Final Thoughts

Since the beginning of the Carter Administration, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott has covered Cyrus Vance closely, writing about the Secretary's behind-the-scenes struggles with the National Security Council and accompanying him on a number of missions abroad. Talbott reports on how the departing Secretary views the job that he is turning over to Edmund Muskie:

Cy Vance has always been a clean-desk man, so it did not take him long to prepare to leave Washington. That gave him plenty of time on his last day to say goodbye to staffers. Some came out of his mahogany-paneled office with damp eyes. Vance's own voice grew husky.

For someone who had taken such a beating and whose friends thought he should feel emancipated by his departure, Vance seemed surprisingly uncheered by the prospect of a Caribbean vacation and a return to the more leisurely and lucrative life of a senior New York lawyer. Vance deeply regretted the circumstances that led him to resign, although he had no regrets about the resignation itself.

He would have liked to serve out his term, partly because he has never thought of himself as a quitter but also because he wanted to play a key part in what he sees as the biggest challenge facing the Carter Administration in foreign policy: salvaging detente.

The steady deterioration in Soviet-American relations over the past three years is, in Vance's view, the fault of the Carter Administration as well as of the Kremlin. He believes that President Carter came to the presidency with sure instincts and clear, correct goals on virtually every important international issue except how to manage the superpower relationship.

Vance is still puzzled by this one blind spot in a man whom he otherwise regards as a wise and potentially great statesman. Perhaps Carter's conviction that right makes might--that morality, truth and trust matter so much in politics--prevented him from viewing the Soviet Union more pragmatically at the outset, then caused him to overreact when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Carter's lack of an intuitive grasp of how to deal with the Soviets, combined with his righteous wrath over their misbehavior, has made him all the more susceptible to what Vance sees as Brzezinski's excessive reliance on punitive policies.

Vance has supported the post-Afghanistan sanctions, but he believes that the U.S. must start talking to the Soviets again about how to rebuild detente and save SALT. However, he recognizes that perhaps first there had to be a clearing of the air, an end to nonstop stories about his feud with Brzezinski, and a resolution--in favor of the Secretary of State --of who is the President's principal foreign policy adviser.

Vance is confident that Ed Muskie will assert himself with, and over, Brzezinski, and that Muskie shares Vance's approach to U.S.-Soviet relations. The former Secretary is urging Muskie to keep the tentative date Vance had made to meet with Andrei Gromyko in Vienna this month.

Another piece of advice for Muskie and Carter: Vance concedes that his own overall effectiveness, and also the President's, has been severely hobbled by the preoccupation with Iran. That has got to stop even if the crisis goes on indefinitely. Muskie and Carter must delegate the job of monitoring the situation. Otherwise the highest level of the Government will be both exhausted and paralyzed.

As much as Vance disagrees with Carter's decision to order the hostage rescue attempt, he is convinced that the President did so in what he thought were the interests of the nation: that Carter's own re-election concerns played no part. Vance dismisses the fear of some of his own friends and colleagues that with him gone, the President will be more likely to act rashly or play domestic politics with U.S. foreign policy. Vance is more concerned about the outcome of the election itself. He hopes Carter gets another four years in order to finish the business, particularly SALT, that Vance has now reluctantly left behind.

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