FOREIGN RELATIONS: GARTER SPINS THE WORLD

"It is a new world that calls for a new American foreign policy. "

To that ringing declaration, made at the University of Notre Dame last May, Jimmy Carter might have added "You can depend on it!" In his half-year in office, the President has gone far toward creating a new American foreign policy, both in content and conduct. He has tirelessly emphasized —some might say preached—the virtues of open diplomacy and moral principles as a substitute for what he contends was the often secretive and sometimes amoral Realpolitik of the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger years. He has spent an extraordinary amount of time on foreign affairs and has made more news in dealing with the world than with domestic concerns. He has sent off his emissaries in all directions and tried to tackle virtually all major international problems simultaneously.

All this activity and rhetoric has had a significant effect at home. After the guilt-ridden defeat in Viet Nam and the shocks of Watergate, Carter has given many Americans a renewed feeling that they are standing for something good in the world. He has done this in his own special style, but in the tradition of Wilson, Roosevelt and Dulles, who, in very different ways, affirmed that U.S. foreign policy must have a moral content.

At the same time, Carter has greatly alarmed both traditional friends and adversaries abroad and raised serious questions about his aims and methods in foreign policy. In the U.S., quite a few members of the mainly Democratic foreign policy Establishment are beginning to wonder whether he is really up to the job. Nothing serious has been lost so far and much may yet be gained from Carter's obvious good intentions, his openness to new ideas and his ability to inspire those who see or hear him. But the general pattern of his foreign policy actions creates genuine cause for worry about troubles ahead.

Having boldly jumped into the world arena like a Daniel in the Lions' den, Carter is finding that the inhabitants have quite a bite. Soviet Communist Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, deeply wounded by the human rights crusade, charges that Carter has launched "psychological warfare," and adds that "a normal development of relations on such a basis is, of course, unthinkable." French

President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing says that Carter "has compromised the process of detente," while West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has complained that Carter "acts like a faith healer" and formulates "policy from the pulpit."

The impression is growing that Carter's overall strategy is flawed, that his sense of priorities is unrealistic and that some of his tactics are counterproductive. As he has often done in domestic affairs, he sometimes seems to think that enunciating a great goal is the same as doing something about it. Is Carter simply an idealist, applying Southern Baptist religiosity and New World populism to the complexities of diplomacy? Or is he shrewd, even Machiavellian, bobbing here and weaving there in order to camouflage his pursuit of some well-wrought global goals? Or is he, perhaps, merely inexperienced and naive?

No doubt the one-term Georgia Governor was much less experienced in foreign affairs than domestic matters. No doubt, much of his world view is rooted in