WASHINGTON REPORT: Softening of a Hard Line
Geitlen, Frank
WASINGTON REPORT SOFTENING OF A HARD LINE It would be a cheap shot and a bum rap to say that American foreign policy follows the election returns, worse still the primary returns, but something...
...FRANK GETLEIN...
...Hence, he was heavily overplayed...
...The man who had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Indochina by a Congress which had indeed got a message from the electorate, the man who took out bis spite on Congress by staging a limited run mini-war against the Cambodians over a strayed merchant ship, the man who gloomily foresaw the Unter-gang des Abendlands in the Congressional refusal to let bun bomb the Angolans for a while, that man has abruptly come out for majority rule in Rhodesia and against police state torture and all-around violations of human rights by the regime be helped, one way or another, to establish in Chile...
...It is reasonable to assume that these two remarkable reversals have not come about because of a sudden attack of conscience hi the soul of Henry Kissinger...
...The fact that Ford has said he plans to keep his secretary on only makes it more certain that hell go no matter what...
...but there were plenty of what members of the community, starting at the top, regarded as ample justifications for tolerating such conduct...
...The press gang was enchanted by Kissinger chiefly because he seemed to be the only member of the Nixon administration who had read a book and could crack a joke, accomplishments easily overvalued by people who make their living by writing and spend a lot of their free time hanging around newsrooms cracking jokes...
...If you grant that Communism is a worldwide, unified conspiracy directed from Moscow and aiming at absolute domination of the globe by the Russians, a powerful Communist base in this hemisphere, let alone continental control, is worth worrying about...
...On Rhodesia, Henry Kissinger might reasonably have been expected to say that yes, of course, we were hi favor of majority rule, that's the kind of society we are, but we do not presume to dictate to friendly nations what style they shall follow in purely domestic affairs...
...Transfer that assumption to Latin America and the people you find who have a stake in the country are the big landowners, the natural resource exploiters doing business with American-based multinationals, and the military officer class recruited from and dedicated to protecting the interests of both...
...that the community is willing to believe that something like the "third world" actually exists as a thing in itself, pot merely as a target area for the machinations and maneuvers of the Communists, the counter-moves of the Free Worlders hi Washington...
...Similarly, on form, Kissinger might have been ex-pected to point out that reports of torture by the right-whig militarist government in Chile were no doubt highly exaggerated, that at any rate such a government was preferable to the Marxist-induced chaos that preceded it, and further, if it came to that, what do you know about torture hi the cellars of the Kremlin, Charley...
...Even that, of course, would be a great step forward, from a humanitarian point of view, from the days hi the last four administrations when humane concerns were taken as a sign of weaknesses and therefore abjured even when they coincided with those of realpolitik...
...It is certainly not something the Metternichian permits himself...
...On that principle and in fear of that vision, our government systematically violated the civil rights of its own citizens on a scale not yet fully determined...
...That's what I call torture...
...It isn't that he lies, exactly...
...When the house wit was Spiro Agnew with additional dialogue by William Safire, obviously Henry Kissinger sounded like Oscar Wilde on a good day...
...Kissinger's departure as such, however, matters less than you might think from reading his faithful press gang over the years...
...he may therefore be said to have been following the traditional method of allying himself with the majority of those concerned, eliminating the risk of isolation in the area...
...With such a vision of impending doom and with the basic operating principle that a government's first obligation was to survive, the tolerance of torture goes without saying...
...Actually, by definition, he has done nothing-except for those jokes-not approved or initiated by his successive masters who in turn have faithfully reflected the established or emerging point of view of the foreign policy community...
...He has said forthrightly that the United States looks forward to the establishment of majority, that is black, rule in that country and will do what it can to hasten such a transformation...
...Reformers tended to be leftists, AUende being the latest, hardly the last, example...
...Why on earth should it be expected to cavil at similar treatment, worse only in degree, inflicted on its citizens by an ally in the cause of freedom...
...Latin-American military governments practicing torture, illicit arrest and murder of their subjects have never particularly disturbed the American foreign policy community before...
...The vision of a Latin-America substantially gone Communist has always terrified the foreign policy community and, in theory, not always unreasonably so...
...it was something people would rather not think about, let alone talk about...
...The root one was anti-Communism...
...But there is a good chance that the change indicates something more, that the foreign policy community is at last ready to give up on the hard line that has brought it and the nation so much disaster since 1960, gamed so little...
...If that realization lies behind Kissinger's about-face, it is the best news yet for the humanitarians, who have always represented the principal enemy to the realists...
...And that is why the sudden emergence of Kissinger following a soft line is worth consideration...
...We may yet construct a foreign policy upon the principles and manner of operation we hope to practice in our own lives and even make it work...
...Our foreign policy community thought about it in much the way that the corresponding community hi the Kremlin and related universities felt about the nuclear-tipped missile encirclement of the Soviet Union they saw taking place through the American system of alliances...
...What has got into him...
...It is tune and overtime for the community to catch up with and realize what it obviously already knows...
...Again, he didn't say anything like that, but speaking in an OAS context, bluntly told the Pinochet junta to take off the brass knuckles...
...Now, abruptly, that whole approach has been dropped by one of its most dedicated practitioners...
...he just talks a lot without thinking much...
...In both instances, of course, there were regional groupings of nations pleased by Kissinger's remarks...
...Actually, the community acted on that perception in the matter of China and has without thinking about it much, acted on it hi regard to Yugoslavia for thirty years now...
...WASINGTON REPORT SOFTENING OF A HARD LINE It would be a cheap shot and a bum rap to say that American foreign policy follows the election returns, worse still the primary returns, but something has got into Henry Kissinger in recent days and the easy explanation is that all those people who were urged so long to "send a message" to Washington finally got one through...
...He hasn't...
...Far from indulging in any such caviling, our governments under all administrations for a long tune now have cooperated, helping military regimes to power and, in the judicious opinion of a lot of people with the background to know, actually exporting methods and machines of torture to such allies...
...From one point of view, it hardly matters...
...If Kissinger has abruptly come out against disenfranchisement and torture on the part of totally reliable anti-Communist governments, it can only be because he-and therefore to a greater or lesser extent, already or very soon now, the foreign policy community-has concluded that disenfranchisement and torture don't pay anymore or won't pay much longer...
...From the beginnings of our Republic there has been a powerful school of thought that placed ultimate reliance upon the propertied class, said to "have a stake" in the country...
...Even in the unlikely event that President Ford captures the nomination of bis own party and wins election to the position he now holds in fee to Richard Nixon, it would be even more unlikely that Kissinger will stay with him for four more years...
...As with the man sinking his teeth into rump steak of bulldog on the hoof, that's news...
...It was de trop to bring the matter up unless you had to...
...Ford, after all, wasn't going to pardon Nixon and wasn't going to run for the office he received as a gift...
...For the hardy Metternichian, conscience is a power of indeterminate strength that occasionally just may be appealed to hi public diplomacy...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 14
