Zbig Without Cy

8/2/2019 Zbig Without Cy

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ea t to kick the m edia out again. Or if they have come

ite bouncing this informa tion mad ness back to therwise we may go to war to insure a strong

Night upon night of national electronic inciteme nt tonaldson has ta ugh t u s all; it may flip us out into

Nicholas von Hoffmanis a syndicated colum nist . His la te s tMake Believe Presidents ( P a n t h e o n ) .

g Without Cyaution is one thing , caution abou t the use of

on in to Iran was a danger ous step down the slopeThe Real War (Warner Books), Nixonles since Vietnam because th e

ar, but th e older men who managed the war, came

ther V ietnam" that they wheedle and appease their

On the day Vance formally resigned. Sena tor G eorgeovern said that o ne of the "le ssons" of Vietnam

military ways." Presumably similar thoughts wereVance's mind. If so, it may be, as Nixon said, thathave forgotten the difference between the use abuse of power. McGovern's warning certainly wobe appropriate if it applied to an invasion of Iran,atte mp t to seize its ports, punitive bombing of its citor even a blockade. Each of those steps would infurther military entanglem ents. None would do mto convince the Iranians to come aroun d. But this rif it had wo rked, w ould have "solved" the problem. Aby removing the irritant that distorts all our otdealings in the reg ion, it would h ave helped solve a gmany more complicated problems as well.

Apparently Vance felt otherwise. However judge his disagree men t with the pre sident, his decisto leave because of that disagreem ent dem ands respYes, the timing was awkw ard for his president. Y eshad been nibbled to death by Zbigniew Brzezinski othe ye ars, which may have been the real reason h e gup. Yes, there are few real "risks" in resignation foman wh o has had th e job he spent his life prep aring and who has a Wall Street law firm in which to sphis exile. And yes, the government is sometimes beserved by tho se w ho aspire to fill th e Geo rge Ball Chof "D issent from W ithin" Diplomacy. But of every diplomats, at least 99 are all too eager to take Ge orge Ball approach and keep th eir jobs. Usually requires a considerable muting of their dissent. Vacertainly must have remembered that there werepublicized resignations over policy among top officduring Vietnam. The abrupt departure of quintessential team player may remind others in governm ent that not everyone needs to stay and "wfrom within."But whatever flattering things the resignation msay about Vance's personality, it says far mdamaging things about the Carter administration. harm is not so much the immediate political flap. real message of this incident is tha t, with his first temore than four-fifths over. President Carter still not decided what his foreign policy should be.The political damage from the resignation probawill be based on the assumption that the presideforeign policy has changed in the direction of Zbign

Brzezinski's views. To critics on the right, this wilthe occasion for more "I told you so" gloating about previous error of Carter's ways. Vance and assistants he brought with him to the State Depment were personally identified with the human rigpolicy, the efforts to sell a SALT agreement, emphasis on "north-south" issues such as hunger refugees, th e Andy Young approach towar d Africa,disinclination to prop up Somoza and the shah. Cacan hardly outdo the Reagans and Podhoretzesdisowning th ese policies wit hou t making his repu tatfor inconsistency even worse. So far he hasn't etried; each speech about standing up to the Russihas contained a brief prayer for "cooperation" and


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talk, Car ter p robably will get th e wo rst of it both wa ys.People will think, largely because of Vance's depa rtur e,that C arter has veered farther to the right, but he wo n'tbe able to go far enoug h to win supp ort from the h ard -liners.For those on th e left, the disappearance of Vance alsosignals a change, one tha t would leave Brzezinski aloneat the wheel. Here is a cause for genuine alarm.Like a Phillips screwdriver, Brzezinski is by natureextremely useful for some tasks but useless for manyothers. He is facile, a free-wheeler, the type of m an w ho(as Franklin Roo sevelt said in praise of Louis Howe) willcome up w ith 10 new ideas each day, even tho ugh nineof them may be bad. One good idea a day is far morethan mo st people achieve. Brzezinski also is hasty andglib. No one has ever used the words "wise" or"reflective" in connection with his nam e. In my limitedexperience with him, I cannot recall him ever pausingfor even an instant before answering any question. Forall of them, he has a theory right at hand. While hisviews toward the Soviet Union are theoreticallybalanced between the needs for "competition" and"cooperation," in practice they come out as rabbitpunch es from a man spoiling for a fight, Brzezinski wasthe one who visited China in 1978 and told his hoststha t th e first one to th e top of their Wall got to fight th eRus sians. He led the agitation abo ut the "unaccep table"deploym ent of Soviet troo ps in Cuba last fall. Tw o daysafter the Iranian rescu e failed, Brzezinski and S ecretaryof Defense Harold Brown appeared separately on theSunday interview shows. Brown struck the right noteof firmness without braggadocio. Brzezinski's coldferocity fulfilled every fantasy of Dr, Strangelove. Lastwinter, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post wro te a longseries about B rzezinski. Th e Post had to back dow n fromthe series in humiliation over a crucial error of factQuinn's false allegation that Brzezinski had unzippedhis fly in the presence of a female r epo rter. T he pity ofthis stupid err or was that Q uinn 's general portrait w asaccurate. She showed a vain, impulsive man, charmingin many ways , bu t with the self-knowledge and balanceof an average teenage boy.

In the right circumstances, such a man can be anasset. If a president knows his advisers' limits and canseparate the crazy ideas from the clever and creativeones, he can do far better with an adviser likeBrzezinski than with no one but supercautious Vancetypes. Most of the time President Carter has seemedable to balance Brzezinski's flashiness with Vance'scaution and deliberation, never letting himself bedraw n too far into th e orbit of either m an. But since thebalancing has been alm ost totally personalseem inglybased on Carter's fondness for the steady, reliableVance as a man, rather than on a particular commit-m ent to his policies those who favor Vance's "liberal"policies fear that Brzezinski now will have his day,

I suspect that this fear is premature, and not simplybecause Edmund Muskie should be able to give

not dramatically change after Vance, because Pr esidCa rter has still not decided w ha t th e policy is. For thand a half years, he has tried to apply and explaiforeign policy based on contrad ictory poin ts of viewhas not tried to teach Vance and Brzezinski the salanguage, but has mixed words from each of thlanguages into a crude pidgin that he alone cprehends . Unless Ca rter himself changes fundam enly, he is unlikely to resolve the inconsistencies he tolerated until now.Almost everyone who has dealt with Jimmy Cacomes away with the impression that he is a remarka"intelligent" man, in the sense of being ableman ipulate and analyze facts. But his intelligencalmost entirely of the item-by-item, engineervariety, not the kind involving abstract thought. Ahim his position on any specific issue construction Corps of Engineers dam, unemployment in Detroiand you will get a detailed, specific answer. Ask h"what is the philosophy of your administration?" you will get a list of the specific points. Jimmy Cartethe first person I would want to look over plans fonew submarine, or to assess the cost-benefit ratio opower plant. He is practically the last person whthoughts I would want to hear on "The UnresolTensions in the US Constitution"or on "RelatiBetween the Soviet Union and the U nited Sta tes ,"mind does not work that way,A resident Carter is like the "fox" in Isaiah Berlfamous essay on "The Hedgehog and the Fox"thinker who sees a thousand aspects of life, unlike "hedgehog" who tries to cram everything into cen tral vision. He is no t inclined to fit each little piecinformation into a grand scheme of the world, in fashion of Karl Marx (or, for that matter, RonReagan), For this reason. Carter is more likely tmost politicians to reach a lucid, reasonable decisionany specific case. For th e sam e reaso n, he is not likelpush individual decisions or policies towar d the ir logconclusionsand therefore to see which poliultimately contradict which others.The virtue of this approach is that it encouracompromises like the one at Camp David. Only a mwh o does not dwell on differences of principle betwtwo sides can look for ways to reconcile them poinpoint. Th e defect of this approach is tha t people whthink in more abstract fashion cannot figure out whyou stan d. Vance himself is no idle theorizer, but I hno doubt that he and Brzezinski both recognized ttheir policies were incompatible. The emphases, implications, the tones are all different, even thothey may agree on a specific point. Each of thprobably would have been happier with a presidwho declared one's view the winner and let the otone go . But if they saw a conflict. Ca rte r has not, andhas attem pted to combine th eir policies by applyingpercent of each. The enduring metaphor for


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in June 1978 at the US Naval Academy, It was anpt to "clarify" American policy toward the S oviet

s was reported a t tbe time) by stapling the tw o mem osPresumably President Carter sees a continuity in

ideas. W hether or not be does, tb eression be leaves is tbat of a man w ho sees in

As long as Vance remained , he supported tbe illusiontbat tbere really was a center, that someone understood wbat the policy was about. Perhaps outsidercould not detect it, but they could rest assured tbat intbe long run its elem ents would be sensible and held tosome kind of balance. In resigning, Vance bas sbownthat wbile tbe president's mind may be capaciousenougb to keep accommodating opposites, some of bisub ord inate s lack this skill. This too is a service, thoughperhaps not one President Carter wishes Vance hadperformed. '

James Fallow]ames Fallows, Wasbington editor of tbe Atlantic,President Carter's chief speechwriter in 1977 and 1978

Labor M onopolyy Jam es R ing Ad am strikesNew York transit workers, Kansas City

tical spec trum abo ut tb e viability of public employeeism . Should public emp loyees be forbidden by lawom striking, as they are in New York? Should tbey be

are issues tbat bave made public employm ent

nu m ber of politically charge d, divisive publicr erosion of tbe spirit ofTbe impression of labor unrest is not misleading.

is an editorial writer for tbe Wall Street,

first quarter of 1980. The council projects more than400 state and local gov ernm ent strikes by tbe end of tbyeara rate tb at may not m atch tbe 1975 record of 478but is certain to rank among the highest in US historyWe have arrived at tbe long-expected collision of twpowerful forces: militant public employee unionismand tbe movement to limit the cost of state and locagovernment.Th e public em ployee unions are cbang ing th e face otbe American labor movement in a way that wouldconfound Karl Marx, Am erican unionism peaked in tbmid-1950s, when it included some 35 percent of tbcountry's non-farm work force. But as its share bafallen steadily to under 25 percent, municipal unionhave grown explosively. Between 1976 and 1978membership in manufacturing unions declined by449,000; membership in state and local governmenunions grew by 531,000, In tbe last decade, the twofastest growing unions bave been tbe AmericanFederation of State, County and Municipal Employee(AFSCME) and tbe American Federation of Teacber(AFT), botb of wbicb have more than doubled tbeimembership. More than 15 percent of tbe labomovement now consists of government worker(including federal), up from five percent in 1956,

Like adolescents, these fast-grow ing unions have badtheir identity crises. Many teacbers bave been acutely


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