Foreign Policy Flashcards
who did Ford retain
Kissinger
who did Ford retain
Kissinger
the final withdrawal from vietnam
Nixon and Kissinger had supposedly brought ‘peace with honour’ at Paris in 1973. However, the paris peace accords contained no provision for communist resumption of the war. Under the settlement, America could protect SV through financial aid but congress cut the aid by 50% in 1973 and then again in 74. American taxpayers felt that the $150B spent on V had been wasted money and opposed further expenditure
Communist escalation
74-5 communists began a major offensive against SV. Nixon had secretly promised Thieu America support if the peace collapsed but neither congress nor the public were interested when Ford appealed for help for SV. Thieu feld the country in 21 April after a speech where he accused the US of selling out. Ford reponsded with a speech that combined admission that the war was over with more positive sentiments.
Leaving Vietnam
Ford arranged the evacuation of 40,000 and the US navy reac used over 32k that fled by sea. Few Americans shared in fords enthusiasm for those returning.
Relations with USSR and China
Initially Ford and K sought to continue detente with the Soviet’s. In 1974, Ford met with Brezhnev at the Vladivostok summit meeting on arms control. They agreed on SALT which was designed to put limits on missles and Bombers. However, Americans were opposed to detente
the final withdrawal from vietnam
Nixon and Kissinger had supposedly brought ‘peace with honour’ at Paris in 1973. However, the paris peace accords contained no provision for the communist resumption of the war
Why Americans turned against detente
Americans turned against detente with the Soviets for several reasons:
• Detente suffered from its association with disgraced President Nixon.
• Conservatives particularly opposed the Helsinki Agreement (1975), saying that it constituted ‘appeasement’ of the Soviet Union. The Helsinki Agreement was arguably the nearest the Second World War victors ever came to making a European peace settlement, in that both sides recognised the post-war European status quo. In exchange for that implicit Western recognition of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Soviets agreed on a human rights provision. Although some in the West felt the agreement was a sell-out, the human rights provision encouraged agitation for human rights in Eastern Europe and caused the Soviet Union considerable international embarrassment.
• Americans perceived the Communists as having taken advantage of detente to build up their nuclear arsenal and to increase their influence in Africa and Vietnam.
• Americans had grown dissatisfied with SALT I because the Soviets had attained parity on multiple warheads.
Why the Soviet’s turned against detente
The Soviets turned against detente for a number of reasons:
• They resented President Carter’s repeated criticisms of the Soviet Union’s human rights record. For example, when in 1979 Brezhnev allowed an exceptional number of Jews to emigrate from the Soviet Union (something the Americans had long demanded), Carter responded by conducting a high-profile correspondence with a Soviet dissident. The Soviets retaliated by criticising the US human rights record, citing widespread racial prejudice, unemployment and organised crime in the West as indicative of Western hypocrisy.
• The Soviets resented their exclusion from Carter’s Middle East peace process in 1978
The USSR considered Carter too friendly with China. When the Americans and Chinese finally established full diplomatic relations in January 1979, the Soviets blamed Sino-American plotting for the subsequent Chinese invasion of Vietnam (a Soviet ally). The Soviets had hoped to isolate China through detente, but the Chinese were buying military hardware from the West and improving relations with Japan (America’s ally).
• The Soviets had hoped that detente would do more to help their economy.
• Worst of all, the Helsinki Agreement had led to unrest in Eastern Europe and worldwide criticism of the USSR on the human rights issue.
Demise of detente
The demise of detente was illustrated when Congress refused to ratify the
SALT II treaty that Carter and Brezhnev agreed on at the Vienna summit
(1979). Congress felt the Soviets had taken advantage of detente to become more aggressive, as demonstrated in Afghanistan.
Helsinki accords
The Helsinki Agreement (1975)
• The West recognised the current national boundaries in Eastern Europe.
• West Germany recognised the legitimacy of East Germany.
• NATO and the Warsaw Pact (see page 20) countries agreed that each should have observers at the other’s military exercises.
• There would be more trade, more co-operation in economic, scientific and technological endeavours, and a free exchange of people and ideas between the Soviet bloc and the West.
Both sides opened their human rights records to public scrutiny.
Responses to crisis in the Middle East
The 1973 Arab-Israeli War (see page 217) had clearly demonstrated the limitations of detente, particularly when Nixon put America on full nuclear alert. It affected Ford and Carter in that it demonstrated the West’s increasing vulnerability to Arab oil power: when the United States had supplied weapons to the great Arab enemy, Israel, and used NATO bases in Western Europe as transportation points, the Arab nations had retaliated by imposing an oil embargo which damaged the American, West European and Japanese economies (oil prices rocketed). Under the pressure of this oil crisis, Japan and Western Europe seemed increasingly pro-Arab, which worried Ford and confirmed the dangers of the multipolar world that had made Nixon seek detente.
Whereas the importance of oil had led President Eisenhower to woo the Arab nations (see page 80), the United States was far more closely associated with support of Israel by the 1970s. Carter proved a brilliant negotiator in bringing about an Israeli-Egyptian detente at Camp David in 1978, but US problems with the Middle East were demonstrated in the Iranian crisis.
Iran and Afghanistan
ran and Afghanistan
tian and Afghanistan were the international crises most responsible for the media and public refrain of ‘Can Carter cope?’ Iran was the greatest crisis of Carter’s presidency.
Iran
In 1978, Islamic fundamentalists led a revolution against the repressive, pro-American Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In January 1979, the Shah fled Iran. Iranians resentful of American military and political support for the Shah stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held it for several hours. Many Americans felt powerless, and 50 per cent of them felt that Carter was ‘too soft’ on Iran
Iran attack
On 4 November 1979, Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran and took 60 Americans hostage in protest against Carter allowing the Shah into America to receive cancer treatment. Carter tried to negotiate the hostages release, stopped Americans buying Iranian oil, and froze Iranian assets. His approval rating rocketed to 61 per cent. Then, in April 1980, he attempted a military rescue. It was a disaster.
