Carter boosts arms budget

Muhammad Ali, a handsome broth of a boy about 20, 30 pounds heavier than the black leopard we used to know, appeared this week at the White House and, by his side, President Carter, for the first time in months – in public at any rate – wearing a wide grin.

Muhammad Ali was there to announce that he's taking the Carter re-election campaign out of the hands of the amateurs. He's organising Athletes For Carter. If the much-beloved John Wayne were still alive I'm sure there would have been an answering bugle from him with the formation of Actors For Ronald Reagan and there's no doubt that pretty soon there will be an Actors and Actresses Front for Ted Kennedy.

This may not sound like the most tasteful or responsible way to start a Letter From America when the Russians have 85,000 men in Afghanistan and appear to be digging in for the winter, or for as long as it takes them to make the Afghans feel safe from the aggressions of the Americans and the British.

Well, Mr Carter deserves to have a moment or two in which to relax and grin with any visitor to the White House who's not there on Iranian or Afghan or NATO business. Goodness knows, we'd got to the point a week ago when the country – when powerful sections of it, anyway, and most of Mr Carter's opponents for the presidency – were saying and then shouting, 'Why don't you do something?'.

Now since the day's long gone when frustrated Americans could cry, 'Send in the marines!' with any hope of being listened to, not one of Mr Carter's critics cared to be specific about what he ought to do. But from the Midwest, as much as anywhere, the chorus rose to a demand, 'Don't just sit there wringing your hands! Do something!'

'All right!' said Mr Carter, 'I will.' And he cancelled the standing Russian order for 17 million tons of wheat, maize and soy bean, at which the Midwestern farmers let out a bellow of rage. 'But you told me to do something!' said Mr Carter. 'Yes, but not that!' they howled.

As it is, the president has already secured the farmers against a drastic tumble in prices by having the Department of Agriculture buy up the contracts from the firms that were going to supply the Russians. This will cost about two and a half billion dollars and if any American wants to know where that money is coming from the Bureau of Internal Revenue will soon tell him. It's coming, as the tax man said, 'From you, buster!'

So the patriots of the farm belt can now enjoy the emotional luxury of having given their all for their country at no cost to themselves.

Now, into Iowa, the very heart of the corn belt which, being interpreted, means the maize belt, charged young Lochinvar. Senator Edward Kennedy, as you must know by now, faces the first head-on political clash with the president ten days from now, on the 21st when the Iowa Democrats choose delegates to the Democratic convention next August who will go instructed to vote for this man or that man, namely for Carter or Kennedy. A couple of weeks ago the president did what sitting presidents always do when the occasion offers, they announce regretfully that though there's nothing they would like more than a face to face, eyeball to eyeball debate with their principal opponent, the ship of state happens to be in such a touchy or perilous situation at the moment that it would be unfair to the American people to have the captain desert the bridge and descend to mere political squabbling below decks.

Franklin Roosevelt did this with such consummate persuasiveness that in his last campaign he simply announced that he'd dare not leave the running of the Second World War to subordinates. He would stay at the helm. He thereby gave the impression that the Republican candidate was fiddling while Europe burned, almost that the man was unpatriotic in going on with his nattering. In the result, Roosevelt went thundering back into the White House for an unprecedented fourth term after an unprecedented third term.

So once the Russians moved into Afghanistan on their errand of mercy, Mr Carter announced he could not and ought not go politicking in Iowa and would have to resign himself to losing a delegation there for the sake of the country at large.

It didn't take long for Senator Kennedy to discover that this move, however truly felt, was also a sound political move. A quick survey of the likely Iowa delegates showed that they somehow felt the president was acting like a president, though that was before he announced the cancelling of the Soviet's farm contract. In any case, Senator Kennedy – I was wrong, he didn't exactly charge into Iowa, he went in humbly saying he was far behind in the state – he didn't jeer at Mr Carter's decision to stay in Washington. He said simply that if Mr Carter had not dropped out of the arranged debate, quote, 'he would surely have been asked to explain why we have this drift in foreign policy, domestic issues, energy, inflation and why we haven't been unable to anticipate these problems.'

The senator made the point, which his fellow or rival candidates had started to parrot, that banning the sale of grain to the Russians would hurt the farmers more than it would hurt the Russians. This might have become the standard Republican retort but it's hard to see how they can go on repeating it now that the president has fixed things so that while the ban on grain will hurt the taxpayer a little, it's bound to hurt the Russians a lot.

In the meantime, the president's hoping that the Australians and the Canadians will do the same. However, 'drift' is Senator Kennedy's complaining slogan, especially in foreign policy. Well, when and where did the drift start? There's already a lot of writing and speechifying and searching for a scapegoat and of course it's the burden of Mr Carter's presidential rivals to say that the drift started with him.

But now something has come up which the Republicans will notice – and President Carter, I shouldn't wonder – which could move the pointing finger away from Mr Carter and point straight to Senator Kennedy himself. I bring it up because it's an incident that has never been mentioned as a drag on the senator's presidential ambitions. It is, indeed, one answer to the question which nags the nation: When did America begin to lose its ability or inclination to exercise and influence over events that matches its rank as a superpower? When did America stop acting on its own and begin automatically to react to Russian moves?

Well this week an English newspaper published a piece by Sir Robert Thompson, the veteran of Malaysia, one of the very few men in our time who've managed to conduct a successful military campaign against communists. For many years he was, not very successfully, an unofficial advisor to the White House on Vietnam. He holds the unpopular view that Vietnam could have been won in 1972 with a massive exercise of air power, after the North Vietnamese had invaded the South.

Sir Robert rehearsed the steps, the downward steps, by which the United States seems to have lost the power to intervene successfully in Indochina, in Africa and elsewhere. Now, here, is the bit that will be quoted by old hawks, new hawks, the Republicans and, I should guess, by President Carter himself when they all get into the thick of the presidential debate about what America should spend on arms. You'll recall that Mr Carter promised four years ago to cut the military budget, though since then he's noticeably increased it. He's now urging a tougher, bigger military budget, talking about a chain of bases in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf and leaving the Liberal Democrats to deplore such a policy.

Mr Carter's conversion to more arms can now be explained by his having said that he's suddenly changed a lifetime's thinking about the true aims of Soviet policy. Now, here's the bit. Sir Robert Thompson, as I've implied, advised Mr Nixon to move in with the full strength of the American air force in Vietnam in 1972. He believes the war could have been won then.

However that may be, in the piece published this week, he recalls something that he wrote in 1974 and this is it, quote: 'When on May 6 1974 Senator Edward Kennedy's amendment to a military aid bill to cut $266 million aid to South Vietnam, when that was passed by the Senate by 43 votes to 38, it signified that perhaps the major lesson of the Vietnam war is "Do not rely on the United States as an ally". This vote may prove to be one of the initial steps leading to the strategic surrender of the United States.'

Now, Senator Kennedy was greatly praised at the time, the spring of 1974, and not only by Liberal Democrats. It would be interesting to know how Mr Carter, then, I think, governor of Georgia, felt about that vote. Almost certainly I'm sure he would have been for it. It looked then to a nation just emerged from years of that detested and debilitating war, it looked like just what the doctor ordered. In other words, vote less money for arms and you'll have fewer wars. It may sound absurd now but it was no more absurd than that fatuous fighting or non-fighting slogan of the 1930s, 'Against War and Fascism!' chanted far and wide in Britain and America by people who were willing to do absolutely anything to get rid of Hitler except fight him.

Throughout the five years since 1974, the Liberal Democrats in Congress and outside Congress and the poor and the blacks and a sizeable majority of women voters have said it over and over with feeling, 'Cut the military budget!' Men who wanted a bigger military budget were looked on as warmongers.

Well, as Duke Ellington once said ,'There've been some changes made'. Even Mr Carter, once the darling of the Liberal wing of his party, a man who would never have made it to the White House if he'd come out in 1976 for a bigger military budget, now Mr Carter has recoiled with a shudder from the wishful thought that if you disarm you won't have to fight.

Quite apart from the challenge of Afghanistan, he's been forced into this change of mind by the warning of the army and air force that there aren't enough volunteers to keep them up to strength and this week, by a private memorandum from Admiral Haywood, the chief of naval operations, to the joint chiefs of staff, to the effect that the poor pay of skilled petty officers is stripping the navy of enough men to run its ships. To put it bluntly, Iran and Afghanistan together have sounded the knell, I should guess, of the Liberal Democrats heyday.

Senator Kennedy, in spite of his now saying that 'Yes, we must militarily strengthen the Middle East and Pakistan', he is the presidential candidate of choice of the Liberal Democrats and he's going to have to do some fancy juggling of his old convictions if he, too, is to come into line with the national mood and with that reborn-again president who has seen the light about Russian strength and Soviet purpose.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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