John Dumbrell

Plans Unraveled: The Foreign Policy of the Carter Administration. By Scott Kaufman. (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2008. x, 298 pp.

Greatest ex-president or foreign policy failure? Kaufman offers a fresh, comprehensive look at the Carter years.During the past decade, the literature on the Carter administrations foreign policy has grown rapidly, due largely to both the release of new materials at the presidential library and the attention Jimmy Carter has received since leaving the White House. While previous monographs have focused on specific foreign policy issues, Scott Kaufman breaks away from the mold and offers this up-to-date, comprehensive look at Carters aggregate foreign policy record. Although many Americans regard Jimmy Carter as the nations greatest ex-president, Kaufman argues that the diplomatic performance of the thirty-ninth president was mediocre, primarily because of Carters own doing.Carter, who entered office at a time of transition, was determined to shift the direction of U.S. foreign policy in a way that would downplay conflict between the superpowers; to give more emphasis to North-South issues; and generally to make the world a better place by curbing repression, reducing arms sales, halting nuclear proliferation, ending political and military conflicts abroad, and strengthening the world economy. But, as crises developed abroad, the president gradually assumed a diplomatic stance similar to that of his predecessors, and ultimately his foreign policy boiled down to containing the Soviet threat.Kaufman admits that Carter, like all presidents, faced limitations in what he wanted to achieve, including lawmakers or foreign officials who did not see eye-to-eye with him. Despite difficulties, the president did have some success: he achieved ratification of the Panama Canal treaties, normalized relations with China, convinced Israel and Egypt to sign the Camp David accords and a peace agreement, and made human rights a permanent component of U.S. diplomacy. Nonetheless, Kaufman concludes that Carters style of leadership caused his failures to far outnumber his successes: Carter viewed himself as a political outsider, attempted to achieve too much at once, failed to prioritize initiatives or to understand the complexities involved in achieving them, poorly handled intra-administration disputes, and failed to give the nation a vision of the state in which he wanted to leave the country by the end of his administration.

38.00, ISBN 978-0-87580-390-6.)

Perceptions of American international decline are not new. This article considers the current debate over US decline in historical context, noting that current forecasts of decline are less apocalyptic than those of the later Cold War period. The foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush is assessed. Perceptions of domestic US political paralysis are discussed, along with the need for the Obama administration to move clearly in the direction of global retrenchment.

American Power: Crisis or Renewal?

The introduction sets a framework for subsequent chapters by considering theories of change and the extent to which there was consequential change during the Obama years. It draws upon earlier scholarship to suggest that although there certainly was no “transformation” (when new interests secure power, institutional relationships are rearranged, governmental priorities are recast on a long-run basis and when there is an accompanying paradigm shift), more limited, incremental forms of change were enacted through, for example, the Affordable Care Act or some of executive actions used to bypass Congress. Nonetheless, although recent literature within historical institutionalism has stressed the importance of incrementalism, it is vulnerable to rollback. Against this background, the introduction sets questions about the character of change that are addressed in the case studies included in this volume.

Introduction: The Politics of Change

Bill Clinton is frequently seen as a president whose foreign policy lacked direction, focus, and a sense of purpose. Examination of his foreign policy leadership in relation to US transatlantic relations does not bear out such a negative verdict. Clinton’s policy in the Balkans was very confused and fairly directionless before 1995, but achieved positive results subsequently. The Clinton administration’s Irish interventions were unprecedented and extraordinarily successful. Similarly, in regard to his commitment to the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Clinton enjoyed a degree of success that appeared very unlikely at the start of his presidency. Despite predictions to the contrary, Transatlantica remained central to the concerns of Clinton’s post-Cold War presidency.

President Bill Clinton and US transatlantic foreign policy

Based on extensive research in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Piercing the Bamboo Curtain situates itself firmly in the stream of Johnson revisionism pioneered by writers such as Thomas Alan Schwarz. Inevitably, Lumbers deals at length with Chinese support for the communist cause in Vietnam. Indeed, Lumbers sees LBJ’s crucial decisions in Vietnam as driven, at least to some significant extent, by the image, presented by key presidential advisers, ‘of a Chinese menace, propelled by an implacable ideology and an insatiable appetite for expansion . . . and best positioned to take full advantage of the unravelling of America’s position in Asia in the event of a defeat in South Vietnam’ (p. 112). Lumbers’ main concern, however, is to rescue Johnson from the distortions of Vietnam-obsessed historians and to argue the case for LBJ as ‘an adept conflict manager with an ability to empathise with the concerns of the other side, and mindful of the limits of America’s capacity for shaping events to its liking’ (p. 7). Lumbers’ main focus is on the China policy review of 1966, which ushered in a brief commitment to bridge-building and engagement with China. Lumbers is very good on the bureaucratic politics of the engagement strategy, with ‘engagers’ like Roger Hilsman and Edward Rice pitted against the ‘containers’ led by secretary of State Dean Rusk. Engagement did not survive the Vietnam-related upheavals of the mid-1960s, though it was briefly revived as a possible ‘wedge’ strategy (between Beijing and the Soviet-backed Vietnamese communists) in 1968. Michael Lumbers has produced an excellent, lucid, and original contribution to the literature on LBJ’s foreign policy. If anyone still thinks that President Nixon and Henry Kissinger invented the notion of wedges between Beijing and Moscow, then Lumbers may now be cited as decisive evidence to the contrary. (Actually, as a recent book by M.J. Selverstone demonstrates, the ‘wedge strategy’ dates back to the very foundation of communist China. ) However, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Michael Lumbers pushes the case for Johnson’s rehabilitation a little far. Chinese engagement under LBJ was never (as the book’s subtitle acknowledges) more than tentative and very short-lived. Far from emerging as ‘an adept conflict manager’, LBJ still seems a decisional ditherer who simply could not find a way out of Vietnam.

Piercing the bamboo curtain: tentative bridge-building to China during the Johnson years

‘AFFIRMATIVE ACTION’ attempts to use discrimination (typically in employment, promotion or entry to higher education) as a positive tool to further the interests of historically disadvantaged racial and other groups. Otherwise known as positive or reverse discrimination, it generates impassioned debate across a huge range of political, legal, philosophical and s0ci.a-l thought. Supporters of affirmative action see it as a temporary expedient, whose drawbacks are massively outweighed by the real and rapid benefits that i t can achieve. As Kirp and Weston (1987, p 242) put it, supporters see affirmative action programmes as ‘way stations on the long road to a truly colorblind society’. They consider that i t compensates for past wrongs, and argue that it promotes social utility by providing positive role models for minority youth, by facilitating greater racial intermixture in education and employment, and by reducing the underutilization of minority talent. It may also be seen as the necessary response of dominant groups to the threat of social conflict (Polyviou, 1980, p 356). Implicit in many arguments for affirmative action is also the view that it actually does work, and does so in a visible and measurable fashion (O’Neil, 1975; Goldman, 1977). Opponents of affirmative action see it as transgressing standards of fair competition in the pursuit ofa spurious equality ofoutcome (Abram, 1986; Edwards, 1987). They consider that i t perpetuates invidious racial distinctions, impairs efficiency and incites dangerous resentments. On the left, it may be dismissed as either tokenistic or co-optative. Libertarians point to its role in the creation of civil rights bureaucracies (Capaldi, 1985). In the United States, affirmative action also has to overcome the potential constitutional obstacles of the 14th (‘Equal Protection’) and fifth (‘Due Process’) amendments, as well as the anti-discrimination language contained in civil rights legislation. Where the Carter Administration was broadly supportive, its successor has made no bones about its hostility to all forms ofpositive discrimination, and especially to the use ofquotas. The period since 1981 has seen attention shift from education to employment. Debates over affirmative action have exacerbated tensions between President and Congress and provoked a series of ground breaking Supreme Court decisions. With the Johnson decision (1987), the national debate moved away from its overwhelming concern for black and other minority rights, to a consideration of programmes designed to benefit women.