Compare and contrast the foreign policies of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. What were their basic philosophies when it came to foreign policies? What were their biggest successes and failures, and which initiatives do you think have had the most impact on us today in the 21st century?

 

By any yardstick, a Ronald Reagan presidency would bring distinct changes to the United States, affecting not only Americans but peoples overseas. Despite Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's campaign description of President Carter as a clone of Mr. Reagan, clear differences stamp the policies of the two men.

Some of these, like income tax policy, are obvious. Others, involving foreign affairs, are less so.

Mr. Carter himself, speaking Wednesday in New York, called the differences between him and Reagan "brutal," both in their respective concepts of where America now stands and where the nation should go.

More points are given below.

Step-by-step explanation

Jimmy Carter's presidency was marked by several significant events that were perceived as extremely negative developments for the US in both the domestic and international realms.

Despite this, Carter's major achievement in foreign affairs was to broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. Some observers believed that the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, participated in it only because the Egyptian economy was in danger of collapse and he needed financial aid from the US. But it is significant that Egypt and the other Arab states no longer would attack Israel from this point (1979) in spite of the four previous attempts on their part (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973) to destroy Israel through war.

Unfortunately for Carter and his administration, this achievement in the Middle East was overshadowed completely by the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis following the storming of the US embassy in Teheran by Islamic militants.

Analysts stress that, so far, they are dealing with Reagan's campaign rhetoric, which might be tempered if he became president -- just as Carter's performance in office differs from his 1976 goals.

In foreign affairs, experts single out the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Taiwan as key areas in which Reagan's policies, as so far expressed, split with those of President Carter.

With his talk of achieving military superiority over the Soviets, Reagan alarms many West Europeans, who fear being caught in the middle of a superpower arms race.

US defensive strength, said Reagan in his nomination acceptance speech, is at "its lowest ebb in generation, while the Soviet Union is vastly outspending us in both strategic and conventional arms."

He opposes the SALT II treaty to limit nuclear weapons, claiming it is advantageous to the Soviets. he would, he says, negotiate a treaty to "genuinely limit strategic nuclear weapons."

America's European allies, together with State Department experts, see no chance that Soviet leaders would scrap SALT II in favor of a treaty acceptable to Reagan.

End result of Reagan's Soviet stance, said a US expert, might be "deep strains within NATO, with many Europeans basically disagreeing with US policies."

Even now, despite the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, several West European governments are reluctant to impose -- at President Carter's urging -- the kind of economic sanctions against Moscow that might jeopardize future trade.

As for the Middle East, Reagan's ringing support of Israel, including the latter's sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem, would make it harder for moderate Arab leaders to cooperate with the US, analysts believe.

Reagan describes Israel as a staunch US ally, whose armed forces act as a deterrent to Soviet expansion in the Middle East. This primacy of Israel, in Reagan's rhetoric, so far is not matched by equal consideration of the strategic role played by Saudi Arabia, largest oil supplier to the United States.

Some analysts note what they call an inconsistency in Reagan's position. At home, he wants all price controls removed from domestic oil, reduction of the windfall profits tax on US oil companies, and the "return" of energy development to energy firms.

This accords with the views of giant US oil companies, whose officials, on the other hand, long have pleaded for a more evenhanded Arab-Israel approach from the US government.

Deploring what he calls the Carter abandonment of Taiwan, a "longtime ally and friend," Reagan advocates restoration of some kind of official US-Taiwanese relations, though not necessarily full diplomatic ties.

President Carter broke relations with the Taipei government when the United States exchanged ambassadors with the (mainland) Peoples Republic of China.

Chinese communist leaders, alert to Reagan's views, rumble warningly against resumption of government-to-government relations between Washington and taipei.

Apparent to most Americans is the striking difference between Reagan's advocacy of a 10 percent, across-the-board income tax cut, effective next Jan. 1 , and Carter's rousing attack on that proposal as inflationary.

In fact, analysts note, tax policy ultimately is decided by Congress, so that Reagan's jurisdiction, even as president, would be limited.

This stands in contrast, some analysts note, with foreign policy, which primarily is the responsibility of the president, not Congress.

Reagan and Carter share a desire for a balanced budget. But the Republican challenger would sharply boost military outlays and correspondingly trim social spending to reach that goal.

Mr. Carter and his advisers say that cannot be done without cutting into the bone of programs that support poor, elderly, and also disadvantaged Americans.

Zealous as Carter is to reduce government regulation of the economy, REagan likely would go him one better -- all with the aim of unshackling industry to achieve higher output and productivity.

Significant and sustained rises in defense spending began in early 1979, not in 1981. The unhappy job of wringing out the social accounts began with Carter's attack on the suspiciously swollen Social Security disability program.

Carter, like Reagan, promised to balance the budget within four years. Carter, like Reagan, abandoned that promise in midterm.

Reagan loyalists argue passionately that the big difference between the two administrations' economics is that Carter and Co. pushed up the inflation rate, while Reagan is responsible for pulling it down. Really? The struggle against inflation started in 1979, when Carter appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. It is difficult to think of any great contribution that Reagan has made to lower inflation, other than endorsing from time to time the Federal Reserve's monetary policy and, after a long quarrel within the administration, reappointing Volcker last year.

What about deregulation? The most conspicuous example, deregulation of the airlines, was accomplished under Carter. The key legislation in the deregulation of interest rates was enacted in 1980.

Obviously there have been important differences between the Carter and Reagan administrations. But the continuities have been more important, and they were not limited to the economy.

It was Carter who led American foreign policy back to an insistent and sometimes shrill emphasis on moral values. In the Nixon-Ford period, this country's relations with the Soviet Union were cool and pragmatic. There were things that Nixon wanted from the Soviets, beginning with tacit cooperation in ending the Vietnam War. The Soviets wanted much from the United States, beginning with formal acknowledgment of the status quo in Europe. There were bargains to be struck.

Carter, in contrast, returned to the tradition of an earlier Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who felt deeply that the United States really shouldn't deal with immoral governments -- or at least should deal with them as little a possible. Carter periodically seemed to the Russians not only to be pronouncing a judgment on their regime but challenging its legitimacy and offering support to its internal opposition. One of his first acts on entering the White House was to reply publicly to a letter from the dissident Andrei Sakharov, then as -- unfortunately -- now in the Soviet Union.

Carter bears only a minor share of the responsibility for the deterioration of relations between the two countries that took place during his four years. Some of it is owed to Soviet adventuring in Africa, and much to the Soviet installation of the new SS20 nuclear missiles aimed on Western Europe. But the current cycle of U.S.-Soviet tension began in the mid-1970s, not in the 1980s. It has developed under two presidents each of whom felt it necessary to begin the dialogue with a statement of moral condemnation of the Soviets.

Both of these presidents have conceived their foreign policies as part of a larger attempt to elevate the American sense of morality, and both have couched that appeal in the idiom of evangelical Protestantism. Carter always described himself as a born-again Christian; Reagan has devoted much energy to his relations with the evangelicals.

But the evangelical tradition has historical associations reaching far beyond religion. In a pattern that goes far back into the 19th century, evangelical Protestantism has repeatedly turned up in the company of a less attractive phenomenon, American nativism -- the expression of the established population's resentment of the immigrants. Both presidents repeatedly denounced bigotry, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. But both have constantly reverted to the language of a particular kind of religious movement and, in Reagan's case, to its political causes.

The message being delivered has been at best ambiguous, and over the eight years it has made religious and ethnic minorities deeply uneasy -- although they seem to find Reagan's sophisticated exploitation of these sensitivities to be less threatening than Carter's naivet,e.

Something happened in American life in the middle 1970s to produce two presidents unlike any of their modern predecessors, but more like each other than either is ever likely to concede. What caused it? Perhaps it will turn out to have been a reaction to the tensions of the Vietnam War, rising wealth and rapid social change. That would explain the resemblance between the present period and the 1920s.