Superpowers Collide, 1961-1981

President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier L. Brezhnev during a 1973 Meeting During the 1960s and 1970s, American foreign policy was dominated by rivalry with the Soviet Union. Although the two superpowers stepped to the brink of nuclear war, diplomacy prevailed and negotiation continued. In an attempt to break the bipolar dynamic and win advantage for the United States, President Nixon opened contact with the Peoples’ Republic of China. The power and influence of the Department of State fluctuated as it competed with the National Security Council for the ear of the President.

The World in 1961

President John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy entered office determined to restore the prestige and power of the United States, which he felt had eroded during Eisenhower’s watch and to stop the expansionism of the Soviet Union.

Kennedy’s policy led to a concerted diplomatic effort to win new friends among the “non-aligned” nations of the world. But it was a policy that also drew the United States into frequent, intense clashes with the Soviet Union—and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Kennedy's Foreign Policy

Kennedy’s close advisers believed that Eisenhower’s foreign policy establishment was stultified, slow moving, overly reliant on brinksmanship and massive retaliation, and complacent. Their fear was that after eight years, the State Department would be unable to implement their new international vision. The new President was determined to control foreign policy through a young and energetic White House and NSC staffers who would make their own informal contacts within the foreign affairs bureaucracy. Furthermore, Kennedy thought that Eisenhower and Secretaries Dulles and Herter had all but ceded the newly emerging states in Latin America, Asia, and Africa to the communists.

Official White House Portrait of President John Kennedy

The execution of Kennedy’s foreign policy did not quite live up to the stirring rhetoric of his inaugural speech, in which he said: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” In fact, his foreign policy was marred by a string of failures.

First, Kennedy gave the green light to an Eisenhower-initiated invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961. Based on faulty intelligence, the military action, which was carried out by Cuban exiles without crucial air support was a fiasco. Then in June 1961 at the Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Kennedy was unprepared and seemed to be a lightweight playboy. Next, Kennedy’s tough talk about the Soviet Union in Berlin did not improve the situation—instead, the Soviets built the Berlin Wall. Finally, his decision not to draw the line against communism in Laos, as the Eisenhower Administration had urged, left South Vietnam as the place to fight communism in Asia.

Kennedy’s overall record was a mixed bag of success and failure. At the President’s urging, Congress established the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) in 1961 as a separate entity under Department of State auspices. The Administration built on Eisenhower’s extensive negotiations with the Soviet Union, but the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed by Kennedy only outlawed atmospheric but not underground nuclear testing. In Vietnam, the Kennedy Administration approved the overthrow of President Diem, believing that any successor government would have to be an improvement over Diem’s. They were wrong. Finally, U.S. initiatives in Western Europe, such as support for British entry into the European Economic Community and European defense integration, also were unsuccessful.

The Cuban Missile Crises

In October 1962, the Kennedy Administration faced its most serious foreign policy crisis. President Kennedy with his cabinet during the Cuban Missile Crisis Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev saw an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro’s Cuba and make good its promise to defend Cuba from the United States. In May 1960, Khrushchev began to ship ballistic missiles to Cuba and technicians to operate them. He believed that President Kennedy was weak and would not react to the Soviet move.

After extensive consultation with his foreign policy and military advisers, Kennedy blockaded Cuba on October 22, 1962. The two sides stood on the brink of nuclear war, but Khrushchev capitulated six days later and the missiles were dismantled. In return, Kennedy disbanded its own missile sites in Turkey. The most confrontational period in US-Soviet relations since World War II was at an end.

Kennedy and the Department of State

John F. Kennedy chose Dean Rusk to be his Secretary of State, convinced that Rusk would not challenge presidential control of foreign policy. A former Rhodes Scholar, professor of government, college dean, senior Department official under Secretaries Marshall and Acheson, and president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Rusk had impressive qualifications. Quiet, self-effacing, and supremely loyal without being a “yes” man, Rusk never became part of Kennedy’s inner circle and failed to establish a close rapport with the young President. Rusk served for eight years as Secretary of State, but he found fellow southerner and self-proclaimed “self-made man” Lyndon Johnson a more compatible boss than Kennedy.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk

The new administration hoped to infuse a new energy into the Department of State, but Kennedy made some appointments that he came to regret. For example, Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles, an old-line New Deal liberal, was not well suited to run the Department of State, as his job required. Bowles was a thinker and a grand conceptualizer, but he was not an administrator. In late November 1961, Kennedy replaced Bowles with Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs George Ball, who was the principal Europeanist in the Kennedy team at State. Walt W. Rostow transferred from the White House to be Counselor and head of the Policy Planning Staff, while Rusk’s friend George McGhee replaced Ball, and Ambassador-at-Large W. Averell Harriman became Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. The reshuffle was meant to improve both the Department’s administration and its policy role.

The Department did improve its performance somewhat in Kennedy’s eyes over time. Secretary Rusk was a key adviser during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, and other Department officials, including Llewellyn E. Thompson, played a key role as an adviser on the Soviet Union and as a drafter of letters to Khrushchev. But as a general trend during the Kennedy years, the National Security Council increased in prominence at the expense of the Department of State, and McGeorge Bundy's role as National Security Adviser grew proportionately. Although he sought to be neutral on policy matters, laying out the bureaucratic and policy options for the President, increasingly he and his active NSC staff began to shape the agenda and orchestrate the dialogue of policy debate.

Traditional Diplomacy Expanded

Early in his administration, Kennedy clarified the role he expected ambassadors to play. In May 1961, Kennedy sent all ambassadors and department heads a letter reminding them that ambassadors were in charge of all U.S. activities in their respective countries and were responsible for all members of the mission, no matter which agency originally sent them. Kennedy was acknowledging a new reality—most major U.S. Government agencies now had overseas staff reporting to someone other than the Department of State. The President expected that those representatives would still report to their home offices in Washington, but he required them to obtain the chief of mission’s concurrence for all important cables and policy recommendations. Kennedy's letter, which also laid out appeal procedures in case of serious disagreement, was an effort to end inter-agency maneuvering and rivalry at U.S. embassies.

During these years, the Department shook off the staid pace of the Eisenhower era as its mission expanded beyond the realm of national security policy and the management of Cold War crises. Foreign Service officers performed duties that far transcended the traditional tasks of representation, negotiation, and reporting. Knowledge of scientific, economic, cultural, and social issues became essential, as many more officers were assigned to the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia.

At the Kennedy Administration’s urging, Congress established a separate Agency for International Development (AID) in November 1961 under the ultimate authority of the Secretary of State. Walt Rostow, a former academic economist, was the leading proponent of economic development for the “Third World,” and his take-off theory of development permeated the Department and AID. Many Foreign Service officers and their Civil Service colleagues set out to change the world and bring economic development to Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Domestic Upheaval and a New President

Lyndon B. Johnson became President after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

President Lyndon B. Johnson

Although his foreign policy team initially remained the same, there were subtle changes. As Vice President, Johnson had been kept out of the foreign policy decision-making process by the Kennedy team. Secretary Rusk and the Department of State had often suffered similar treatment during the Kennedy years. Shared humiliation and a sense of frustration made the new President sympathetic to Rusk and the Department of State. From that point on, Rusk was a strong and influential Secretary of State. He repaid Johnson’s trust and support by loyally defending the President’s increasingly unpopular Vietnam policy to Congressional critics, the American public, and world opinion.

Johnson's Foreign Policy

Privately, Johnson agonized over the consequences of the U.S. escalation in Vietnam and raged at the incompetence of the succession of military juntas that tried to govern that country and carry on a war against Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese regulars. Publicly, he was determined not to lose the war. As a result, in 1968 there were 500,000 American troops in South Vietnam and no end in sight to the conflict. After an extensive re-examination, President Johnson decided to disengage from a struggle lacking U.S. domestic support. He desperately tried to initiate formal peace negotiations in Paris before the 1968 presidential election, but the peace talks commenced only as he left office.

Johnson was also concerned about Latin American policy, which was another of his special interests. He chose Eisenhower official Thomas C. Mann to be Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Mann let it be known that he would judge Western Hemisphere neighbors by their commitment to anti-communism rather than their commitment to democracy. The Alliance for Progress, begun with such fanfare under Kennedy, was allowed to wither as a result of neglect and its own internal problems. Johnson’s policy toward Latin America became increasingly interventionist, culminating with the deployment of U.S. soldiers to Santo Domingo to prevent another communist takeover in the Caribbean.

Management of Foreign Policy

During the Johnson years, complaints persisted about the Department’s management of foreign policy. In a 1966 quest for greater efficiency, the Department created “country directors” in the geographic bureaus to support chiefs of mission and their embassies. These directors formulated and communicated policy guidance and mobilized operational and administrative support for an embassy’s “country team.”

Also in 1966, Johnson made the Secretary of State formally responsible for overall direction, coordination, and supervision of interdepartmental activities overseas and created the Senior Interdepartmental Group (SIG), chaired by the Under Secretary of State, to do just that. Several Interdepartmental Regional Groups were created to support the work of the SIG, chaired by Assistant Secretaries of State. On paper at least, the Department of State was in charge of the NSC policy process. In reality, the system did not work as planned and did not survive beyond the Johnson Administration. At least for Vietnam and a few other high-profile issues, Johnson still relied on Rusk, the Secretary of Defense, and his National Security Adviser, meeting through the mechanism of the “Tuesday lunch,” an extremely restricted version of the National Security Council.

The Department addresses Inequality

Johnson was also a firm believer in civil rights, and his commitment directly affected the Department of State. Lyndon Johnson pushed the Department of State hard to recruit more African-Americans and women, and he made a conscious effort to increase their presence in the upper levels of the Department and its related foreign policy agencies. The Department, reflecting American racial attitudes, offered no meaningful opportunity to African-Americans for most of its existence.

While prominent African-Americans, such as the famous abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, had represented the United States overseas during the 19th century, in reality the only posts open to African-American men were in black nations. Change came no more quickly in the 20th century. The first African-American to enter the Foreign Service was Clifford R. Wharton in 1925. Although he later became the first career diplomat of his race to serve as a chief of mission, his early career was spent mostly in posts traditionally reserved for African-Americans. Wharton remembered telling a personnel officer: “You’re not only discriminating against us in the Service, but you’re exporting discrimination abroad.” Johnson’s greatest success in this campaign was to convince prominent African-American journalist Carl T. Rowan to become Director of the U.S. Information Agency.

The President was also concerned about the status of women because their role at the Department of State had been a limited one. The Department did not employ any women in full-time positions until 1874, and for some time thereafter they were deemed qualified only for clerical duties. In 1905, for example, Assistant Secretary Frederick Van Dyne said: “The greatest obstacle to the employment of women as diplomatic agents is their well known inability to keep a secret.” The first woman to enter the Foreign Service did not do so until 1922, and the first woman ambassador was not appointed until 1933.

President Johnson realized that women had not been given a fair chance in the Department of State and the Foreign Service. Although the number of women in senior positions in the Department increased 33 percent in the 1960s, women still held just 2.5 percent of senior slots. It was not until 1971, when Foreign Service officer Alison Palmer won her gender discrimination case, that the Department finally addressed long-standing problems.

President Nixon and the NSC

The election of President Richard M. Nixon in 1968 led to important changes for the Department of State. Foreign policy had been Nixon’s specialty in Congress and as Vice President under Eisenhower. As President, he fully intended to control foreign policy and make the major decisions himself. He created an activist NSC staff under Harvard Professor Henry A. Kissinger, whom he named as his National Security Adviser. Kissinger and the NSC staff acted as a buffer between the President and his cabinet departments and agencies, analyzing their recommendations and making sure that the President’s interests were protected. Kissinger’s NSC staff analyzed all foreign policy memoranda, which were then approved by Kissinger himself before they went to the President.

President Richard Nixon

Not surprisingly, President Nixon chose a Secretary of State whom he thought would not challenge him and his NSC staff. Secretary of State William P. Rogers was a former Attorney General under Eisenhower, a lawyer known for administrative and organizational skills, but not for his breadth of foreign policy expertise. The President and Kissinger reserved for themselves the big policy issues: Vietnam, the Soviet Union, China, and strategic arms limitation. They set up special communications channels on these issues unknown to the rest of the bureaucracy, withheld information, and excluded Rogers and other official NSC members from key meetings. Part of the problem was the President’s aversion to large gatherings and his reclusive personality. Kissinger’s penchant for secrecy and his natural rivalry with Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird were other contributing factors.

Nixon’s Foreign Policy

President Nixon pursued two important policies that both culminated in 1972. In February he visited Beijing, setting in motion normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China. In May, he traveled to the Soviet Union and signed agreements that contained the results of the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty talks (SALT I), and new negotiations were begun to extend further arms control and disarmament measures.

Nixon's Visit to China

These developments marked the beginning of a period of “détente” in line with a general tendency among Americans to favor a lower profile in world affairs after the Vietnam War, which finally ended in 1975 with the last withdrawal of U.S. personnel. While improvements in relations with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China signaled a possible thaw in the Cold War, they did not lead to general improvement in the international climate. The international economy experienced considerable instability, leading to a significant modification of the international financial system in place since the end of World War II.

During the Nixon Administration, international scientific, technological, and environmental issues grew in prominence. In October 1973, Congress passed legislation creating the Bureau of Oceans and International Environments and Scientific Affairs (OES), to handle environmental issues, weather, oceans, Antarctic affairs, atmosphere, fisheries, wildlife conservation, health, and population matters. The Department had difficulty filling the new Assistant Secretary position until January 1975, when the former Atomic Energy Commissioner, Dixie Lee Ray, took the job. However, she resigned six months later claiming that OES was not playing a significant policy role.

Although Secretary Rogers still had broad responsibility for foreign policy, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and international organizations, the Department of State resented its exclusion from key policy decisions, and the Secretary continually fought to make his views known.

Kissinger Becomes Secretary of State

During 1973, the Watergate scandal proved a major distraction to the nation and overshadowed any achievements President Nixon gained in foreign affairs. When the President focused on foreign policy, he was accused of trying to distract public attention from charges of abuse of power and avoiding the impeachment process. Disappointed by the Watergate scandal and tired of fighting bureaucratic battles, Secretary Rogers resigned on September 3, 1973. President Nixon named Kissinger as Secretary of State—in addition to his role as National Security Adviser. With one man doing both jobs, the problems that Rogers faced disappeared, but Kissinger at times found himself in an awkward position when, as National Security Adviser, he had to make judgments on the Department of State’s position.

Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger

Many of Kissinger’s NSC staff moved to important positions in the Department, creating an inner circle within the agency. In 1973, Winston Lord became Director of the Policy Planning Staff, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt became Counselor. In 1975, Lawrence Eagleburger was confirmed as Under Secretary of State for Management, and Harold Saunders took over as the Director of Intelligence and Research.

Kissinger was a very demanding Secretary of State; he was hard on his staff and hard on himself. He worked a brutal number of hours seven days a week, and he expected his aides to do the same. In the course of his tenure as Secretary of State, he flew 565,000 miles, making 213 visits to foreign countries. He once visited 17 countries in 18 days, and after the October 1973 war, Kissinger spent 33 consecutive days in the Middle East negotiating disengagement between Israel and Syria. Despite his self-admitted “merciless driving” of his staff, morale improved at the Department during his tenure as Secretary. Foreign Service officers and Civil Servants appreciated his conceptual abilities as a strategist. They were also relieved that under his stewardship the Department of State was once again at the center of the foreign policy process. As Kissinger tackled all the complexities that faced a Secretary of State, he came to rely more and more upon the Department’s permanent staff.

Because of growing Congressional and public disapproval of the fact that Kissinger was wearing two hats, he resigned as National Security Adviser in late 1975. Nixon’s successor, President Gerald R. Ford, named Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger’s deputy at the NSC, as National Security Adviser.

Carter's Foreign Policy

The election of Democrat Jimmy Carter as President in 1976 brought a new emphasis, based on Carter’s personal ideology, to U.S. foreign policy. Carter believed that the nation’s foreign policy should reflect its highest moral principles—a definite break with the policy and practices of the Nixon Administration. In 1977, Carter said, “For too many years, we’ve been willing to adopt the flawed and erroneous principles and tactics of our adversaries, sometimes abandoning our own values for theirs. We’ve fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is sometimes best quenched with water. This approach failed, with Vietnam the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty. But through failure we have now found our way back to our own principles and values, and we have regained our lost confidence.”

President Jimmy Carter

Carter refused to continue the past practice of overlooking the human rights abuses of our own allies, and was particularly tough on South Korea, Iran, Argentina, South Africa, and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He also ended more than 30 years of U.S. political and military support to one of Latin America’s most abusive leaders—President Somoza of Nicaragua.

Carter clearly defined the foundation of his foreign policy: “Our policy is based on an historical vision of America’s role. Our policy is derived from a larger view of global change. Our policy is rooted in our moral values, which never change. Our policy is reinforced by our material wealth and by our military power. Our policy is designed to serve mankind.”

Initially, the diplomatic initiatives of President Carter and Secretary Vance were quite successful. In 1978, the Administration completed the process begun during the Nixon Administration and normalized relations with mainland China. President Carter himself facilitated the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt, which paved the way for new progress in the Middle East and an end to the long-running hostilities between the two sides. Carter and Vance also persuaded the Senate to consent to a treaty promising to return the Panama Canal to Panamanian control by 1999. In 1979, President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a follow-on nuclear arms control agreement, known as SALT II.

Carter’s new emphasis on human rights led to a Congressional requirement for the annual submission by the Department of State of “a full and complete report” on human rights practices around the world. The first volume of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices covered the year 1976 and was released in 1977. In less than 300 pages, the report analyzed the situation in 82 countries. In contrast, 195 individual reports were included in the volume for the year 2000, covering virtually every country in the world, and the overall report was about 6,000 pages long.

Jimmy Carter and Cyrus Vance

President Jimmy Carter’s new emphasis in foreign policy brought a new approach to policymaking to the Department of State. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was a soft-spoken man with extensive experience in international law and previous service as Deputy Secretary of Defense under President Johnson.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance

He believed strongly in teamwork and focused on making the Department function smoothly and efficiently. Initially, Vance was aided by President Carter’s determination to cut down the size and influence of the NSC, which Carter believed had become too powerful under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Under Vance, the organization charts actually followed the lines of authority. A high proportion of Vance’s assistant secretaries, especially those in the geographic bureaus, were Foreign Service officers. Vance believed in delegation, and he encouraged ambassadors to play a role in policy formulation. He promoted affirmative action and during his tenure, minority Foreign Service officers increased from six to 11 percent and women from 10 to 14 percent of the service. African-American Ambassadors were no longer a rarity—President Carter appointed 14 during his four years in office.

Under Vance, the Department of State expanded the role of ambassadors-at-large as government-wide coordinators. Ambassador-at-Large Henry Owen, for instance, coordinated economic summits. There was an Ambassador at Large for Mexican Affairs and one for Refugee Affairs. At the urging of Congress, the Department of State created a coordinator for human rights issues in April 1975; a position which President Carter and Congress upgraded in August 1977 to Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. The war on drugs resulted in the 1978 creation of a Bureau of Narcotics Matters to coordinate the international narcotics control activities of all U.S. agencies. In 1980, a Bureau of Refugee Programs was split off from the Bureau of Human Rights to deal with the avalanche of refugee problems and issues.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis

Representing the United States abroad has been a dangerous job since the beginning of the Republic, but that was never truer than during the Carter Administration. In the wake of a successful revolution by Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-American Shah of Iran, the United States became an object of virulent criticism and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was a visible target. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d’Affaires to the most junior members of the staff, as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days. While the courage of the American hostages in Tehran and of their families at home reflected the best tradition of the Department of State, the Iran hostage crisis undermined Carter’s conduct of foreign policy. The crisis dominated the headlines and news broadcasts and made the Administration look weak and ineffectual. Although patient diplomacy conducted by Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher eventually resolved the crisis, Carter’s foreign policy team often seemed weak and vacillating.

U.S. hostage being paraded in front of the public

The Administration’s vitality was sapped, and the Soviet Union took advantage of America’s weakness to win strategic advantage for itself. In 1979, Soviet-supported Marxist rebels made strong gains in Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique. Vietnam fought a successful border war with China and took over Cambodia from the murderous Khmer Rouge. And, in late 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support its shaky Marxist government.

In light of these challenges to global stability, President Carter significantly altered his view of both the Soviet Union and the advice of his own advisers. Carter initially favored Secretary Vance’s policy of negotiation, but by 1980 was more receptive National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s more confrontational stance. Once again the National Security Council and the Department of State were in open conflict. The issue came to a head when Secretary Vance opposed a mission to rescue the hostages in Iran—a move championed by Brzezinski. Vance had been correct—the 1980 mission was a debacle. But Vance was frustrated and he resigned in protest in April 1980. Cyrus Vance was the first Secretary of State clearly and publicly to tie his resignation to a difference of opinion over policy since William Jennings Bryan in 1915. Carter chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his new Secretary.

Landmark Departmental Reform

In 1980, Congress passed the landmark Foreign Service Act, the first new legislation on the service since 1946, designed to address problems both at home and overseas. The act was the culmination of reform initiated by Vance and Deputy Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher and implemented by Under Secretary of State for Management Benjamin Read.

The act created a Senior Foreign Service (SFS) to address a real problem—there were too many senior officers and not enough senior posts. Now, the number of senior personnel would be related to the number of available jobs. Those who did not pass the close scrutiny and rigorous standards for the SFS would be assured a 20-year career and a pension. Foreign Service pay was raised and overseas allowances and spousal rights were liberalized. The Foreign Service Reserve System ended with the acknowledgement that it that had not worked as planned, and specialists who had been part of the “Wristonization” experiment of the 1950s were transferred back into the Civil Service. The act created a Foreign Service of 6,850 people and a domestic work force of 3,800 Civil Servants, for a total of about 10,650 employees.

The Foreign Service Act encouraged qualities in the Foreign Service that were essential to the modern practice of diplomacy. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David D. Newsom summarized these qualities in 1978: “An understanding of our own nation; a balanced sensitivity to other societies and peoples; a firm grasp of the subject matter of international relations; and the skill to bring this knowledge together in advancing both the interests of our country and the establishment of working understandings with others.”

An End to the Hostage Crisis

Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in the 1980 presidential election. Although Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher had completed negotiations under Algerian auspices to free the American hostages in Tehran, President Carter and Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie, suffered to their last day in office. On January 20, 1981, the hostages were finally freed—but only after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as president.

Conclusion

The Carter Administration, which had begun with such high hopes, ended its term locked in a cold freeze with the Soviet Union, including escalating confrontations in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The good work it had accomplished during its early years faded in popular memory.