At the June 1972 annual meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, Rockefeller proposed forming an organization that would bolster the world capitalist order by strengthening ties among leaders on the three continents. Brzezinski, who was a member of both the Bilderberg Group and the CFR, enthusiastically seconded the proposal. Seventeen members attended a planning meeting at Rockefeller’s New York estate the following month. Beginning with sixty members on each continent, they set up offices in New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Most rejected the CPD’s knee-jerk anticommunism, hoping instead to lure the Soviets into an international system that promoted economic interdependence and free flow of trade and capital. Third-world economic and political problems would be addressed outside the Cold War framework.31
Brzezinski served as executive director of the commission’s North American branch. The son of a Polish diplomat and probably the most unreconstructed anti-Communist among the founding members, he tapped Carter for membership.32 He and Rockefeller saw in Carter a rising, though still little-known, southern governor who was eager to be educated about the world. Always confident and ambitious, Carter was already discussing a run for the presidency with his close advisors. He had yet to make a splash on the national scene. When he appeared on the television show What’s My Line? in December 1973, none of the panelists, Arlene Francis, Gene Shalit, Soupy Sales, could identify what he did for a living. Perhaps Brzezinski was impressed that Carter had nominated hard-line anti-Communist and neocon favorite Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson for president at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
Brzezinski and Rockefeller saw something in Carter that convinced them that he was worth cultivating and got behind his candidacy early. Carter’s deputy campaign manager Peter Bourne revealed that “David and Zbig had both agreed that Carter was the ideal politician to build on.”33 Brzezinski served as Carter’s foreign policy advisor and speechwriter during the campaign. Carter filled out his administration with twenty-six fellow Trilateralists, including Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. At the CIA, Carter replaced Trilateral Commission member Bush with fellow member Stansfield Turner. Trilateralists, including Warren Christopher, Anthony Lake, and Richard Holbrooke, also populated the secondary ranks. Most significantly, Carter selected Brzezinski as his national security advisor. Trilateralist Kissinger was not offered a position in the administration.
Despite his inexperience, Trilateralist connections, and centrist instincts, Carter came into office with a moderately progressive vision of what the United States could become. Among his top priorities was cutting defense spending. During the campaign, he had denounced U.S. nuclear hypocrisy: “by enjoining sovereign nations to forgo nuclear weapons, we are asking for a form of self-denial that we have not been able to accept ourselves.” Rejecting the typical double standard that powerful nations imposed on weaker ones, he recognized that the United States didn’t have the “right to ask others to deny themselves such weapons” unless it was actively moving to eliminate its own nuclear arsenal. “The world is waiting, but not necessarily for long,” he realized. “The longer effective arms reduction is postponed, the more likely it is that other nations will be encouraged to develop their own nuclear capability.”34
Such honesty was refreshing, as was his promise to restore the United States’ moral standing in the world and learn from Vietnam. He declared that “never again should our country become militarily involved in the internal affairs of another nation unless there is a direct and obvious threat to the security of the United States or its people.”35 He vowed never to repeat the “false statements and sometimes outright lies” that his predecessors had used to justify the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. He raised the hopes of mankind by announcing that the United States would “help shape a just and peaceful world that is truly humane…. We pledge… to limit the world’s armaments…. And we will move this year a step toward the ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth. We urge all other people to join us, for success can mean life instead of death.”36
Just how heartfelt Carter’s comments on Vietnam were is difficult to ascertain. They clearly represented a welcome departure from the apologetics of his predecessors and successors. But they may have represented a kind of dissembling intended to make the new president seem much more liberal than he actually was or than his record as president would suggest. While campaigning in 1976, Carter responded to a reporter’s question about Vietnam by asserting, “I called for a complete pullout” in March 1971, after having previously taken a more typical southern prowar position. However, in August of that year, he had written a column saying that he had supported the initial U.S. involvement in Vietnam to fight “Communist aggression,” but now, “since we are not going to do what it takes to win, it is time to come home.” The following year, he had supported Nixon’s bombing of North Vietnam and mining of harbors and urged Americans to “give President Nixon our backing and support—whether or not we agree with that decision.” Even as late as April 1975, with Saigon about to fall to the Communists and their supporters, he had told reporters that he supported giving the Saigon regime $500 million to $600 million in military aid for another year to help stabilize it.37
Thus, Carter may never have been as liberal on foreign policy as many assumed he was. But he did manage to rile the CPD crowd by selecting dovish Paul Warnke to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, appointing liberal former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, an African American, as UN ambassador, and siding, at least initially, with Vance’s lawyerly pragmatism and commitment to détente over the toxic anticommunism of Brzezinski. That allowed Carter to score some significant early successes. He successfully renegotiated the Panama Canal treaty. In 1978, he helped secure the Camp David Accords, which led to Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory captured in the 1967 war and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He also made headway in arms control. Warnke negotiated the SALT II treaty with the Soviets, mandating a reduction in nuclear missiles and bombers, and helped convince Carter to resist the Pentagon’s pressure to build the B-1 bomber. SALT II, for all the fanfare surrounding its signing in June 1979, was only a measured success, actually allowing both sides to continue their buildups at a reduced rate. Both parties were permitted to add another four thousand warheads by 1985 and deploy one new weapons system over the five-year life of the treaty. CPDers denounced the treaty, claiming that it would give the Soviets “strategic superiority” and open a “window of vulnerability.”38 They called for massive growth in defense spending and civil defense. With the Scaife Foundation pouring over $300,000 into the CPD, foes of SALT II outspent treaty backers by fifteen to one.
But Carter’s lack of foreign policy experience would come back to haunt him, and his growing reliance on Brzezinski and other hawkish advisors would doom his progressive agenda, leaving the administration’s foreign policy awash in a sea of Cold War orthodoxy. Brzezinski quickly instituted a significant change in procedure that allowed him to exert inordinate influence on the president. Whereas in the past, a top CIA official had given the President’s Daily Brief, Brzezinski arranged to do this himself, with no one else present. “From the very first day of the Presidency,” he wrote, “I insisted that the morning intelligence briefing be given to the President by me and by no one else. The CIA tried to have me take a briefing officer with me, but I felt that this would inhibit candid talk.” Brzezinski overruled Turner’s objections.39