President Carter

by Stuart E. Eizenstat

  Less than two weeks after his inauguration, President Carter met with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. He was a tall, imposing man, totally fluent in English, and given more leeway than most Soviet diplomats. His long service in Washington and the wide range of his contacts made him especially valuable to both sides as a reliable link with direct access to the Politburo. Most of their initial meeting was taken up with Carter’s ambitions to complete SALT II, but then Carter brought up the Helsinki Accords. He explained that while not interfering in the Soviet Union’s internal affairs, the United States understood that when the Soviet Union signed them, it had placed the subject of human rights firmly on the agenda of legitimate discussion between our two nations, and he expected this and all other agreements to be honored.19 Carter reserved the right to speak out about Sakharov, while Dobrynin countered that Brezhnev had promised not to “test the American president” through confrontation, lest it risk the continuing dialogue with Moscow.20 Thus the principal difficulty in shifting from realpolitik to idealism was exposed at the highest level during the very first exchange between the two superpowers.

  Sakharov wrote a personal letter on January 21, 1977, the day after Carter’s inauguration, that dropped into Carter’s lap shortly before his meeting with Dobrynin, applauding the new president for making human rights a high priority; stating that his telephone communications were being blocked; naming a number of political prisoners; and urging him to do something about the situation. (A then-unknown young Soviet Jewish dissident, Anatoly—later Natan—Sharansky, translated the letter, which was smuggled out and delivered to the Carter White House by Jewish tourists.) I remember the air of excitement at the White House about how to respond to this early human rights challenge, because it would be a breach of protocol for a president to respond to a communication from a private citizen of another country about his own government’s policies. But this was a plea with grave implications from a person of international standing, and following the recommendations of Vance and Brzezinski, Carter replied personally only a few days after the Dobrynin meeting. He wrote Sakharov on February 5, 1977, that he should “rest assured that the American people and our government will continue our firm commitment to promote respect for human rights, not only in our own country, but also abroad.”21

  An official of the American Embassy in Moscow met with Sakharov to inform him of the president’s response and tell him that the embassy was willing to accept and transmit documents of a public nature, as well as any letters he might wish to send to members of Congress or the administration. The Kremlin was infuriated when Sakharov posed for photographs holding up the letter and displaying Carter’s signature at the bottom. This quickly set the tone of the tense relationship between the two countries.

  There was much trial and error in the early going. When Helsinki was first mentioned at a cabinet meeting just a month after the inauguration, on February 28, Carter wanted to be sure the United States was on a firm footing: For years U.S. law had barred known Communists from visiting America, while the Soviet Union had no such barrier against avowed capitalists. Zbig said that the administration’s human rights statement should not be pointed only at Russia or “they will see it as an attack against them.” At the cabinet meeting Carter gave Vance a clear message: “Don’t vacillate on human rights; be moderate and careful, but be consistent, because it is the best thing we can do to restore our world leadership.” He warned against singling out the Soviet Union and wanted to remove any stigma in this area, so we should allow Americans to “go wherever in the world they want, and let others come here.”22

  As a lawyer, the secretary of state assured the president early on that Soviet actions and policies violated their Helsinki commitments, and that while the Helsinki Accords recognized their right to determine their own laws, it also stated that human rights “‘derive from the inherent dignity of the human person,’ and thus, in our view, these rights transcend national laws.”23 In March, Vance began what would be a regular routine when meeting with his Soviet counterparts. He first presented a list of seven hundred Soviet Jews and appealed on their behalf for permission to leave because of religious discrimination. The issue unified American Jews and was also taken up by Congress, but Vance never received the credit he deserved for his unstinting efforts on behalf of Soviet Jews.

  While most of the Russian dissident leadership, like Sakharov, preferred to remain and work for reforms internally, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews, who under Soviet law were labeled of “Hebrew” nationality on their identity documents, were not permitted to practice their religion and demanded to emigrate. Their identity and confidence as Jews was raised by Israel’s lightning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, which emboldened Jews worldwide following the devastating Holocaust. They were refused exit visas, itself a violation of the Helsinki Accords, and were called refuseniks—those who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union.

  Many who spoke out were often arrested on trumped-up charges. On February, 24, 1975, ten Soviet Jews demonstrated outside the Lenin Library in Moscow, calling for the release of Jewish prisoners and seeking freer emigration to Israel. Six were arrested and jailed for 15 days, including Sharansky, who was brought before a criminal court and released. From this spark grew a fire of escalating demonstrations and hunger strikes, first in April 1975 by Jewish activists in the Soviet Union who signed an appeal for an international commission to investigate the denial of Jewish emigration, then in Israel, Western Europe, and the United States, including 200,000 demonstrators in New York.24

  The Soviets did not take these protests lying down. On June 6 a heavy tax was imposed on foreign funds sent to Soviet Jews to assist their emigration, and the Soviets announced that “tourist-Zionists” coming to Russia would be regarded as interfering in Russia’s internal affairs. During 1975 and 1976, advocacy organizations were formed in America to defend Soviet Jewry through mass protest and official complaint. This did not go unnoticed by our campaign. I explained to the candidate that the issue had galvanized the American Jewish community like nothing else since the Israeli victory in the 1967 war, and that American Jews, bearing a sense of guilt for doing too little to push President Roosevelt to help European Jewry escape the Nazis, were united under the slogan “Never Again.” I helped draft campaign speeches for Carter putting him firmly on the side of Soviet Jewish emigration as part of his own human rights policy. The issue became a cause célèbre among American Jews, and was taken up by Congress and remained a priority on the State Department’s diplomatic agenda.

  Carter nevertheless continued hoping to build on the policy of détente, and Vance supported him. When Vance told the cabinet on March 14 that the Cubans had approached him about relaxing travel restrictions, Carter responded that the Cubans wanted the trade embargo lifted, and in exchange he would want Cuban troops to withdraw from Africa and release some political prisoners.25 He clung to the hope that he could have it both ways—sharply criticizing the Soviets on human rights violations, while maintaining an even keel in other areas, particularly SALT II negotiations.

  Then, a week later, he told the cabinet that in Brezhnev’s private exchanges the Soviet leader indicated “there was progress on SALT; that he might even act on his own to reduce intermediate nuclear forces; and that the Soviet Union was staying out of the Middle East.”26 Vance reported that he had been courted by the Soviets at the UN, and Carter told the cabinet that he welcomed this because he wanted to keep open the lines of communication with Brezhnev, whom he regarded as one of the more moderate Soviet leaders. But he also admitted that “human rights aggravated them more than I anticipated, and I still don’t understand it,”27 exhibiting his inexperience by failing to see how his human rights campaign threatened the Soviets’ legitimacy and their need to maintain internal order at all costs. He was so invested in his human rights campaign that he ignored the diplomatic consequences—but in the long run for the better.

  LINKAGE?

  In Carter
’s view of the world America was competing with the Soviets in many areas, but he continued to exude optimism, telling the vice president and senior White House staff in July that “things with Russia are better than Brezhnev indicates” in public.28 He thought he could call Brezhnev directly at the behest of Israeli prime minister Begin, and make a private request to take the pressure off Soviet Jews. Around the same time, Zbig told the cabinet in July that the Soviets were interfering with U.S. telecommunications contacts, and on commercial transactions, as well.29

  And I also got a whiff of an early version of today’s cyberattacks when Senator Moynihan informed me that the Soviets were listening to our White House discussions through the giant antennas on the roof of their nearby embassy, and urged that we use our technology to interfere with their snooping. When I raised this at an NSC meeting, our intelligence agencies, aware of the practice, concluded it was not worth risking retaliation: We got more information on their closed political system from our listening posts, while much of what we were doing was plastered on the front pages of our open press.

  Zbig would use every opportunity to point out Soviet misbehavior, but neither side was listening to the other. The Soviets did not seem to comprehend, or care, that the treatment of dissidents was high on the Carter agenda, and Carter did not appreciate that adding human rights and Jewish emigration to his position on SALT II overloaded Brezhnev’s political circuits inside the Politburo. As Soviet conduct failed to improve, Carter’s attitude began to change. One of the key parts of his Soviet policy, which was shared by Vance, was to avoid linking Soviet behavior in some areas with progress in others, particularly arms control. In March 1978 he told the cabinet that SALT negotiations must go forward, while pressing his campaign against the brutal crackdown on Soviet Jews.30

  * * *

  The dilemma was crystallized by Sharansky’s arrest on March 15, 1977, on phony charges of spying for the United States and treason, both capital crimes. It would become a test case of the president’s human rights policy and profoundly alter the American relationship with the Soviet Union. Sharansky was a particular target because he was both the link between the general dissident community through the Russian Helsinki Watch Committee and the Jewish refuseniks. He also defended Catholic rights, was a key contact to Baptists, and served as a translator for American visitors. His arrest put Carter in a difficult position. Although he knew the charges were utterly false, a president traditionally neither confirms nor denies that persons arrested are spies, because an official statement either way could compromise covert operations, implicate innocent people, and establish an expectation in future cases.

  My former Harvard law professor, the combative Alan Dershowitz, came to see me to urge that Carter issue a statement declaring that Sharansky was not an American spy.31 I had several meetings with Sharansky’s wife, Avital, who became an effective champion for him around the world, and made the same plea for a presidential statement of her husband’s innocence, which touched me to the core.32 They had been separated within weeks of their marriage in July 1974, when she was granted an exit visa to Israel and his application was turned down. Carter and Vance initially made clear in private meetings with the Soviets that he was not an American spy.33 Vance told Dobrynin that we were receiving thousands of letters about his detention and that putting him on trial would undermine public and congressional support for better relations with Moscow.34

  Vance repeated the warning to Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko in June; he brushed it aside by saying that the case now was in the hands of the court. When Gromyko made his annual visit to America in September for the UN General Assembly meeting, he came to Washington for his regular meeting with the president. There are two differing versions of their September 23 conversation at the White House, but both underline the unyielding Soviet determination to ignore the human rights obligations of the Helsinki Accords. Carter confronted Gromyko with Sharansky’s widely publicized case, and as Carter recalled it, Gromyko dismissed Sharansky as “a microscopic dot” of no importance to anyone.35 According to Dobrynin, Gromyko asked the president: “Who is Sharansky?”—and that ended the matter. But in the car after leaving, Gromyko asked Dobrynin: “Who really is Sharansky? Tell me more about him.” Dobrynin did so and discovered that Gromyko had previously instructed his aides not to bother him with such “absurd” matters.36

  The Sharansky case dragged on for about a year into 1978, and with his trial looming, there was a struggle to persuade the president to make a public statement, while we considered our options to retaliate against Moscow for his expected conviction. On July 7 Brzezinski expressed to me his deep concern that we had reached our limit with the Soviets: “We must fish or cut bait on human rights soon. The Russians don’t think we’ll back up our words with action.” He listed several actions that we might take, which were elaborated at a meeting two days later, including limiting technology transfers and recalling our ambassador.37 But what he did not say, and what was certainly on Vance’s mind, was that any sharp response would slow down, if not derail, the SALT II talks. I was upset to learn that the State Department’s senior adviser on Soviet affairs, Marshall Shulman, had persuaded Vance to oppose anything limiting Soviet trade. This was taking the department’s notion of unlinking Soviet action against human rights from any other issue to an absurd and politically unsustainable point.

  As Sharansky went on trial July 10, the president met in his study with Ham, White House Counsel Lipshutz, and me. I told the president flatly that the human rights issue and his own credibility were at stake if he did not act. I mentioned some of the steps we had been discussing. Defensively he said: “Don’t discount what we have already done. I do not want to resurrect the Cold War” (emphasis Carter’s). He told me he would consider limiting technology transfers and cultural exchanges but added: “We must be measured.” Ham and I both cautioned him that he needed to lead the way on Sharansky or Congress would overtake him. He was desperately trying to maintain the fraying ties with Moscow, but most important from his standpoint was somehow to isolate Sharansky’s case from SALT II, which he considered—and with good reason—of surpassing importance.38

  On July 14 Sharansky was sentenced to thirteen years in prison, ten of them in a strict labor camp. Carter did not wait for the conviction, which caused a sensation. With the trial in progress, in an interview with Western European and Japanese reporters on July 11, he made an unprecedented statement that could serve as a guidepost for all future presidents faced with such gross violations of human rights: “The allegation that Sharansky was a spy for the United States is patently false. The Soviets know it to be false. They are prosecuting Sharansky because he represents an element, a small group in the Soviet Union who are fighting for the implementation of international agreements which the Soviet Union itself has signed.… These are the things that the Soviets are attacking in the Sharansky trial … and others. We deplore this, the actions themselves, and the violation of agreements which the Soviets themselves freely signed.” He went on to declare the case an affront to the world, and that it was his responsibility and that of others who had signed the international agreements to point out the violations.39

  As for Sharansky, his closing remarks electrified the Jewish community and well beyond. He said he was proud to work with other famous dissidents, “but most of all I feel part of a marvelous historical process—the process of the national revival of Soviet Jewry and its return to the homeland, to Israel.” He told the packed courtroom that the Jewish people “stubbornly and without reason, say to each other, ‘Next Year in Jerusalem.’” Repeating it then to those who would share his hopes everywhere, he turned to the judge and declared: “And to the court, which has only to read a sentence that was prepared long ago—to you, I have nothing to say.”40

  In a rarity, both Time and Newsweek put Sharansky’s picture on their covers, with Time adding the backdrop of a crumbled sign reading “détente.” Sharansky’s plight gave the issue of
dissidents a young and vigorous human face. Committees were formed on American campuses, and congressional resolutions were offered. The Association for Computer Machinery cut ties with the Soviet Union, and by the end of the year 2,400 American scientists, including 13 Nobel laureates, signed a pledge to avoid all contacts with the USSR until Sharansky and other dissident colleagues were freed. In light of the uproar over the conviction, the president had acted just in time. He prohibited the sale of computers to the Soviet news agency, TASS, for use in the 1980 Olympics, and restricted the export to the Soviets of equipment for oil drilling.

  Though he declined to cut all trade with the Soviet Union or stop SALT negotiations, he said that “we need to let them know we’re concerned. We need to show there are dire consequences of their action, but not impose a total embargo.” Senator Jacob Javits, a liberal Jewish New York Republican, supported the president but warned that the Senate would not approve any SALT agreement unless the Soviets liberalized emigration.41 It had taken Carter a few days to come around, but he did so—and would do much more later after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

  I was struck by how the trial of one man had led to these sanctions, even in the midst of the arms-control negotiations. Combined with his sanctions on Latin American dictatorships, Carter’s Soviet sanctions were the first time in American history a president employed sanctions to protest human rights violations. To him the Soviet government’s adamant hold on Sharansky was indicative of its waning influence on the global stage. It took Sharansky some years and a serious threat to his health for him to become the first Soviet political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. When he was finally released across a bridge into the West, Sharansky was ordered by his Soviet captors to walk straight ahead. In a famous gesture of tenacity and unbreakable will, he intentionally walked in a zigzag course to freedom—and then straight into politics in Israel, where he served in several cabinet posts and now heads the Jewish Agency.