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One of the more egregious sins of innocence perpetrated by the fey Administration of Jimmy Carter was its wholly unrealistic and, indeed, irresponsible crusade against the sale of American arms to friends and allies—and potential friends and allies—around the world, immediately after his inauguration, President Carter dispatched diplomats and messengers to various European capitals to urge a reduction in arms sales and transfers, and announced that henceforward the sale of conventional weaponry would be regarded as an “exceptional foreign-policy implement, to be used only in instances where it can be clearly demonstrated that the transfer contributes to our national security interests.”

Whereupon the greatest foe of armament since Major Barbara proceeded to draft a set of guidelines, announced in May of 1977, setting a sales ceiling in dollars, removing the economic incentives for transfers, putting all kinds of restrictions on types of weapons, mixing in the vexed and in this case quite irrelevant—or anyway secondary—question of “human rights,” and in essence adopting a policy of unilateral restraint. (In so doing, it is fair to add, Carter was merely capping, or codifying, a trend that had begun in Congress almost a decade before.) Then suddenly it was 1981: enter Ronald Reagan.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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One of the more egregious sins of innocence perpetrated by the fey Administration of Jimmy Carter was its wholly unrealistic and, indeed, irresponsible crusade against the sale of American arms to friends and allies—and potential friends and allies—around the world, immediately after his inauguration, President Carter dispatched diplomats and messengers to various European capitals to urge a reduction in arms sales and transfers, and announced that henceforward the sale of conventional weaponry would be regarded as an “exceptional foreign-policy implement, to be used only in instances where it can be clearly demonstrated that the transfer contributes to our national security interests.”

Whereupon the greatest foe of armament since Major Barbara proceeded to draft a set of guidelines, announced in May of 1977, setting a sales ceiling in dollars, removing the economic incentives for transfers, putting all kinds of restrictions on types of weapons, mixing in the vexed and in this case quite irrelevant—or anyway secondary—question of “human rights,” and in essence adopting a policy of unilateral restraint. (In so doing, it is fair to add, Carter was merely capping, or codifying, a trend that had begun in Congress almost a decade before.) Then suddenly it was 1981: enter Ronald Reagan.