The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  Jackson condemned the results of Vladivostok, arguing that it sanctioned a massive Soviet arms buildup because of the “astonishingly high” level of MIRV missiles that were permitted. He also objected to the exclusion from coverage of Soviet Backfire bombers and any constraints on the number or range of U.S. cruise missiles. Jackson’s bottom line for SALT II was equal ceilings at sharply reduced levels, rather than consenting to “an arms buildup agreement.” James Schlesinger, then Ford’s secretary of defense, shared Jackson’s opposition to Vladivostok, which further strengthened the friendship between the two men, but also led to Schlesinger being fired from his post as Pentagon chief. Opposition to the Ford-Kissinger approach to SALT II became one of the central arguments made by Ronald Reagan in challenging Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976.

  Against this background, Jimmy Carter came to office intensely committed to seeking a new approach to arms control negotiations. He wrote to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev on this subject less than a week after his inauguration. Six days later, he invited the longtime Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to the Oval Office and startled the wily and experienced Russian by combining a commitment to continuing the SALT II talks with an outline of a dramatically different set of proposals. Carter envisioned establishing prior notification of any test missile launchings, a comprehensive test ban, demilitarization of the Indian Ocean, and, most sweepingly, deep cuts in total nuclear weapons with exact confirmable equality of strength. Carter’s goal was to complete the SALT II treaty, a daunting task in itself, in order to move on to even larger reductions in nuclear arsenals.

  At first glance, Jimmy Carter’s commitment to deep reductions in nuclear arsenals seemed to parallel Scoop Jackson’s call for sharply reduced levels of nuclear weapons. It was an illusion; the distance between Carter and Warnke, on the one hand, and Jackson on the other, was an unbridgeable chasm. The new president believed that meaningful and verifiable arms control agreements could be negotiated with the Soviet Union, and that the national security of the United States, and world peace, depended on doing so. Jackson didn’t share any of those beliefs. He and his allies believed that Carter’s approach to the Soviet Union was naïve and dangerous—“McGovernism without McGovern.” There would be no honeymoon on foreign and defense policy for the new president.

  UP UNTIL THIS POINT, new presidents had always received great latitude to make their key appointments. In fact, the Senate had never in its history rejected a cabinet-level appointment by a new president. Scoop Jackson determined that where Paul Warnke was concerned, it was time to make history. Jackson’s formidable staff would prepare him to go after Warnke fiercely.

  The Foreign Relations Committee, which had jurisdiction over Warnke’s nomination, held the first hearings on his nomination on February 7 and 8. Warnke glided through the dovish committee, despite some serious contradictions between his testimony and some of the positions that he had taken earlier. Even so, Paul Nitze, who had resigned as the country’s SALT I negotiator and was known for his hard-line position, testified strongly against Warnke. The Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a neoconservative group with close ties to Jackson, began circulating a memo accusing Warnke of favoring unilateral disarmament.

  Prior to the Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Byrd had seen no reason that Warnke would not be confirmed. But following the hearings, Byrd’s comments were much more negative. Noting that he was keeping “an open mind on the nomination,” Byrd acknowledged that “many senators think he is too soft to negotiate with the Soviet Union.” Howard Baker, impressed by Nitze’s testimony, said that Warnke had “been damaged by it. I have grave doubts that he can do the job.” With Jackson and other hard-line senators already opposed, a nominee without support from Byrd or Baker was a nominee destined to crash and burn.

  Typically, Carter wasn’t easily deterred. Over the next few days, the Carter administration scrambled to make the case for Warnke even more strongly. Just a week later, on February 18, Byrd reversed himself, now predicting that Warnke would be confirmed by a wide margin. He elaborated that “it would be bad to send a man over there who is just confirmed by a vote of 60–40. If we’re going to confirm him, we ought to confirm him with the kind of support that will let the Soviets know that we . . . intend to back up a strong negotiator. As of today, I’d say he should be confirmed by a substantial majority . . . over ⅔.”

  Byrd was plainly struggling to balance his loyalty to the Democratic president, his leadership of the Senate, and his own tough views about the Soviet Union. His argument why a strong Senate vote on Warnke was important was much better suited to quiet lobbying of undecided senators than to public musing. By predicting an overwhelming victory, Byrd was actually setting a standard that would be difficult to reach. Jackson and other Warnke opponents were doubtless quite pleased by this statement.

  The stage was set for a bruising hearing in the more hawkish Armed Services Committee. Because it did not have primary jurisdiction over the nomination, the committee would not vote on Warnke’s confirmation, but the committee Republicans were hitting Warnke hard, charging that he had opposed virtually every weapons system modernization of the past decade. Of course, no Republican made the case as powerfully as Jackson.

  During a long line of tough questions, Jackson endeavored to obliterate the nominee. He named thirteen missiles systems and weapons upgrades, then asked Warnke to confirm that he had opposed every one of them. Warnke admitted that he had, but claimed that he had since modified many of his positions because the superpowers had subsequently proceeded with new weapons deployments.

  Jackson and the Republicans had the advantage. There was sufficient ammunition to charge that with his nomination in jeopardy, Warnke was walking back from many of his positions and describing himself as more hawkish than he had been. “I don’t think there were 25 votes against him three weeks ago,” Jackson said on the eve of his confirmation vote, but now many additional senators had come to doubt his intellectual honesty.

  Yet the nominee’s fate was not quite sealed. Many Democrats had already committed to Warnke. Others, whatever doubts they might have, were deeply concerned that rejecting the nominee would be a devastating blow to President Carter, who had already suffered the humiliation of Sorensen’s withdrawal as the nominee for CIA director. Despite his opposition, Jackson would not filibuster the Warnke nomination. He felt that he had made his point powerfully enough and guaranteed that any arms control treaty negotiated by Warnke would be highly suspect in the Senate.

  On March 9, after four days of sometimes acrimonious debate, Paul Warnke’s nomination to be the head of ACDA was confirmed by a 70–29 vote. However, he was confirmed as SALT negotiator by only a 58-40 vote. President Carter and Vice President Mondale lobbied intensively for the nomination, convincing at least a dozen senators that confirmation was crucial. It was a solid majority but far from a strong vote of confidence, given the fact that the SALT II treaty, his principal negotiating responsibility, would require a two-thirds vote of the Senate for confirmation.

  Jimmy Carter would have his nominee, but the president and Warnke had been put on notice by Scoop Jackson and the Senate. Ideas that sounded good in the McGovern campaign in 1972 or Foreign Policy magazine in 1975 were not likely to cut it in the U.S. Senate in 1977 and onward.

  THE BATTLE OVER WARNKE and the coming clashes over arms control treaties both pivoted on one crucial fact: Jimmy Carter had a deep abhorrence of nuclear weapons. He envisioned a world free from nuclear weapons and was anxious to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union where both countries actually made deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals. Carter thought he saw an opportunity to gain Jackson’s support by going far beyond the Vladivostok formula reached by Ford and Brezhnev in 1974.

  In March, shortly after Warnke’s confirmation, Carter sent Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to Moscow carrying two alternative proposals. Carter’s principal proposal departed radically from the Vladivostok formula to include (1
) substantial reductions in the number of strategic weapons on both sides; (2) a freeze in the number of MIRV missiles; and (3) a moratorium on the development of new missiles. Vance, who had never met Brezhnev, was put in the position of making the strongest SALT demands ever made, amidst a negotiation that Kissinger had claimed was “90% complete.” Vance’s backup proposal simply embodied the Vladivostok limits in a treaty and deferred action on the Backfire bomber and the Cruise missile.

  It was a bold bid to break with the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger approach to arms control. It was probably the only way to unify the U.S. arms control advocates and the U.S. hard-liners because it represented real reductions and would have prevented either country from developing a missile force that could destroy the other country’s ICBMs. But Moscow flatly rejected it. Observers speculated that the proposals were turned down because of the new administration’s criticism of the Soviet Union on human rights, or the fact that the proposals were put forth in detail publicly before being presented to the Soviets.

  Jackson later told a breakfast meeting of reporters that Carter had “taken a giant step in cutting back on arms levels.” But he questioned whether springing the proposals on the Soviets was a good idea, noting “frankly, I would not have gone public on this. . . . You never want to push them into a corner in public,” Jackson commented. The Soviets “are accustomed to negotiate under the rules of privacy.” But now, “everything is in the sunshine.”

  Perhaps a bit wiser for its early missteps, the administration bent over backwards to share information with the Senate. On May 27, Vance had a two-hour meeting with Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle. Jackson characterized it as a breakthrough on information sharing with the Senate. On May 30, the Washington Post observed that “Carter may have invested as much effort clearing the Capitol Hill path for continuance of new arms talks as he did for the actual Geneva negotiations.” The Post went on to say that “each of them carries almost equal priority for administration strategists. And both are tenuous.”

  It was not long before Carter realized that pursuing Jackson was futile. Any agreement that the Soviet Union might sign was anathema to Jackson, and vice versa. An editorial in Pravda, the Soviet government organ, slammed Carter’s proposal, in large part because, as one Soviet analyst put it: “Anything that Jackson likes so much has to be bad for us.”

  It would soon become clear that Jackson and other hard-liners would use the administration’s proposal as a benchmark against which they could attack the less comprehensive agreement that would ultimately emerge. Moreover, Jackson’s brilliant and hyperactive staff members did not hesitate to use the administration’s briefings to sharpen their criticisms of Carter’s efforts, subjecting them to withering attacks through favored news outlets, particularly the widely read columns of Evans and Novak.

  JACKSON WAS NOT THE only senator determined to play an important role in foreign policy. Immediately after the 1976 election, twelve senators, led by Abraham Ribicoff and Howard Baker, had spent eighteen days visiting Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Iran. They had focused principally on the prospects for peace in the Middle East, pending nuclear power reactor sales in the region, and U.S. policy toward Iran. Codel (short for “Congressional Delegation”) Ribicoff issued its report on the prospects for peace in the Middle East and U.S. policy toward Iran on February 10, three weeks after Carter’s inauguration.

  The Codel’s s report on meetings with the leaders of Israel and Egypt combined familiar observations with interesting insights. “The predominant apprehension in Israel,” the report noted, “is a sense of insecurity and fear of continuing hostility and attack from terrorists or from Israel’s neighbors.” Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister and a renowned general, told the Codel grimly that no Arab nation had shown a willingness to deal directly with Israel or acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. But the Codel had also reported that Anwar Sadat had stressed that “1977 must be a year to reach a peace settlement.” Sadat had said that Egypt would start peace negotiations without preconditions. Most importantly, the Codel reported that “for the first time Arab leaders are willing to recognize the right of Israel to exist as an independent and secure Jewish state.”

  The five days spent in Iran warranted special attention. The fortunes of the United States had been tied to Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi for nearly a quarter century, since the U.S.-backed coup in 1953 that toppled Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, who had expressed determination to nationalize oil production in Iran. Pahlavi, then only thirty-three, but handsome, fluent in English and French, educated in Switzerland, and dedicated to the Westernization of his country, became the leader of Iran. Every president since 1953 had regarded him as an ally and a friend. U.S. reliance on the shah only intensified after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the OPEC oil embargo, which made it clear just how precarious western oil supplies were.

  The Codel report noted that “strategically, Iran is an important friend in a critical and unstable part of the world. Iran needs support to maintain its integrity free of Soviet influence.” Moreover, the United States and its allies had an enormous stake in protecting “the oil lifeline from the Gulf oil producers through the Straits of Hormuz.” The report noted that while 18 percent of U.S. oil came through the Straits, Europe depended on the Gulf for 52 percent of its oil; Japan for 75 percent. Since Britain had withdrawn from the Gulf in 1971, the United States had relied on Iran for the defense capacity to ensure that the Straits stayed open and had sold arms to Iran accordingly. By 1976, Iran had become the leading recipient of U.S. arms sales, with a long list of requests for advanced weaponry still in the pipeline, including a request for the Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS).

  The delegation intentionally avoided staking a position on the merits of any particular arms sale. But it clearly and repeatedly characterized Iran as “an essential ally” and “important friend,” and that the requests should be evaluated in light of Iran’s crucial role in the Straits and its vulnerability to Soviet pressure, either directly or through Iraq, a Soviet client state.

  Of late, human rights groups had been increasingly critical of conditions in the shah’s Iran, focusing particularly on allegations of torture committed by SAVAK, Iran’s security police. The senators took up the human rights issue with the shah and other officials. “Recent developments give cause for both optimism and dismay,” the report noted. “The Government and the Shah himself appear receptive to international concern.” On the other hand, reports of torture by SAVAK continue to be reported in the press. Detailing advances in education, health care, literacy, land reform, and voting rights, including voting rights for women, the report concluded that “the ‘Shah-people’ revolution of the past two decades has involved extensive and basic changes in all aspects of life. . . . Through a considerable social change a middle class is emerging. Many of the positive goals of human rights movements are being reached through the rapid development of Iran.”

  This view of the situation in Iran was much too optimistic for two Codel members, Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and John Culver of Iowa, two of the Senate’s most liberal Democrats, both well known for straight talk. They exercised their right to file separate views from the majority. Eagleton and Culver contended that the new administration “should consider the risk that massive arms sales may not contribute to regional stability and the continuing flow of oil—if such sales increase rivalries and instability within or among nations of the area or if they lead to conflicts which halt the flow of oil.” They stated their basic concern emphatically: “Our relations with Iran are far too dependent on a highly personalized relationship with the Shah.”

  The Iran we visited, Eagleton and Culver wrote, “is a society slowly emerging from extreme underdevelopment. Despite a high degree of social and economic activity, Iran is still decades away from acquiring the infrastructure necessary to absorb the influx of foreign ideas and technology.” They reviewed the specific requests made by Iran for F-1 4s and the AWACS and concluded that
Iran could not use either effectively without massive assistance from the U.S. military and Boeing Corporation.

  Eagleton and Culver disagreed with the majority of the delegation on Iran’s progress: “On the evidence available to us, we believe that Iran is an authoritarian nation whose internal policies often appear antithetical to American values.” They concluded: “We should therefore act according to our own interests. . . . We cannot subordinate our disagreements to ritual demonstrations of friendship or declarations of ‘special relationships.’ Arms sales, for example, must not be taken as tokens of commitment or proof of close relations, but rather only when both sides benefit.”

  Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy views were premised on a deep commitment to human rights. But in Iran, plainly, where human rights were concerned, even experienced senators could disagree on whether the glass was half full or half empty. As a candidate, Carter had sharply criticized America’s emergence as the world’s leading arms supplier. Now, however, focused on economic and energy issues, SALT II, and his first steps toward bringing Israel and Egypt together, Jimmy Carter chose to be optimistic about Iran. He noted in his diary that he would continue: “as other presidents had before me, to consider the Shah a strong ally.” Consequently, his administration would continue major arms sales to Iran. It was an understandable decision—and one he would come to greatly regret.

  THE DISSENTS FROM CULVER and Eagleton presaged a problem for the president altogether different from the likes of Scoop Jackson and his hawks. As it turned out, Carter would also face a serious threat from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, especially with respect to his domestic program. His commitment to combating inflation by balancing the federal budget threatened cuts in programs favored by many Democratic constituencies. The liberal groups could issue their own critiques, but they also could rely on leading senators whose views would command widespread attention.