VANCE AND BRZEZINSKI: FEUDING CHAPTER BY CHAPTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001404060009-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 4, 2008
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: May 26, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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In[ IvtPi TUKN I JIILS
26 May 1983
Vance an ~,< Brzezinski:.
Feuding Charier by Chap ~er
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN
Spect,i to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 25- Zbigniew
Brzezinski and Cyrus R. Vance, whose
personal and policy disputes were an
open secret while they served as
President Carter's chief foreign
policy advisers, have revived their
feud in a pair of candid memoirs that
are fueling the gossip circuits among
Washington's foreign affairs special.
fists.
Both memoirs are written in a cool
dispassionate style, which often dis- I
guises the intensity of bad feeling that
prevailed between the two men by the
end of the Carter Administration. Of
the two, Mr. Brzezinski, who was na-'
tional security adviser, and whose
book, "Power and Principle," was
published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
last month, is the more frank in his
personal comments about the other.
"I could not help reflecting on the
extent to which Vance seemed to be
the quintessential product of his own
background," Mr. Brzezinski writes
of Mr. Vance. "As a member of the
legal profession and the once-dorm.
nant WASP elite, he operated accord-
ing to their values and rules, but those
values and rules were of declining
relevance not only in terms of domes.
tic American politics but particularly ,
in terms of global condidons."
Mr. Vance resigned as Secretary of
State in April 1980 after failing to
block the abortive operation to rescue
American hostages in Iran, which Mr.
Brzezinski had pushed stongly. His
book, "Hard Choices," published by,
Simon & Schuster and due in the
stores shortly, is less chatty'but still
more revealing about his differences
with Mr. Brzezinski than many who
know Mr. Vance might have expected.
'One Critical Reservation'
"I supported the collegial ap- ' -
proach," Mr. Vance says about the
plans for the handling of foreign rela-
tions at the start of the Carter Admin-
istration in 1977, "with one critical
reservation. Only the President and
the Secretary of State were to have the
responsibility for defining the Admin-
istration's foreign policy publicly."
"Despite his stated, acceptance of
this principle, and in spite of repeated
instructions from the President, Brze-
zinski would attempt increasingly to
take on the role of policy spokesman,"
be writes.
"Eventually, as divergences grew
wider between my public statements
and his policy utterances," Mr. Vance
goes one "Brzezinski's practice be.
came a. political liability, leaving the
Congress and foreign governments
with the impression that the Admiais-
tration did not know its own mind.--
But Mr. Brzezinski says that while
he originally supported the idea of the
President and the Secretary of State's
being the primary spokesmen, "in I
practice It turned out that Vance, for
all of his many gifts and personal ,
qualities, was not an effective com-
municator, and the President started
encouraging me to speak up more."
Mr. Carter, in his own book of mem-
oirs, supports Mr. Brzezinski com-
pletely on this point.
Admitting that'he enjoyed speaking
out, Mr. Brzezinski adds that lie advo-
cates making the position of national
security adviser sub jest to Senate con-
firmation. This, he said, would accom-
push two objectives. It would '-legiti-
mate" the officeholder's central role
in makig policy, allowing him to tes-
tify before Congressional committees,
and would enable him to act more
regularly as a spokesman on foreign
Policy issues. He -complained that
whenever he spoke out, "1 was per-
celve] as having usurped Vance's Je `
gitimate prerogatives."
Letting Others Do the Talkigg
For those who covered foreign
Policy In the Carter Administration, ?
there was no question that in the first
year Mr. Vance was the President's
chief spokesman on that subject. He
had frequent news conferences and
gave several key speeches. But by
1978 he seemed to lose interest in news
conferences as he became increas
ingly Involved in negotiations. And
after the Iran crisis of November 1979,
Mr
Van
i
.
ce v
rtually stopped meeting
with the press. and did, as Mr. Brze..
zinski suggests, allow others like Mr.
Brzezinski and the State Department
spokesman, Hodding Carter 3d, do the
In their memoirs, both Mr. Brzezin-
ski and Mr. Vance agree that their
policy differences .were primarily
over how to deal with the Soviet
Union, and this carried over into such
areas as China, Africa, arms control
and ultimately the Iran crisis.
Zbig and Cy, as they called each
other, began to clash over the question
of Soviet involvement in Africa and
whether this should be "linked- to
Progress in the negotiations on limit-
ing strategic arms.
.Of
"My view was that the deployment
an American aircraft carrier task
force near Ethiopia would send a
strong 'message to the Soviets and
would provide more tangible backing
for our strong words." Mr. Brzezinski
writes. He says that Mr. Vance op-
posed this approach, and "for the first
time in the course of our various meet-
ings, he started to get impatient, to
get red in the face and to raise his
voice."
No'BIuffing Game Wanted
Mr. Vance, talking of this proposal,
says that when it came up at a meet-
ing on Feb. 21, 1978, he said that If a
carrier was deployed, and if Somalia
was invaded by Soviet-backed Ethio-
pia, "it would be perceived as a defeat
for the United States." He says that
neither he nor Defense Secretary Har-
old Brown "wanted to engage in a
bluffing game."
"The meeting closed with agree-
ment that there would be no linkage
between the Soviets' and Cubans' ac-
tivities in the Horn and other bilateral
Issues between the United States and
the U.S.S.R.," Mr.. Vance says. But
clearly irritated, he notes that on
March 1, Mr. Brzezinski "stated pub-
licly that Soviet action in the Horn
would complicate the. SALT talks."
President Carter, Mr. Vance says,
"denied" the United States wanted to
link the talks with the Horn, but did
say that Soviet activity in the Horn
could make it difficult to get the arms
control accord ratified.
"We were shooting ourselves in the
foot," Mr. Vance says;
Mr. Brzezinski's recollection was
similar, If more colorful than Mr.
Vance's. "As socm as the linkage issue
surfaced, Cy became very angry and
agitated," he writes. He said that at a
meeting on March 2, Mr. Vance said,
"7.big, you yesterday and the Presi-
dent today .Id it may create linkage,
and I think it is wrong to say that."
The public was not aware initially of
the Vance-Brzezinski feud. and the
first detailed press account of the dis-
pute was published 14 months after
the inauguration.
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It was over China that Mr. Vance
and Mr. Brzezinski had their most dif-
ficult moments. Both agreed on the
value of concluding negotiations with
Peking on establishing formal diplo.
matic relations, but for quite different
reasons.
Mr. Brzezinski makes it clear that
he favored close ties with pelting for
strategic reasons, to put pressure on
the Soviet Union and to counter Mos.
cow around the world. But Mr. Vance
wanted to give priority to improving
relations with the Soviet Union and
was opposed to anything other than an
evenhanded approach to Peking and
Moscow. The issue came to a climax
on Dec. 13, 1978, when it became evi-
dent that as a result of secret talks in
Peking, the United States and China
were close to an agreement to normal-
ize relations.
Mr. Vance had a meeting scheduled
in Geneva with Foreign Minister An-
drei A. Gromyko of the Soviet Union
from Dec. 21 to Dec. 23, in which he
hoped to conclude the negotiations on
limiting strategic arms. Because of
that, "I had wanted the announce.
ment of normalization to come after
my Geneva meeting with Gromyko,"
Mr. Vance writes. He said that he and
Mr. Carter had agreed on announcing
the Peking breakthrough on Jan.1.On
Dec. 13, Mr. Vance was in the Middle
East. He said that be got a phone call
there from Mr. Carter "who to my
surprise told me that he wanted to
move the date of the announcement up
to Dec.15."
A Lecture From Gromyko
"The Dews came as a said. "At a critical moment, Bk rzez n...
ski had blacked Christopher and Hal.
brooke out of the decision=making for
about six hours, and they had been un-.
able to inform me in advance of what
was taking place." He was referring
to Warren Christopher, the Deputy.
Secretary of State, and to Richard
Holbrooke, the Assistant Secretary
for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
As a result of the normalization, Mr.
Vance said that the Soviet attitude in
the strategic awns talks the next week
hardened. "Grornyko's lecture on
China was -not entirely unexpected,"
Mr. Vance said, "but the emphasis he
put on how normalization cras taking.
place was troubling. The Soviets felt
that the timing and the characteriza-
tion of normalization were deliber-
ately provocative and intended to be
publicly perceived as such."
Mr. Brzezinski has another version
of what happened. He said the reason
Mr. Vance did not reach agreement
with Mr. Gromyko in Geneva was that
"a large number of issues remained
unresolved at this stage." He says
that "revealingly, Dobrynin appears
to have shared the view that SALT
was not ready by December 1978."
The Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly F.
Dobrynin, told him, he?said, in late
January 1979, "quite flatly that the
stalemate In Geneva on SALT- was
produced not by our normalization of
relations with China or our invitation
to Deng Xaioping to visit Washington, -
but simply by the fact that a large
number of outstanding issues were
still unresolved."
"I must say that on that point I
found Dobrynin's position more cred-
ible than the line that some State De-
partment officials were feeding to the
press," Mr. Brzezinski says, "that
somehow or other, SALT, which ac-
cording to them should not be linked to
any adverse Soviet behavior, was
compromised by our decision to'estab-
Iislr-irmal relations with China."
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