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Yet Carter was not long in office before he began publicly scolding the Soviet Union for its harassment of political dissidents. Dispatched on a mission to Moscow by the President and told to carry out "open" diplomacy, Vance found himself uncharacteristically briefing reporters on what the new Administration was demanding of the Kremlin in the way of a SALT II agreement: the Russians should either agree to a drastic reduction in strategic weapons or defer such problems as the Soviet Backfire bomber and U.S. Cruise missile and accept a simple continuation of the modest limitations on offensive weapons tentatively set by Brezhnev and Ford at Vladivostok in 1974. Brezhnev, stung by both the human rights campaign and what sounded like an arms ultimatum, coldly rejected the proposals and in March of last year scolded a red-faced Vance in Moscow.
Vance knows now, and perhaps he should have known then, that he should have more forcefully resisted the posing of such a sharp challenge to the Soviet Union. But Vance, says one of his aides, has a tendency—both a strength and a weakness at times—to be "sometimes more like a soldier than a lawyer; he takes his orders and marches off."
Vance returned from Moscow and successfully urged Carter to moderate his human rights approach. It should by no means be abandoned, he advised, but it should be conducted less stridently, it should be applied to other countries outside Eastern Europe, and it should be pushed through private diplomatic channels whenever that approach looked more promising. Above all, it must be squared with overriding U.S. security interests. Vance persuaded Marshall Shulman, Columbia Sovietologist, to switch from a part-time consulting job at the State Department to a full-time post as the Secretary's adviser on Soviet affairs. Not coincidentally, the medium-soft-line Shulman serves as a kind of academic counterweight to the NSC's Brzezinski.
Carter appreciated these moves, and Vance's influence with him grew steadily. The President, however, still vacillates between the Vance and Brzezinski approaches to the Russians. Increasingly, Vance tends to prevail on the practical tactics to be taken in pursuing agreed-upon foreign policy goals.
The Secretary, for example, rejected advice from his department's top Africa experts that the U.S. take a compromise position between Kissinger's reluctance to pressure South Africa to abandon its apartheid policy and Carter's desire to place America openly on the side of black majority rule. Vance fully agreed with Carter. But when the President wanted to dispatch Mondale to jawbone South African Prime Minister John Vorster in what Carter called "the lion's den" in Pretoria, Vance objected. Mondale should be given the benefit of at least meeting Vorster on neutral ground, Vance argued, and the meeting was held in Vienna.
Vance has the highest regard for what he considers United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young's "excellent instincts" on Africa. But when the loquacious former Georgia Congressman accused various foreign white leaders of racism, Vance summoned Young to his office and scolded him for not tempering his language.