Word: brzezinski
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...three advisers are an odd mix. Vance and Brzezinski have never really got along or understood each other. It has to do with temperament: Vance is more cool, methodical, even slogging, than the nimble, aggressive Brzezinski. Though the Secretary in the past has been bitterly opposed to Brzezinski's hard-line approaches, he has remained curiously passive, allowing Brzezinski to acquire more and more power. The President has been accused (as Nixon was in the early days of Henry Kissinger) of creating a mini-State Department in the figure of his Security Adviser...
...introduction of Newcomer Strauss into the Middle East summitry shook the State Department to its foundations. That Carter would reach around Vance and Brzezinski and pick the glad-handing Texan, a lawyer, politician and trade negotiator relatively inexperienced in diplomatic affairs, stunned the department professionals. The move further diminished Vance's standing, removing a principal foreign policy area from his direction. It not only disillusioned the whole State Department but also aggravated the long-term power struggle between State and the National Security Council. Brzezinski saw Strauss's appointment as both a weakening of Vance's authority...
...with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. In the wake of the Camp David summit, the two leaders were constantly turning to Carter for counsel. The President had made up his mind that Vance was not strong enough to control the volatile peace negotiations, and he was not satisfied that Brzezinski was able to make decisions on his own. "Cy can't hold Begin and Sadat away from me," Carter complained to his closest White House confidants, "and Zbig is into my office every 15 minutes." The President told his aides somewhat gloomily that he believed he could...
...little cachet in the diplomatic field, but he would bring the President a more audacious and political style in the Middle East. "I don't care whether Cy likes it or not," Carter told his aides, anticipating a protest from Vance. The President made certain to tell Brzezinski explicitly that he wanted Strauss's role enlarged beyond that of an ordinary ambassador, no matter how it upset Vance...
...normally imperturbable Secretary was badly shaken by the decision, especially when he learned that Strauss had insisted he report directly to the President. Strauss, before he accepted the job, presented Carter with a long memo of understanding, declaring that he would not work directly for Vance or Brzezinski. Carter was startled. He told intimates that it was the first time he had ever received written conditions about an assignment from the man who was about to get it. He went along with Strauss's terms but turned over to Hamilton Jordan the delicate problem of how to resolve matters...