Clinton's Hard-Line Appeaser

...I'm not, but that's what the Christopher Commission said we are, so there's no way I'm gonna stick my neck out.' Police officers are human beings...

...On November 2, 1978, Brzezinski convened a critical meeting of the SCC...

...A Carter-era State Department speechwriter recalls: "Christopher was by far everyone's least favorite person to deal with, precisely because his comments were invariably petty and inconsistent and in many ways wholly unimportant...

...After Vance's resignation following the aborted hostage rescue mission, his successor, Muskie, would rely on Christopher for substance as much as support...

...When applied to friends or coupled with leverage, the litigational approach can be defined as "diplomacy...

...It was ironically the "hawkish" Brzezinski who pressed for wide-ranging, in-depth dialogue with the Soviet Union, while the "dovish" State Department duo tended to view such dialogue as a threat to the "arms controlprocess...

...Christopher's reputation as "Cy Vance without the charisma" is well earned...

...Warren Christopher was reduced to invoking the specter of the incoming President, feared internationally at the time as unpredictably trigger-happy...

...Perhaps at times he was Vance's loyal echo rather than his intellectual twin...

...Many of them endured long imprisonment in the struggle for independence...

...After months of strikes, demonstrations, social unrest, and uncertain U.S...

...Christopher claims his approach "implies direct communication, whether to define our views, to explain our actions, to win acceptance, to invite cooperation...

...According to Brzezinski—whose magisterial memoir, Politics and Principle, can be read using Christopher's volume as a bookmark—blindness, not blandness, was the big problem with both Christopher and Vance...

...I have to believe they took a series of incidents, whether proven to be guilty or not, and established that these were problem officers just by the sheer number of complaints they had accumulated...

...I proposed at the meeting that we should immediately tell the Russians, through a Presidential message to Brezhnev, that SALT was now in jeopardy and that the scope of our relationship with the Chinese would be affected," wrote Brzezinski...

...Plenty, unfortunately, if the Carter Administration is any guide...

...In a way, that's what he wants to see: "I keep hoping that some judge will allow this into evidence, so that Christopher and the rest of this commission can be brought in and required to prove the accusations that they made in that report...

...We intend to shoot him twice...

...Leverage...

...Prior to recent reforms, the department, he explains, classified complaints as "sustained, not sustained (meaning we couldn't prove it or disprove it), unfounded (which means that investigation was able to establish enough evidence to believe it didn't happen), or exonerated (which means that it happened, but it wasn't misconduct, it was a necessary part of their job...

...Khomeini's return on February 1, 1980, confronted Washington with a fait accompli...

...The idea was to reassert American power and influence in a region that had become an "arc of crisis" through additional air and naval deployments, joint exercises, and base agreements with regional friends...

...On February 12, after another SCC meeting on Iran, Brzezinski noted in his journal: "I was rather struck by how eager Christopher and [Undersecretary for Political Affairs David] Newsom were to emphasize that the new regime in Iran is treating Americans well...

...Vance and Christopher resisted at every turn...

...They were always looking for a way out and they did not want to be 'provocative.' " When, a week after the Soviet invasion, State at last fell in behind tough sanctions, Brzezinski observed acidly: "For reasons more explicable in terms of psychology than politics, those who previously were reluctant to react strongly to growing indications of a likely Soviet move against Afghanistan now urged actions stronger than those I proposed...

...The commission focused on forty-four "problem officers" against whom six or more "allegations" of excessive (continued on following page) force had been lodged...

...What was Christopher's excuse...

...In the end, it was not the force of our arms, but the force of our arguments—and our economic and diplomatic leverage—that ultimately prevailed...

...Clinton may be inexperienced, but he has good instincts and firm resolve...

...Defense Secretary Harold Brown understood the need for a firm American response to Soviet expansionism...

...They did provide us with the names of the original forty-four, but they did not provide us anything more than the names...

...Our respect for human life also provides the essential context for any dealing with terrorists in the future...

...National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had spine and strategic vision...

...The Christopher Commission report will be the bible for every plaintiff's attorney who wants to sue the city of Los Angeles," he predicts...

...The two lawyers exemplified the litigational approach to foreign policy...

...Whether the Carter Administration's handling of the hostage crisis "invited" future acts or not, it certainly did not deter them...

...This is debatable, and the counterargument consists of the hostages taken in Beirut throughout the 1980s...

...It is a mistake to equate talking with yielding...

...Did the report and its ill effects on morale contribute to the belated LAPD response to the April riots...

...Anthony Lake and Sandy Berger at the National Security Council are able strategists...

...n 1979, America's strategic pillar in Iran had crumbled, the Soviets were knocking at the door in Afghanistan, and Soviet clients were entrenched in Ethiopia and South Yemen...

...From Brzezinski's perspective, it was a worst-case outcome...

...Not only did Christopher blithely equate the U.S...

...With Christopher now feeding Muskie the policy, the two tried to wriggle out of the Carter Doctrine commitments, not yet a year old...

...On that basis, he questioned whether Carter's policy of firm support for the Shah was surviving intact its transmission through Sullivan on the ground in Tehran...

...Even when Carter swung firmly toward the Brzezinski view late in his term, State often made the resulting policy hard to implement and sustain...

...While the hostage deal represents Christopher's crowning glory, it does not follow that it was a great moment in American foreign policy, even if Christopher thinks it was...

...And anyone who is holding a hostage, we intend to shoot him, and shoot him right between the eyes...

...In defending Sullivan against implications that he was diluting expressions of American backing for the Shah, Christopher may have spoken too soon...

...For the State Department gives operational expression to foreign policy...

...Brzezinski proposed that Sullivan inform the Shah that the United States supported him unreservedly, felt that he needed to take decisive action to restore order, was agnostic on what form such action might take, and hoped he would resume his liberalization efforts after order had been restored...

...It was largely our respect for human life that made this a crisis," observed Christopher...

...promise not to intervene in Iran and stay mum on U.S...

...We must resolutely resist the kind of outcome that could invite similar acts in the future...

...Lou Cannon reports in President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime that, according to Lloyd Cutler, "chief U.S...

...As Afghan resistance to the Soviet-sponsored Amin regime spread, the Washington pattern repeated itself: the NSC pushed to dial up the private and public heat on the Soviets, while State worried "that this might be seen by the Soviets as U.S...

...But such crucial distinctions did not survive the Christopher Commission's statistical sleight-of-hand...

...support, the Shah of Iran was paralyzed...

...In Christopher's defense, as deputy secretary of state his job was to reflect Vance's views...

...GI...

...Critics believe that in its crudely quantitative approach to the LAPD's use of force, its reluctance to acknowledge progress already made in confronting an array of problems and abuses, and its sweeping generalizations, the Christopher report caricatured the department as sadistic and racist, smeared a number of individual officers, and devastated officer morale at a time when the large' community that depends on the police could ill afford it...

...He then read aloud a draft message along those lines, stressing that Vance had already cleared it...

...I said that the people who come out of this building—there was a large building there that housed a lot of Iranian guards—when they come out we're going to try to take all those people down, and as we do that, we're gonna be going into the various compartments of their other buildings, searching for the hostages...

...Beckwith remembers, "but he laid his head down all the time...

...And he said, 'Well, would you consider shooting them in the leg, or in the ankle or the shoulder?' "Now Christopher is gonna deny that he said that, but it's the truth...

...It's hard to think of a more fitting testament to the futility of Vance-Christopher litigationism than that unratified treaty...

...They suggest that, with respect to Khomeini, Christopher was not merely a before-the-fact naïf, but an after-the-fact apologist...

...I suspect that the outcome in Iran is one that not only fulfills some of their prophecies but also expresses some of their preferences...

...should tell the Soviets that a military move into Iran would precipitate war with the U.S...

...defenders of the report might argue—the report was analytical not disciplinary and did not publish thenames of the forty-four...

...Whatever way Cy Vance looked at the world, Warren would try to look at the world in the same way," recalls a senior Carter official...

...As a result, Carter got not only bad advice from State, but also internal stalemates between hard- and soft-line approaches, with the President caught in the middle...

...In the early months of 1979, recalls Brzezinski, "I monitored with mounting apprehension the intensifying Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan and I pressed for stronger U.S...

...True, the report did not name the forty-four...

...To a considerable extent, though, this possibility has been tested...

...I believe that we should grasp, as a central lesson of the crisis, the wisdom in seeking negotiated settlements to international disputes," he wrote...

...I don't think in practice he'll turn out to be very much different from Cy Vance, but that remains to be tested...

...It involves addressing differences, struggling at least to identify them and ultimately, one hopes, to resolve them...

...The next morning Brzezinski convened a crisis management session of "his" interagency forum, the Special Coordination Committee (SCC...

...He did not last long...

...Charlie Beckwith, commander of the Delta Force and one of the most decorated special forces heroes in the country's history, briefed President Carter and his top national security advisers on Operation Eagle Claw, the plan to rescue fifty-two American hostages being held by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Tehran...

...Dedicated to process, to "talking," Christopher lost sight of the strategic and ideological ends that necessarily guide choices of means...

...When applied to implacable adversaries and not backed up by power, it is barely distinguishable from appeasement...

...And the commission refused to provide the department with the background data that would permit analysis of their murky numbers...

...Unfortunately, his State Department was headed by Cyrus Vance and Warren Christopher...

...in promoting a settlement to the conflict, in effect offering the Soviets parity in an area the President had declared a vital interest of the United States...

...Throughout 1980, Christopher remained cool to efforts to boost America's presence in the Persian Gulf, even after the enunciation of the Carter Doctrine ("Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force...

...These remarks were made two years after Khomeini's return, after mass executions and arrests, after the hostage crisis...

...I don't think there is any question about it, because everybody stood back and said restraint is the new order of the day," says Gates...

...State instructs ambassadors, conducts negotiations, shapes embassy reporting, and enunciates U.S...

...When it is not in sympathy with the White House, it has a unique capacity to dilute, obstruct, and stall...

...But unlike Christopher, those two had a sure grasp of strategy and history...

...hristopher's approach to the C Iranian revolution—undermining the Shah's capacity to rule while displaying a haughty indifference to the consequences of weakening him—finds something of a parallel in the severe criticism meted out to the Los Angeles Police Department and its former chief, Daryl Gates, by his "Christopher Commission" report on the force in the summer of 1991...

...For good measure, he suggested inviting the Soviets to join the U.S...

...Afghanistan fell under Soviet domination and Iran transformed itself into a terrorist theocracy...

...The Shah had raised the specter of abdication for the first time and requested guidance from Washington within forty-eight hours...

...T he commission's use of the category "allegations" in the absence of explanatory background information was itself deceptive, Dince explains, because the same incident often involves multiple "allegations": "A personnel complaint by a citizen against an officer might involve one or more 'allegations' of misconduct, and there might be one or more 'allegations' of excessive force or improper tactics...

...Saudi Arabia, fearing an Iranian attack on their oil fields in retaliation for planned Iraqi attacks to be launched from Gulf oil states, requested American AWACS, intelligence help, and enhanced air defense...

...Eventually Brown and he "prevailed on Vance and Christopher, both of whom were less than enthusiastic, to register formally our concern over the Soviets' creeping interference in Afghanistan...

...meddling in Afghanistani affairs...

...Warren Christopher, as Carter's deputy secretary of state—and de facto secretary of state under the clueless Edmund Muskie—was as responsible as anyone for cutting America's interests loose from their strategic underpinnings in the late 1970s...

...he also saw Khomeini's triumph in terms of a classic anti-colonial independence struggle rather than as the medieval theocratic reaction against modernity it so Plainly was...

...But Christopher saw it in a somewhat different light...

...Whether undermining support for the Shah or backtracking on security commitments in the Persian Gulf, it did just that in the Carter years, when Ethiopia, South Yemen, and...

...Both "were so much better when playing supporting roles than when given predominant responsibility for coping with the ugly realities of the contemporary world...

...Perhaps Christopher's punctiliousness accounts for his limited output of foreign policy writings...

...In this view, he will be balanced by Clinton himself and the otherwise impressive national security team he has assembled...

...This somewhat surprised Christopher, who pointed out that Zahedi was adept at giving the impression that the United States did not support the Shah and noted that a coalition government might still be the best way to provide movement toward a lasting settlement," records Brzezinski...

...Christopher has earned the high praise he has received for his personal role in this effort...

...Department speechwriters worked in State's Policy Planning Bureau, then headed by Tony Lake and his deputy, Sandy Berger...

...But very nearly the opposite is true...

...In 1985, he wrote: "There is scant incentive for others to copy the Iranian action in the future...

...And Christopher said, 'You mean you can do that?' "And I said, 'We work very hard to do that.' Daniel Wattenberg's "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock" appeared in our August issue...

...His post-Carter chef d'oeuvre is "Diplomacy: The Neglected Imperative," a 77-page manila-bound collection of speeches published by his law firm...

...Christopher opposed the aid, lest it be perceived as being provocative by either Iran or the Soviets...

...How much damage could Warren Christopher do...

...The internal debates, according to Brzezinski, reflected "conflicting" strategic views: "Brown and I were now firmly united in the view that the United States had to sustain its commitment to the security of the Persian Gulf, while Muskie and Christopher appeared inclined to use the Iraqi-Iranian war—arguing that the United States was neutral—as an opportunity to dilute the commitment made earlier in the year...

...State remained fixated on arms control...

...They suggested that the U.S...

...But the Los Angeles Times did, and it's safe to say that the list was not leaked to the paper by the LAPD...

...Brzezinski summarized what he'd heard, through sources including the Iranian ambassador to the U.S., Ardeshir Zahedi, regarding the Shah's state of mind and the mixed signals he was receiving from U.S...

...This has given them an understanding and a credibility in relating to independence struggles of others, including Iran...

...negotiator Warren Christopher warned the Iranian government through an Algerian intermediary that Reagan might be unwilling to approve an arrangement that freed the hostages in return for the release of frozen Iranian assets...

...When in the fall of 1980, Soviet force deployments along the Iranian border raised the real possibility of a Soviet invasion, Brown and Brzezinski argued forcefully that the U.S...

...On the night of December 25, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan...

...After the Iran-Iraq war broke out, Christopher tried once more to undercut the Carter Doctrine...

...T hroughout the Carter years, Christopher recoiled from confronting the Soviets over their regional adventurism, long after Carter himself had wised up...

...In orchestrating the complex pattern of interlocking financial, legal, diplomatic, political, and logistical arrangements the agreement involved, Christopher performed with consummate professionalism, selfless dedication, and considerable ingenuity...

...This method, according to Commander Rick Dince, obscured distinctions between substantiated and unsubstantiated complaints...

...In effectively equating complaints with guilt, Christopher's report established a precedent, argues Gates...

...One week later, Sullivan sent Washington a telegram entitled, "Thinking the Unthinkable," in which he speculated that, should the Shah leave without a fight, the Ayatollah Khomeini would probably return from exile to play a "Gandhi-like role," and elections would probably result in an Islamic republic with a strong pro-Western leaning...

...After creating a military government without the authority to clamp down, the Shah continued to vacillate between further concessions and the mailed fist before finally agreeing to leave and cede power to a government headed by the moderate, though anti-Shah, Shahpur Bakhtiar...

...T here are those who argue that President Clinton's nomination of the Los Angeles lawyer as secretary of state is not a cause for serious worry...

...The problem with the State Department in general and Christopher in particular was that "they were unprepared for any confrontation," recalls a senior Carter official...

...foreign policy in daily noon briefings...

...Vance and Christopher objected strongly...

...And after a wishy-washy start, Carter himself demonstrated realism and resolve...

...At times the dynamic duo and Brzezinski seemed to be in different governments, as Brzezinski recounts: "At one point in the debate, Schlesinger argued forcefully that American military presence in the Indian Ocean-Persian Gulf area should 'balance' the Soviets, and when Vance and Christopher reacted negatively, I not only backed Schlesinger but stated that in fact our objective ought to be military preponderance, since the area was vital to the United States while not of equal significance to the Soviets...

...With the support of Harold Brown and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, Brzezinski attempted to activate the national security machinery in support of "a regional security framework...

...Christopher's solicitude for the Revolutionary Guards is particularly odd, given that the Carter Administration was still considering a punitive—and inevitably lethal—military strike on Iran, to be staged concurrently with the rescue mission...

...The Iranians got serious only after the war with Iraq made their frozen American assets suddenly indispensable...

...While the State Department would succeed in frustrating Brzezinski's hopes for a meaningful historical-philosophical dialogue with the Soviets, they would not succeed in getting SALT II...

...Though Christopher's approach was invariably averse to the use of force, that was not its main defect...

...In practice, this litigational orientation resulted more often than not in the evasion of differences...

...I remember Lake and Berger being in despair because he once sent a draft back and forth thirty-three times...

...Self-effacement is not incompatible with success at State, as secretaries from George Marshall to George Shultz have shown...

...And it made him a one-term President...

...The Christopher Commission said we were too aggressive, and so a police officer is going to say, 'I'm not going to stick my neck out, because everybody says I'm too aggressive, they say I'm racist...

...He was notorious for sending drafts back and forth over and over again...

...relationship with the Shah with the benighted French colonial rule in Algeria...

...They had counted...

...We can and should refuse, as we did in this case, to make concessions that might imply any form of victory for the kidnappers...

...To get numbers that were even close to the numbers they had listed as far as the number of complaints or allegations against an officer, you had to count the unfoundeds or exonerateds, even though they should only count those that are either 'sustained' or `not sustained,'" Dince recalls...

...Its main defect was that it venerated negotiation—by definition a means—as an end...

...Many officers agree with Gates's assessment that the commission report, in conjunction with the general drubbing that the LAPD took in the media following the Rodney King incident, had a "devastating" effect on police morale...

...Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher took the lead in cross-examining Col...

...Clinton's nominee for defense secretary, Les Aspin, and CIA director-designate R. James Woolsey have strategic vision and backbone...

...Christopher led the U.S...

...A fter the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians finally got serious about negotiating a deal to release the hostages...

...Beckwith on his rescue plan...

...Ambassador William Sullivan...

...Christopher provided implicit confirmation of Brzezinski's suspicions in a 1981 speech: Algeria's struggle for independence from France was relentless and bloody, and in the end, triumphant in 1962...

...they react to this kind of thing...

...But when diplomacy yielded to power politics, Vance—and later Christopher when he became in effect Muskie's alter ego, given Muskie's relative unfamiliarity with key problems—preferred to litigate issues endlessly, to shy away from the unavoidable ingredient of force in dealing with contemporary international realities, and to have an excessive faith that all issues can be resolved by compromise...

...6 6 . . . take issue with those who contend we should never negotiate over hostages," wrote Christopher...

...Unfortunately, in a revolutionary age, such an approach more often than not tends to be exploited by the Qaddafis, Khomeinis, or even the Brezhnevs or Begins of our age...

...The Secretary of State [Cyrus Vance] was there," Col...

...He didn't participate or act like he heard what was being said...

...Most of the leaders of present day Algeria were leaders in the revolution...

...side in these indirect talks...

...Compiled during the anti-LAPD furor sparked by the videotaped beating of Rodney King, the report added fuel to the public relations fire engulfing the department...

...reactions...

...That view of the context shaped Carter's approach to his hostage crisis...

...responses to Soviet intervention...

...The bottom line, according to Dince: "I know from my own personal involvement with that issue that of those forty-four they identified as `problem people' at least half of those people do not qualify based on the information available as being potential `problem officers.' " So what...

...Brzezinski wrote: Christopher was at his best when supporting Vance, or when negotiating on the President's behalf on the hostage issue...

...Muskie hadn't been at the table when the commitment was made...

...And though the incentive might have been "scant" to copy the Iranian action, the same Iranian regime found the incentives sufficient to sponsor the same type of acts in Lebanon in the eighties...