington is gloomy about the prospects for a new SALT treaty by Oct. 3, when the present five-year treaty expires. As Carter candidly told a group of news editors, "There has been a surprising adverse reaction in the Soviet Union to our stand on human rights. Apparently, that has provided a greater obstacle to other friendly pursuits, common goals, like SALT, than I had anticipated."

He should not have been surprised. At any rate, at his press conference last week, Carter offered a different --though hardly new--explanation for the slow progress of U.S.-Soviet negotiations. He had put forward new and sweeping proposals (a ban on all nuclear tests, a sharp reduction in nuclear weapons) and, he said, "these new ideas obviously take more time." Carter pointed out that talks with the Russians on SALT, the test ban and limiting arms sales were proceeding "with very good attitudes on the part of the Soviets." He said he would welcome a meeting with Brezhnev, although before such a meeting is scheduled, advisers to both leaders would have to be convinced that the personal chemistry between the two would ease rather than increase tensions.

Disquieting Result. It may be that the Soviets are miffed as much--or more --by Carter's style as by the substance of U.S. proposals. At a summit meeting with Brezhnev, Carter would probably defend his practice of promoting democracy and human rights, but would point out at the same time that he is not seeking to scuttle U.S.-Soviet detente. Carter said at his press conference that he sought a relationship with Brezhnev "not just to ratify a final agreement but to get to know one another."

A subsidiary issue between the U.S. and the Soviet Union involves the Indian Ocean. Carter cited current discussions with the Soviets on limiting arms in the Indian Ocean as another sign of mutual U.S.-Soviet progress. But some people in Congress and within his own Administration see these talks as a disquieting result of Carter's hasty improvisation--even naivete--in foreign affairs.

After his Inauguration, and again last May, Carter announced that the Indian Ocean, site of more than half of the world's oil shipments at any given time, should be demilitarized. Asked after Carter's announcement to prepare a policy to that end, State and Defense Department officials concluded that the goal of demilitarization might force the U.S. to abandon the large naval and communications facility it is building on the mid-ocean island of Diego Garcia, while leaving the Soviets free to use ports in places like Somalia and Aden. America's European allies, who receive much of their oil via the Indian Ocean, want a U.S. presence there as a counterweight to Soviet power; so do the Chinese, the Australians and the Japanese. The diplomats and military men convinced Carter that the talks should begin not with the subject of complete demilitarization but with "arms limitation," a term that would not rule out Diego Garcia.

When U.S. relations with the Soviet Union are strained, there is normally some reason to assume that relations with Communist China are going better. But the Carter Administration is not doing very well with Peking either.

The Communist Chinese are impatient for the U.S. to normalize relations with the mainland and shift its embassy from Taiwan to Peking. (The U.S. and China are now represented in each other's capitals by liaison offices.) While the Carter Administration seeks normal relations with China, it also seeks some sort of guarantee of the safety of the Taiwanese. Peking refuses to grant any guarantee because it considers Taiwan to be an internal matter. The longer progress is delayed, the greater the danger that Peking may decide it cannot count on strengthening its ties with the U.S. and must therefore seek reconciliation with the Russians. Last week both Secretary of State Vance and Carter --who have so far given little attention to China--spoke publicly of China's importance to the U.S. "We shall seek to move toward full normalizing of relations," Vance told New York's Asia Society. A solution to the Taiwan issue will be a key topic when Vance visits Peking next month. But it is difficult to see what sort of solution the U.S. can work out without abrogating its defense treaty with Taiwan--a move the present Congress would not be likely to approve, even if Carter wanted to propose it.

Carter's early setbacks on Capitol Hill illustrate the emergence of an odd Senate coalition: anti-Communist conservatives who feel that the U.S. should not aid any Communist nation, liberals who feel that the U.S. should not give even indirect economic aid to repressive regimes, plus legislators of various stripes who oppose foreign aid altogether.

Three weeks ago, this coalition in the Senate prohibited loans to Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia by a vote of 56 to 32. Later the House overwhelmingly voted, 295 to 115, to ban U.S. loans not only to those Indochinese countries but to Cuba, Uganda, Mozambique and Angola as well. If passed by the Senate, that measure could halt some $2 billion in U.S. contributions to six international institutions, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Such domestic opposition, coupled with flak from abroad, has led some U.S. officials to warn that the human rights thrust is proving counterproductive. But the prevailing view, supported by Vance, is that the policy is sound and proper --though it needs refinement. On balance, Carter is convinced that by reasserting America's moral values, his human rights appeal has rallied the U.S. public and much of world opinion behind U.S. foreign policy as it has not been rallied in a long time. In late May. Carter quietly ordered the National Security Council to prepare a Presidential Review Memorandum (or PRM, known around the White House as a "Prim") assessing the impact of his human rights policy, identifying potential booby traps and defining a strategy for pursuing such a policy in the future. Senior officials deny that the review springs from a recognition of past errors or signals that the policy is about to be abandoned. "On the contrary," says one, "it's a reiteration that the human rights policy is here to stay, and therefore it needs to be systematized."

New Ground. The next major issue between Carter and Congress is likely to be the Panama Canal treaty, which is now being negotiated and will probably be submitted to Congress by summer's end. All indications so far are that it will be a sound and necessary treaty, but the issue has emotional, patriotic overtones, and there could be a major row.

Foreign policy has no natural constituency in Congress. There are only independent groupings who get stirred up for various, often parochial reasons. Besides, Carter is opening new ground in many areas. When confronted with a flurry of new measures--"guns blazing in all directions," as Republican Senator Robert Dole puts it--party leaders cannot easily mobilize the troops. Wisconsin Democrat Clement Zablocki. chairman of the House International Relations Committee, remarks somewhat plaintively, "You can't correct the world overnight."

Senator Hubert Humphrey, one of the few senior Democratic Senators who have the commitment and (despite his cancer operation) the energy to lobby for the Carter foreign policy, puts it this way: "This is a post-Nixon Congress. It's been burned and hurt and lied to. They're still trying to curb a President who is trying to hang on to his flexibility. We're in for some rocky days."

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