Dear Editor
Dear Editor 1984 l have three predictions about the Reaganauls Andrew Mollison discusses ("The Reagan Repartee," NL, January 26). First, before long they will be Reagan-oughts?? who ought to do...
...A credible human rights program cannot be separated from concern about and involvement in efforts to achieve more equitable social and economic systems in the destabilized regions...
...Power has become so diffuse that many states have accrued significant quantities of it...
...Ordinary Soldier In his review of The Formula ("A Sorry Season," NL, January 12), Robert Asahina finds it unusual that "an ordinary soldier" would announce to an imprisoned Nazi general that after the War the world will be one big corporation...
...My fundamental differences from Don Peretz would, however, require volumes to elucidate, though the particular policies we would support are probably very close...
...Finally, they will become Reagan-outs??around November in 1984...
...Very few leaders in the developing world consider either autarky or the Soviet-led comecon as an alternative to the Western economy...
...On this I hope I am a better prophet than the best known prophet about 1984...
...who ought to do many things, but won't...
...In Central America, an active CIA has helped maintain conservative, generally military governments for decades...
...Iranians remember all too well our long collaboration with the Shah and his secret police, savak...
...Binghamton, N. Y. Don Peretz Professor of Political Science Stale University of New York George P. Brockway's article is full of provocative statements...
...New York City William Gillis...
...Farben shows that the soldier's prescience was hardly implausible, let alone laughable...
...For that very reason, if the United States maintains a sense of proportion and keeps its eyes on its true interests, the Third World will be seen as a less threatening place...
...In fact, they have proven capable of defining their own foreign policies in the light of their perceived national interests...
...Especially when Soviet actions take a military form, we ought to register loud disapproval...
...President Carter's human rights program was so selective that it seemed deceitful to many in the Third World...
...Latinos, and those to whom the Voice of America sends news about our human rights concerns supposed to take protestations about Soviet dissidents seriously when they fail to hear of our concern about their dissidents...
...But for those of us who fought in "the big one" and therefore have not had our view of military life skewed by the Vietnam era, there is nothing at all strange about an ordinary soldier having political insight...
...Human rights are intrinsically good, like international economic prosperity and the absence of world war...
...Indeed, even Communist countries??from Hungary to China-are anxious to increase their participation in what has become a global economic system...
...Was one more intrinsic that the other...
...Otherwise, the foreign policy advocated by Brockway will be perceived by most of the Third World and much of the rest of the world as mere rhetoric...
...Brockway is also correct, in my opinion, to argue that an aggressive foreign policy, perhaps resorting at times to covert action, can too often be counterproductive...
...Their policies have sometimes converged with ours, but frequently have not...
...They are invaluable, not only because we like them, or because they are the foundation of American independence ("the objective of American foreign policy"), but because the more human rights prevail abroad, the easier it will be to preserve them here...
...The people who manufactured Zyklon B and employed slave labor from the concentration camps still make Agfa film, a host of pharmaceuticals ranging from birth control pills to painkillers, plus God knows how many industrial chemicals??none of which would have been possible without the postwar cooperation of Americans...
...although I hope we don't need them...
...Yet this formula for genuine nonalign-ment is not consistent with Brockway's view that we live in a bipolar world...
...In much of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve the first category of rights without the second...
...In brief, he believes that some things are "intrinsically good," while I find that the intrinsic goods he mentions are often in conflict...
...A credible human rights program cannot be selective...
...banks, and have no choice but to pay the interest rates established in the London money markets...
...Even when covert operations succeed for the moment, the future can bring disaster...
...it operates by assuming that they are moral??that is, agents...
...It was too obviously a propaganda weapon aimed at discrediting the USSR by focusing on Communist betrayal of freedom, while giving little if any attention to identical or even worse violations by regimes that were supposedly our friends??Iran, China, Korea, the Philippines, and others frequently cited by Amnesty International...
...Many of them 1 agree with, but not all of them can be logically advocated at the same time...
...If the Soviets do not desist, the pressure will continue to mount for the United States to respond in kind...
...Are Arabs, Indians...
...In a bipolar world, it becomes extremely difficult for relatively weak states to avoid seeking the protection of one of the two superpowers...
...Each superpower will therefore struggle, using various means, to maintain its friends in power around the globe...
...But now So-moza is gone and El Salvador today??or Guatemala tomorrow??faces a powerful insurgency that views the United States as the major source of succor for their oppressive governments...
...In arguing that the Soviets will often find that client states cost more than they are worth, Brockway offers a useful corrective to those who present each Soviet "gain" as a trauma for the West...
...To direct human rights policies "more toward making the USSR mistrusted than toward making ourselves beloved or feared," depreciates their value...
...The greater danger is that human rights in these crucial areas are imperiled by economic and social disequilibrium...
...Yes, our interest should be in seeing that Third World states are independent states, not clients of any superpower...
...The inability of "political science" to answer such questions produces the very "unstable amalgam of moralizing and Realpolitik "that I mention in my article...
...Carter's human rights program also failed to link the rights of free speech, free press, free assembly, and free political organization with the rights to work, eat and grow old with dignity and security...
...it must demonstrate concern for the rights of all, and must also seek the right to survive with dignity as well as to protest the misdeeds of oppressive government...
...Treating the world as a zero-sum game, where the "loss" of any state is automatically a gain for the Soviets, the United States has squandered great energy and resources in trying to control the domestic politics of an innumerable number of developing nations...
...And (his was planned well before D-Day...
...Washington, D. C. Richard Feinberg Resident A ssociate Carnegie Endo wmen t for International Peace George P. Brockway replies: I full agree with Richard Feinberg that we should "register a loud disapproval" when Soviet actions in the Third World take a military turn, and I expect that he agrees with me that our disapproval should itself seldom take a military or even a quasi-military turn...
...firms and to borrow from U.S...
...in Latin America, no major investment disputes developed over the last four years...
...I most certainly agree that promoting human rights is not merely moralizing, that this can serve a number of important foreign policy goals...
...Detroit Kenneth Davidson Foreign Policy 1 agree with George P. Brockway's conclusion that "policies like the human rights program are precisely what is needed, while unleashing the CIA will damage us severely" ("Foreign Policy in a Bipolar World," NL, January 12...
...Good luck and best wishes to us all...
...Back when conscription was universal, people of intelligence actually did wind up in uniform...
...Nevertheless, I am not sure that the United States can be quite as relaxed about Soviet activities in the Third World as Brockway seems to suggest...
...In the many regions that are critical for our foreign policy??the Middle East, Africa, Central America, Eastern Europe, South Asia??human rights are endangered not only, or even primarily, by threats of Soviet subversion or penetration...
...The film in question may be trash...
...But it seems a gross exaggeration to attribute the decline of Eurocommunism or the survival of Spain and Portugal outside the Russian orbit to former President Carter's human rights program and the Helsinki Final Act...
...hostages held by Iran, genuinely independent countries can often be more useful than "loyal" allies who enjoy little respect in the world and have essentially passive foreign policies...
...Moreover, even if a nationalist government should come to power, whether of the Right or the Left, the chances are very great that it would still want to participate in the international economic system...
...With the United States no longer identified as a close collaborator of every dictator, American businessmen found a friendlier environment...
...While it may be easier to arrange "for our enemies to have enemies" than to increase the number of our friends, there is little evidence that this can be achieved by trumpeting the human rights cause...
...In the past, we mistakenly imagined that we could manipulate these regional "hege-mons" to do our bidding...
...The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, and India have enough power to try to maneuver international events in accordance with their national interests...
...Good, in history, can mean only the perpetuation of those critical processes that define the moral...
...A poleless world is infinitely more difficult for the superpowers to manipulate...
...It would want to trade with U.S...
...Then, they will turn into Reagan-naughts??who will be accomplishing just that...
...Each superpower logically sees the disengagement of any country from its sphere of influence as a "loss," a weakening of its alliance system...
...Either superpower that tries to control events in the Third World today is bound to face frustration and disappointment...
...The best argument for a human rights program is not that it makes enemies for the Soviet Union and friends for the U.S...
...The Soviets and Cubans were active in Angola before South Africa invaded in 1975, but there is no doubt that the Cuban presence was legitimized in the eyes of most Africans by the South African invasion and the CIA presence...
...Smaller powers in their areas recognize the presence of the regional "influentials," and must adjust to this...
...If we are to establish "rules of the game" for superpower activity in the Third World, constraints must be placed on both the Soviets and on us with regard to the use of force in there...
...Another point: A quick look at the latest literature on the resilience and far-seeing resourcefulness of l.G...
...Yet the inherent economic and military importance of these nations, more often than not, is marginal to any reasonable definition of United States interests...
...As a number of countries successfully navigated the difficult transition from authoritarian to democratic rule (Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru), we were able to construct a series of close working relationships which immensely improved our diplomatic strength...
...I also agree that IheUnitedStalestoo often places great stake in the momentary political posture of Third World governments...
...The Soviets are undoubtedly finding their foreign obligations to be a major drain on their limited resources, and must be wondering whether an expansionist foreign policy is really in their interests...
...For example, because the Carter Administration took human rights seriously in Latin America, our diplomatic and economic interests were advanced...
...Fortunately, today we live not in a bipolar nor even in a multipolar world, but a poleless one...
...Such foresight to see the emergence of multinationals," coming from such a character, says Asahina, is "totally silly...
...As Algeria recently demonstrated in helping to gain release of the U.S...
...Forty years ago the "intrinsic" good of human rights was in conflict with the "intrinsic" good of the absence of world war...
...An aphoristic summary of the position of my article may be found in the concluding words of a forthcoming volume on The Philosophy of History by the late Professor John William Miller: "History does not show men good or bad...
Vol. 64 • February 1981 • No. 4
