HARD CHOICES: Four Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy

by Cyrus R. Vance ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 6, 1983

Former Secretary of State Vance is too old-school to respond in kind to his scrappy antagonist, ex-National Security Advisor Brzezinski (Power and Principle, p. 218). So this tale--""not a diplomatic history or a memoir. . . [but] a story of our country and those who led it during four critical and turbulent years""--lacks energy and a cutting edge. It's perfectly clear, nonetheless, that Vavce and Brzezinski fell out early. Vance had extracted a promise from Carter that the secretary of state would be the administration's only foreign policy spokesmen. But when Brzezinski began to hold background briefings and conduct impromptu interviews, Carter didn't intervene--leading, in Vance's view, to the impression of foreign-policy confusion. Much later, Brzezinski met with Iranian government leaders in Algiers days before the hostage crisis broke; and Vance, who didn't authorize or even know about the meeting beforehand, puts much blame there for the rapid deterioration of the Tehran government's authority. By then, Vance had already caught Brzezinski establishing his own communications with Tehran, though Brzezinski denied it in a face-to-face confrontation. The differences between the two were clearest on Iran: Vance favored a sort hand--letting the revolution takes its course; Brzezinski pushed first for active support of the Shah, then for a military coup (even as the army collapsed), then, after the embassy seizure, for the use of force to rescue the hostages. When Brzezinski won out on the last point, Vance resigned. In retrospect, he thinks that the administration could have moved earlier to support reforms in Iran's government (though he emphasizes the Shah's fatalism), and could also have played-down the hostage crisis. Altogether, Brzezinski's totalistic view of the Soviets--as having a global, all-encompassing plan--won out over Vance's view that the Soviets merely exploited events opportunistically. Vance's comments about Brzezinski must be gleaned, however, from very conventional rehashings of meetings and negotiations. He adds nothing substantive to the record of Camp David (except his own chagrin at Begin's interpretive shifts); he's justifiably proud of the administration's record on the Panama Canal Treaty and in Africa; and he validates published accounts of the SALT talks. He took a harder line in public than he meant to over the Soviet brigade in Cuba, to the detriment of SALT--and that he regrets. Vance liked Carter, and registers no pique at being ignored in favor of Brzezinski. Most of the other portraits are positive and colorless. A low-key story, all told, but with its own intrinsic interest for students of US foreign policy.

Pub Date: June 6, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION