Needed: a consistent foreign policy—and muscle When Americans look abroad they tend to see enemy territory. When they look ahead, they tend to see bad times and bad situations getting worse. The confidence and optimism that marked America a generation ago have given way to anger and apprehension often bordering on fear. In short, one of the most serious problems affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy these days is the national mood.
To some extent, the anxiety is understandable and justified.
America's potential enemies—most significantly the Soviet Union—are stronger and bolder than ever before. America's friendships, meanwhile, are increasingly strained, its alliances increasingly divided. The U.N. General Assembly and some other international forums are dominated by supposedly neutral nations that ritually criticize U.S. policies and reject U.S. sponsored initiatives. Pro-Western regimes in the Third World appear vulnerable to revolt and subversion. The U.S., and to a far greater extent its allies in Western Europe and Japan, depend for their very survival as economic powers on oil supplies from one of the most flammable regions on earth—the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf.
Americans rejoiced in the Inauguration Day liberation of the 52 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Nonetheless, Iran threatens to succeed Viet Nam as a symbol of American frustration and impotence. American diplomatic support and military backing could not prevent the fall of the Shah, who for decades seemed the paragon of a U.S. friend overseas. Then came the humiliation of the embassy seizure, the burning of American flags, the ritual chanting of "Death to the great satan!" by mullah-led mobs. Recent years have spawned an array offerees seemingly inimical to American interests, ranging from the extortionist pricing policies of OPEC to xenophobic Islamic fundamentalism. Iran, in a peculiarly ugly way, has managed to represent both.
In its attempts to deal with a more hostile and dangerous world, the U.S. has found that the assumptions, ideals, doctrines and instrumentalities on which it relied for decades to protect and advance its interests no longer seem to work very well —if at all. American diplomatic efforts, with few exceptions, have ended in frustration. Henry Kissinger's attempt to negotiate "peace with honor" in Viet Nam produced neither peace for Indochina nor honor for the U.S. (in part, because Congress blocked him on some key issues). The Camp David peace accords, one of President Jimmy Carter's few foreign policy achievements, have foundered on Israel's refusal to consider an agreement that would provide real autonomy for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.
The impression of impotence has been reinforced by evidence of military weakness. The U.S. is ill-prepared to fight a conventional war. It has not even demonstrated a capacity to conduct a successful rescue mission—as pictures of the burning helicopters and charred bodies at Desert One last April so shatteringly illustrated. Rhetoric about military preparedness has tended to accentuate the problems. By proclaiming the Carter Doctrine, which committed the U.S. to meet Soviet aggression in the Persian Gulf area with force if necessary, the former President unwittingly raised the question of whether the U.S. had the