CHATTER

**Action, Camera** Burt Reynolds has a certain, perhaps unjustified, reputation for dalliance with his leading ladies. Asked what might happen when she and Burt start shooting *The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas*, Dolly Parton neatly sidestepped—or did she? “If I was single I would really be looking forward to the love scenes in the movie,” she laughed. “But I’m not single—and I’m still really looking forward to the love scenes.”

**The King of Paris** The Jerry Lewis cult in France has never diminished, inexplicably, but no one could have predicted the impact of his new movie, *Hardly Working*, which hasn't even been sold in the U.S. yet. French distributor Pierre Kalfon says he was "flabbergasted" at the press coverage Lewis received. "We had 76 front-page stories, dozens of two-page spreads, scores of whole-page features and hundreds of stories and pictures in the newspapers," he exulted. Needless to say, the movie, about an unemployed clown, is also boffo at the box office. And when will it be coming from Montmartre to Main Street? "I have deliberately set no distribution deal for North America," Lewis says. "This time I will sign in the U.S. with my European success behind me."

**Who's Got the Button?** The Oval Office is wired for emergency, and the touch of a button brings the Secret Service running. Not long ago an agent rushed into the office after hearing an alarm, only to find President Carter unaware of any problem. The trouble was finally traced to the President's private bathroom, where a distinguished foreign visitor had hit the panic button as he tried to flush the toilet.

**It's Second Nature to Him** Preparing for the forthcoming revival of *My Fair Lady* nearly a quarter century after playing the absent-minded Professor Higgins on Broadway,

Rex Harrison seems to have become immersed in his role. He absentmindedly forgot to sign the credit card slip after dining with a friend, and the Beekman Place Cookshop owner had to chase him down the block. Then the waitress groaned when she saw the signature. The professor had absentmindedly forgotten to include a tip.

**Fast Food** Fleetwood Mac's farewell to sound engineer Richard Dashut, who decided to quit touring, turned into a real pie-in-the-eye affair. Backstage in Honolulu, they began throwing food at one another and finally reached for the meringue. Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks were splattered with goo. But it was the rock group's going away present for Dashut that really took the cake. He had to dig through one in the shape of a volcano three feet across and three feet high to find the gift—an $8,000 Rolex.

**Furthermore**

* Lillian Carter, in Paris for a women's rights conference, learned that another touring VIP would be using the U.S. embassy's guest room while she was away on a trip to the Mideast. "Somebody," Miss Lillian warned sternly, making plans for her return to France, "better get Henry Kissinger out of my bed."

* On TV, Eddie (The Big Ragoo) Mekka has the hots for Shirley, but off camera he really prefers Laverne. "She's a fabulous lady," he enthuses over Penny Marshall. "We have a lot in common. After all, we're both New Yorkers." And Cindy Williams? Sniffs Mekka, "Just say I get paid to kiss her."

* Meryl Streep needed an extra inducement before United Artists could lure her to London to star in *The French Lieutenant's Woman*. The unusual perk: a studio and raw materials for her sculptor husband, Don Gummer, so he can create while she films. It's "a nice place, just around the corner from a glass factory," says UA, which is picking up the tab.

ROB GALELLA

Dolly Parton: Double take

BLOOMBERG

Jerry Lewis: A French connection

ROB GALELLA

Meryl Streep: Fringe benefit

## NEXT WEEK IN PEOPLE

### Stop Social Security; end the Minimum Wage

Best-selling economists Milton and Rose Friedman have some drastic recession cures—and Reagan's ear

### The real-life sequel is about as dramatic as 'Coal Miner's Daughter'

Loretta Lynn's husband, Mooney, finally went on the wagon and one of their daughters eloped at 15

### What happens—gasp— when stars get zits?

They run to Beverly Hills cosmetician Nance Mitchell, who has ideas for you, too, in PEOPLE's new Body section

134

PEOPLE May 12, 1980

AMONG THE HOSTS, IT WAS MORE
TOAST THAN ROAST WHEN THE
FRIARS INVITED HENRY K

"I came tonight," Bob Hope told the crowd, "so in this election year you could see a comedian who isn't running for anything."

**Barbara Walters**, seated with actor Roger Moore, recounted Kissinger's response to being called a swinger. "I love it. When I bore people, they think it's their fault."

**Kissinger** was awarded a statuette and a gold watch, which showed that the speeches in his behalf went on until 11:30.

Diplomacy—and history—has taught Henry Kissinger a thing or two about knowing who your friends are. After detecting hostile vibes in a projected 60 Minutes report on his relationship with the deposed Shah of Iran, Kissinger refused to be interviewed for the program, which was broadcast May 4. Twenty-four hours earlier, however, he had cheerfully subjected himself to a “roast” by the New York Friars Club, a raucous gathering that in its stag days often featured jokes that would make a dock worker squirm. But with bejeweled ladies in attendance, this year’s Kissinger dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria evolved into an unabashed hymn to him. The crowd of 1,500 paid from $200 to $500 a seat to hear a celebrity-studded dais, including Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Barbara Walters, turn the evening from roast to affectionate toast. As master of ceremonies Kirk Douglas began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here tonight to honor a man who’s

flown more miles than Jonathan Livingston Seagull…” Even 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace was on hand to pay tribute and hear Kissinger defend his stiff-arming the TV show because of its title: *The Shah-Kissinger Connection*. “Anything that gives me second billing is a hatchet job,” he quipped.

Despite minor rumblings from a few

club members that the evening was too political and serious, Kissinger pronounced his own benediction to the nearly three hours of praise. “You have said nothing here,” he intoned, “with which any rational man could quibble.” ☐

**Barbara Sinatra** steered a wise middle course between Ambassadors Ashraf A. Ghorbal of Egypt, left, and Ephraim Evron of Israel.

Photographs by Robin Platzer/Images

48

## So, You Noticed!

Yes, *Worldview* does have a new look. That much you saw right away. What is not immediately discernible but what all our readers deserve to know are the reasons for the change. Why the new—and cheaper—paper? Why the changes in our editorial staff? It is my pleasure to respond.

The most obvious changes were made so that we could spend on editorial concerns and promotion the monies we were previously spending on production. Anyone who has followed the spiraling costs of paper and postage knows that they have risen even faster and higher than inflation. We are trying to ride that spiral downward. But the money saved is going back into the magazine. As a glance at our masthead will show, we have already made additions to our editorial staff that will be reflected in the magazine in the coming issues.

Joining *Worldview* as General Editor is John Tessitore. John comes to us from the Institute of International Education, where he was Senior Editor. He has been responsible for make-up and production of an international quarterly and has worked as Associate Editor for the *Bulletin of Research in the Humanities*. He has had major editorial responsibility for articles in the areas of

politics, history, and literature. Lurking further back in his career are years of teaching in the State University of New York. All of the many talents suggested by these achievements will become immediately evident in what will be among John's principal responsibilities—the development of new authors, the exploration of new issues appropriate to our concerns, and the close, tight editing of *Worldview* articles. (Let us know if you find flaws. We'll tell John.)

John Becker, our new Literary Editor, describes himself as an academic with, for better or for worse, both a literary and a theological background. He is presently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Director of its Honors Program. In 1970, between teaching appointments, he was an editorial consultant for the Department of Ministry of the National Council of Churches and first editor of the North American edition of IDOC, a journal documenting the changes, in all churches, that resulted from Vatican II. He is trying very hard to write a book on the breakdown in the later works of Melville, of the historical myth of American destiny and, at the same time, to teach a graduate course on the transformation that myth has undergone and continues to undergo.

We are also able to introduce now the first of several people who are going to join us as Contributing Editors. Gary A. Sledge has had a variety of positions with a variety of journals, and he will introduce some of that variety into *Worldview*'s pages. He holds degrees from the University of California (Berkeley) and Union Seminary in New York. He is presently editor of a magazine with a circulation of 3,500,000. Because we do not wish to place ourselves at a competitive disadvantage as we push *Worldview*'s circulation upward, we will not divulge the name of that journal.

### OTHER CHANGES

We will add regular columnists to the pages of *Worldview*. A present Associate Editor, Wilson Carey McWilliams, is to be the first of these, and his column will appear on this page regularly. Alone worth the price of the subscription.

Richard John Neuhaus, who is going to be able to give us less of his time and manifold talents, will remain with us as a Consulting Editor (just what the name implies) and will write columns on politics and religion. Unchanged and unmoved amidst all this will be the Managing Editor, Susan Woolfson, and the Editor-in-Chief, James Finn.

Finally. We do need and want your help in bringing *Worldview* to a wider audience—to all those who are concerned about the ethical dimensions of international affairs. Help us introduce it to your friends, your neighbors, your acquaintances, your enemies. To deserving strangers. Extend your *Worldview*.

JAMES FINN

WORLDVIEW

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*"The United States has every right to interfere"*

# The Human Rights of Amerasians

BY EDWARD A. OLSEN

Amerasians are the forgotten people of America's vaunted human rights policy. Amerasians are the unwanted product of illicit liaisons between American servicemen and Asian women, primarily bar girls. It is difficult to estimate accurately the number of neglected Amerasians left behind in Asia. Many thousands were born in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand. Precise figures are hard to get because neither the Asian families nor the governments involved like to advertise what is for them a matter of shame. In one country, Cambodia, it is unlikely that any Amerasians survived the genocidal Khmer Rouge purification campaign. Fortunately, American forces were not in Cambodia long enough for them to produce large numbers of Amerasians.

Not all Amerasians remain in the country of their birth. Many, especially those with Western features, were readily and successfully adopted into families in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Europe. Others were not offered for adoption by mothers who for one reason or another (often including a vain hope that the "father" will one day return) decided not to put their children up for adoption. Aside from those who were kept by their Asian family, frequently under adverse conditions, there exists a substantial number of others who were not wanted by anyone in Asia or for adoption abroad. These are primarily older children, adults, and darker skinned Amerasians of Afrasian ancestry. Also included in this category are Amerasians with various mental or physical handicaps.

There are two reasons why these Amerasians should be an issue for U.S. human rights policy. The fundamental reason is their sorry condition in Asia. With the exception of the Philippines, all the Asian states where Amerasians live are highly homogeneous nations. Each is very conscious of its racial and ethnic identity, with latent xenophobia held in check only by the political and economic necessity of dealing with uncouth foreigners. The presence of a sizable number of quasi-foreign illegitimate children and adults is a constant reminder of past humiliations. Despite occasional egalitarian rhetoric from the governments and good works by a few humanitarian in each of these countries, the prevailing societal attitude is one of neglect and scorn.

Racist discrimination against Amerasians is endemic. It is a part of life. As children they are cruelly ridiculed by 100 per cent Asian children. They receive a second-rate education, if they receive an education at all. Though they are sometimes citizens of the country of their birth, this is not generally the case. Many Asian countries determine legal rights following patrimonial lines. Because they have American fathers, they often are ineligible for full rights in the countries of their birth. Moreover, regardless of their partial claim to citizenship in an Asian country, they are considered somehow "foreign" by their countrymen. In countries where any opportunity for advancement is scarce and depends upon family ties, Amerasians can rarely compete on an equal basis. Their marriage prospects are minimal. Since family ties are usually paramount, prospective marriage partners are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to contaminate their line with an "impure" element. Job prospects are equally poor. With luck, an Amerasian may enter some area of entertainment, sports, or foreign-oriented business such as tourism. Those who are less fortunate will follow their mothers and become enmeshed in the underlife of their societies.

> "Not only do we have some
> responsibility for their
> existence, we have the
> ability to influence their
> fate."

The second reason for action by the United States to improve the human rights of Amerasians in Asia is our indirect national responsibility for their existence. Were it not for our military policies in Asia, most of these people would not have life today. Since our country sent relatively well-off Americans into countries gripped by the dislocations of poverty and war—and did

Edward A. Olsen, a specialist in Asian affairs, is an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California.

4

virtually nothing to prevent illegitimate births—the United States inherits by default some degree of responsibility. Obviously, the servicemen themselves bear moral responsibility for the situation they left behind, but they are a nameless and faceless group and have unconscionably forfeited that obligation. In their absence, the duty to provide some care for neglected Amerasians falls on the collective shoulders of the American people and their government.

It is inconceivable that the United States can focus on the human rights of admittedly deserving cases in the Soviet Union, Argentina, South Africa, and elsewhere—places where we have neither any causal relationship with the human rights abuses nor very much power to rectify existing conditions—and, at the same time, virtually ignore Amerasians in Asia. Not only do we have some responsibility for their existence and treatment, we have the concrete ability to influence their fate.

## "MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS"

There are several things we could do. At an absolute minimum we could undertake a twofold campaign to improve the societal status of Amerasians in the countries where they reside. To begin with, we should let all Asian governments know in the strongest possible terms that Amerasians are our number one human rights priority. We should forcefully demand that Amerasians be treated fairly. Certainly, Amerasians should rank higher for us than the various Asian political dissidents who now clamor for our attention. Asian governments have some logic on their side when they tell us to mind our own business and stop interfering in the domestic political disputes generated by Asian dissidents. However, the United States has every right to interfere to protect the well-being of people who are as American as they are Asian.

The next preliminary step is for the United States to institute a program of assistance to Amerasians, particularly in the area of education. This could be done by offering financial aid for their education in Asian countries or by bringing them "home" to the United States for an education. If these measures would solve the problem, it could stop there. However, discrimination against Amerasians is so virulent and rampant that these first steps are unlikely to be adequate.

We must recognize that there is only one really comprehensive solution. The French Government's experience in helping those Franco-Indochinese who could prove family ties with France might be a model. France helped these people to obtain an education and become French citizens. Though the French plan was magnanimous and surpasses anything done by the United States, it would still be inadequate to meet the needs of Amerasians. The United States, moving beyond the French model, must make available to all Amerasians the option of choosing American citizenship without restrictions. They and their dependents (in the cases of adult Amerasians) should be allowed merely to appear at U.S. consular offices in Asia, declare themselves the children of American citizens, and thereby be granted U.S. citizenship. Not all Amerasians would make this choice. For those who do not, a U.S. human rights cam-

paign to improve their condition in Asia should be maintained indefinitely. However, the great majority of Amerasians are very likely to jump at the opportunity to be "repatriated" to the United States.

It might be objected that, by not placing any limits or qualifications on these claimants to U.S. citizenship, we would inevitably allow the entry of some individuals who were not fathered by Americans and some adult Amerasians who are of dubious legal, moral, or health standing. The objection is valid, but it applies to such a small percentage of potential claimants that they should be overlooked for the sake of the majority. Certainly, we might try to screen out "undesirables," but the difficulty of proving their background is immense, and the process would likely mean endless bureaucratic obstacles undercutting the entire point of a program intended to speedily rescue Amerasians from their plight.

Not until Amerasians are permitted a free and easy means to become U.S. citizens will they be able to live lives free of debilitating discrimination. True, there are transition problems Amerasians might face in the United States. Clearly, racism lingers here as well, but in America their problems would not be insurmountable. Instead of hatred, poverty, and dead-end futures, Amerasians here would find economic and social opportunities and an atmosphere of sympathy, understanding, and tolerance.

A program of this sort is not self-generating. Amerasians have no votes in U.S. elections. They cannot lobby Congress. Many have no doubt given up hope of ever being rescued from their predicament. To reverse this situation will require the efforts of many groups and individuals here. Concerned Americans can do something for the Amerasians. [WV]

5

*It is illegal for this friend of Steve Biko to write for publication anywhere*
*in the world. But perhaps he can speak for publication...*

# Banned in South Africa: A Personal Account

BY DIANA E.H. RUSSELL

October 19, 1977, was described by one of South Africa's best-known newspapers, the *Rand Daily Mail*, as "the bleakest day in South Africa's history." On that day the government banned the country's only black newspaper, *The World*, eighteen organizations (including most groups in the Black Consciousness Movement that had come to be associated with the name of Steve Biko), and seven individuals. Forty-two black leaders were imprisoned without trial, nineteen homes and offices were raided. "What it has done," wrote the editor of the *Mail*, "is to leave the Black people who reject separate development with no outlet, no organization, no mouthpiece even, through which to express themselves." And so it remains today.

These repressive measures were widely publicized and condemned throughout the world. With the exception of Donald Woods, the banned editor of the *Daily Dispatch* newspaper, who escaped the country, addressed the United Nations, and published the first book on Steve Biko, few people outside South Africa know who these people are, why they were imprisoned or banned, how it feels to be outlawed in these particular ways in that particular country. The law permits the government to ban and detain people indefinitely without explanation, trial, or recourse of any kind. And, since it is illegal in South Africa to describe conditions in prison without the consent of the director of prisons, and illegal for banned people to publish, or even to be quoted orally or in print, it is not surprising that so little is known.

As the twin sister of one of those banned, I returned to South Africa to visit my brother in January, 1978, breaking a personal twelve-year boycott of the country. My brother was one of only seven whites included in the primarily antiblack repression of the previous October. There is conspicuous racism even in the manner of repression. All forty-two blacks were detained for a year in prison, while the seven whites were "banned"—a punishment described in detail shortly. Furthermore, for black people time in prison can be fatal. Since 1962 there have been about forty deaths of blacks while in detention. In the last couple of years the rate has

climbed to about one a month. And torture of black people in prison has been an instrument of policy for a long time.

My brother, David Russell, a forty-one-year-old Anglican priest, was the only person on that fateful October 19 who was placed under semi-house-arrest in addition to being banned. While the banning order forbids his being quoted inside the country, this restriction does not apply outside South Africa. However, it is illegal for an article written by him to be published anywhere in the world. The interview format, therefore, becomes the only way he can communicate directly with an international audience.

**DIANA: What does banning actually entail?**

**DAVID:** Banning orders prevent a person from attending any "social gathering"—defined as more than two people. Being able to meet with only one person at a time obviously precludes any normal social life. Also, we can't attend any formal meeting, defined as "any meeting with a common purpose." There are often special additional restrictions; for instance, in my case I can't go into so-called African areas, colored areas, or Asian areas. I can't go to any educational institution. A banning order also confines one to a particular district. And a banned person cannot have anything whatsoever to do with publishing. So one is silenced.

**And what is house-arrest?**

There can be a very tough twenty-four-hour house-arrest order which amounts to imprisonment in one's own house. But twelve-hour house-arrests are more common. These usually enable the person to continue to earn a living. In my case I'm under house-arrest from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. Mondays to Fridays, and all day Saturdays. I am allowed out on Sundays from 8:30 A.M. till 9:30 P.M. The assumption, I believe, is that I will be taking services on Sundays. House-arrest also restricts one's visitors. No one can visit me at my home. But I can meet people one at a time at other locations during the times I'm not restricted to my house.

**Why were you banned?**

The government carefully watches people who speak out against the system. They don't ban priests easily; they don't want to ruffle the church as an institution. But I think they've been watching me from the time I

Diana E.H. Russell is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mills College, California, and author of *Rebellion, Revolution and Armed Force, which is banned in South Africa*.

6

began exposing the horrendous conditions in the resettlement township, Dimbaza, near King Williamstown, where I lived.

*Tell me more about that.*

It was Verwoerd [prime minister, 1958-66] who evolved the Bantustan system in which traditional African areas became Bantustans, or Homelands. These Homelands comprise only about 13 per cent of the country, while the Africans comprise 70 per cent of the population. Increasingly, it has become a more vigorous aspect of government policy to try to get the Africans into these fragmented, poverty-stricken reserves. This vast removal plan has been going on for a long time. As the government began to systematize this plan, they saw the need to create "rural villages." They would find a place like Dimbaza and start building very cheap houses. The people sent there were often pensioners, widows, a lot of old people, whom a deputy minister once actually referred to as "superfluous appendages." In effect, these people were dumped into a place with no work and with very meager rations. The few who did have work received a totally inadequate wage. The result was disease, malnutrition, and death. The number of children who died became scandalous.

It was a terrible situation—people had no heat because they had no money for firewood. Their rations frequently ran out before the month was up. It was absolutely tearing—the poverty and the suffering, the destitution, the callousness of deliberately putting people in that position. It's quite clear that the government would not have treated whites in this way.

Africans received a miserable amount for a pension—only 5 Rand [about $6] a month. Whites at the time were getting 41 Rand [about $50] a month for their pensions! For some reason this miserable pension became a symbol for me. I felt a challenge to try myself to live on 5 Rand a month as a means of drawing attention to this racist double standard. I decided to publicize the situation by writing a monthly letter to the government minister concerned, describing what it was like to live on that amount, then mailing a copy to the press.

On April 14, 1972, I started off on a very austere diet, which I continued for six months. The 5 Rand had to cover fuel, clothing, and any other needs I might have, as well as food. I would never claim to know what it was like for the black people who had to live on this amount—I knew that I was doing it for a purpose. It wasn't as if I were trapped in that poverty. If I became desperate, I could go to my friend next door and get a decent meal. If I wanted to opt out, there was always that possibility. Also, six months is nothing compared to a lifetime. So the whole psychological situation and experience for me was totally different.

*Did your monthly letters to the minister get much publicity?*

Yes, they were widely printed in the English-language press. Dimbaza became very well known, and many people visited to see it for themselves. They were horrified that people could be treated like that. I like to think that this public exposé helped in some small way

to stem the pace at which these Resettlement Townships were popping up.

By the end of my five years working in Dimbaza, the absolute destitution of the place had been supplanted by a certain cushioning of conditions. There were more schools. A doctor came. There were fewer deaths. A public telephone was brought. An ambulance service. Teachers. More people working. So it wasn't the ghastly scandal that it had been.

*How was it to live on 5 Rand a month?*

I had weighed about 165 pounds. My lowest weight went down to about 145 pounds, which wasn't a fantasctic loss. It wasn't a starvation diet. But to get what little food value there is in the staple cereal of most Africans you have to eat a tremendous amount. I ate a whole half-loaf ravenously every second day and I would still be hungry. I kept in reasonable health, though I felt very weak and listless. It was terribly boring. I longed for a change. I became completely food-oriented and not interested in very much else. I looked forward all the time to the six months ending. October 15, 1972, was one of the most joyful days of my life, when I could eat some nuts and other goodies.

*Why do you think you specifically were singled out for house-arrest in addition to banning?*

I think it was vindictiveness on the part of the Security Police. Their main concern was to keep me out of black townships, but the banning order alone does that. They were particularly angered by my involvement in exposing the actions of certain members of the Riot Police in the killings and burnings in the Nyanga townships outside of Cape Town over the Christmas weekend in 1976. Some of the Riot Police had incited a particular group of black migrant workers, encouraging them to burn other black people's houses. The police opened the way by shooting at residents.

Somebody witnessed two Riot Policemen going into a house and bringing a struggling person out and letting him get chopped up and killed. A woman described how the Riot Police vans had come in amongst the houses, going very slowly. A policeman was sitting on the front of a jeep, with a gun, beckoning others to come. An old man passed the woman's garden, walking across an open space. He was shot at for no reason, and fell to the ground, bleeding. The Riot Policeman sitting on the hood pointed to the bleeding man, and a group of people came and finished him off.

There was another account of two Riot Policemen in the grounds of someone's home. A group of people came in and started to chop up a woman's mother with some sort of ax. The woman was screaming that her mother was being killed, and the Riot Policemen just stood watching.

*So what did you do?*

The Minister's Fraternal, a group of largely black ministers and priests who were working in the black townships, got together. We decided to record what had happened and to publish these accounts of violence. Our publication was promptly banned by the government. We were accused of producing undesirable literature.

7

ture, and we were found guilty of this offense. The police tried to intimidate and divide us, to threaten us, to get contradictory statements from us, and to cover up the accounts we had published. The government's utter refusal to face what had happened in the Nyanga township made me all the more determined to persist in publicizing it. I decided to produce another edition based on other similar eyewitness accounts. [The two documents mentioned here have been published by the United Nations.] I sent this report to the press, to religious leaders, and to every Member of Parliament.

The police were absolutely wild that they weren't able to cover this up. Quite a bit of it got into the press. I think that's what made them decide to slap me down with a house-arrest order. Also, they didn't like what I was doing with others to expose the dreadful conditions in the black squatter townships. In its effort to get rid of Africans from Cape Town, the government decided to simply demolish one of the squatter camps called Modderdam. Bulldozing started in the winter when it was cold and raining. People had nowhere to go for shelter or to set up new houses. So an emergency meeting was called. Some young people said, "One thing we can do is all go down tomorrow and stand in front of that bulldozer." There was a show of hands, and it looked as if a lot of people were into doing that. The next day a hundred people came to the camp. We waited for the bulldozers but they didn't come. Obviously, the authorities were thinking, "This lot will get tired and go." It turned out that later that same afternoon the bulldozers came and started the demolition.

I received a phone call that night informing me that the place was pretty well flattened. In spite of this I felt committed to being there the next day. So at half-past seven in the morning I went to the camp. Two others were there, and we walked into Modderdam. Thedevastation was like the aftermath of a bomb. It was also very quiet, like the lull-before-the-storm. Police vans arrived and parked across the other side of the road. A ghastly great animal-like machine came-a front-end loader. We walked toward it and went and sat down in front of the wheels. A policeman shouted, "Vat hom, vat hom!" ("Take him, take him!"). Then I was lifted up and taken.

We were subsequently charged with trespass, with obstructing the authorities in the course of their work, with resisting arrest, and with riotous assembly. We were taken along to Bellville Police Station, where we spent the night before appearing in court the next day. The case was remanded to a few weeks later, on certain conditions of bail, one of which was that we wouldn't go back to Modderdam. I said, "I can't agree to that. My conscience might require me to go back." So I went to jail.

The case came up on the 21st of October, 1977. I had been banned just two days earlier. We pleaded guilty of obstructing, and were fined 100 Rand [about $120].

*What sort of publicity did this get overseas, and in South Africa?*

It got some publicity overseas, and quite a lot here. But the government appeared to decide that, much as they hate the publicity, they had to get rid of the squat-

ters. They weren't going to accept the principle of black workers being permitted to settle here with their families. So after Modderdam they demolished a place called Werkgenot, then Unibel. About 25,000 people were affected.

> "...for me and many others
> Steve's death deepened our
> commitment. It was a
> matter of, 'Well, Steve,
> you're not going to die in
> vain. They are going to
> regret your death....What
> you stood for will grow.'"

*What has helped you most to deal with this experience?*

I have felt upheld by my faith, by my convictions, and by the support of friends and family, and by the knowledge that I am but one of many. Also, I see that my house-arrest order and banning is nothing compared with those in detention at this time, with the terrible threat of torture so many blacks have to live with.

*Does much right-wing terrorism occur in South Africa?*

These tactics are used a lot, in particular against white people who go against the prevailing mores of the white community. Sick things are done. For example, to Basil Moore, an ex-Methodist minister. They skinned his children's cat and left it on their front doorstep. For myself, it started when I was living in King Williamstown and working in Dimbaza. I received threat letters from so-called anti-Communist organizations. They enclosed drawings of daggers dripping with blood. And one morning I found my tires punctured.

*How did you come to be friends with Steve Biko?*

I had known him for a long time. His parents' home was in King Williamstown. They were among my parishioners. So when he visited them, he'd visit me too, and we had long talks. Then he was banned to King Williamstown. I was glad to be able to be of some help to him in providing him with an alternative base to his home, because he wasn't allowed to receive visitors there. I was living in a little house on the grounds of an old delapidated church. We turned the old church into an office block, and Steve was able to develop a base there.

There was a very high level of trust between us. It was more than a political bond, it was a friendship as well.

*How did you feel personally about his death?*

At first I was stunned and numb. It was totally unex-

8

pected. I though they would be more careful of him
than that, since he was well known. However, for me
and many others Steve's death deepened our commit-
ment. It was a matter of, "Well, Steve, you're not going
to die in vain. They are going to regret your death. Your
death will be fruitful. What you stood for will grow."
Often when I'm hit by something, or feel deeply
angered by what the government is doing, as in Dimba-
za, my response is not to weep but to be even more
determined to do something with my life to change it.
So it was with Steve's death. It sharpened my commit-
ment. I also felt, "Well done, Steve! You lived totally
for the cause, and you died for it. And they never
stopped you living for it, in the sense of breaking you
and getting you to deny what you stood for. Your victo-
ry is sealed."

The way he died and the consequences of his death
had certain analogies for me to the Christ event. The
inquest revealed the utter degradation he endured. His
being taken there naked. This free, seemingly inde-
structible person being beaten down and dying in such
an undignified way, but subsequently having such a
remarkable effect on so many people. He has become a
worldwide symbol-and affected people one never
expected would be affected.

BREAKING THE BAN

In early December, 1979, David Russell deliberately broke his banning order to attend the Anglican Synod in Grahamstown, three hundred miles from Cape Town. As an elected delegate to the Synod, he decided to place the calling of the church above the unjust restrictions of the state. For this he received a standing ovation at the Synod. The archbishop of Cape Town, Bill Burnett, the leader of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa, subsequently told the Synod that he was "prepared to see church defiance of the government lead to an end of the institutional church." According to the South African Press Association, "Clerics likened his [the archbishop's] message to what took place in Germany under the Nazis, when the church as an institution felt it could no longer continue in the face of state repression...."

The reaction of the government and court has been
quite otherwise. On February 26, 1980, Russell was sen-
tenced to a year in jail, and three-and-a-half years of
suspended sentences for five years, for breaking his ban-
ning order by attending the Synod. On March 3, 1980,
Russell's attorney filed an appeal against the severity of
the sentences. After four days in jail Russell was
released on his own recognizance. The appeal will be
heard in the Supreme Court some time in the future.

The fact that a priest can be given a four-and-a-half-
year sentence for simply attending a Synod highlights
the iniquity of the whole banning system in South
Africa. There has already been considerable criticism
in the South African press of the government's actions
against Russell. However, international pressure criti-
cizing this vindictive method of trying to obliterate all
opposition would likely be far more effective. More
people need to recognize that the antiapartheid struggle
is an international one.

[WV]

9

Kissinger and Moral Judgment

What role, if any, does moral judgment have in Henry Kissinger's approach to foreign policy? The editors of Worldview asked several prominent observers to answer this question on the basis of The White House Years, the first installment of Kissinger's memoirs. With an additional comment on the memoirs by David McLellan, here are their answers.—The Editors

First Among Watergate
Accomplices

BY TRACY EARLY

Like Nixon, Kissinger uses the slippery phrase to sell the shoddy. "I believed in the moral significance of my adopted country," he writes, defending his zeal for Nixon's Vietnam policy. Do not all nations, all things human, possess "moral significance"? But Kissinger means to slip by another idea, a moral valuation of American power. "America, alone of the free countries," he continues, "was strong enough to assure global security against the forces of tyranny. Only America had both the power and the decency to inspire other peoples who struggled for identity, for progress and dignity." My!

Though Jewish in background, Kissinger expresses no commitment to the Hebraic religious tradition, or to any other. On the contrary, words from the religious sphere serve him as terms of disparagement. "we could not afford to have the talks break down over theological points." For Kissinger, ultimate value appears to reside in the kingdom of this world, especially the American. A moral action then becomes one that sustains or enhances American power; whatever would weaken it must be judged immoral.

Kissinger seems also to define tyranny and freedom in this fashion. The "free peoples" he repeatedly names as beneficiaries of Nixon's care are those whose governments support the United States; all else spells oppression. So Kissinger feels no awkwardness in self-congratulation on his service to "free peoples" while extolling the merits of various dictators. He even reports as a compliment that Mao and Chou, so recently the bloody Communist slavemasters of Red China but now allies against hegemony, said they preferred Nixon to the liberals. Anyone who supports American power merits applause, for American power defends free peoples, who are those with governments allied to America.

Stonewalling it, Kissinger still argues, page after page, that Nixon was right on prolongation of the war, the secret bombing of Cambodia, the 1970 invasion, on indeed his every decision regarding Indonesia, though the futility of the whole enterprise now appears clear to most everyone else. Using more slippery phrases, such as "collapse of executive authority," he offers his alibi. But for Watergate it all would have worked. In his own behavior he regrets only that he momentarily let some people imagine he gave less than total support to Nixon's Christmas bombing.

"For a great power to abandon a small country to tyranny simply to obtain a respite from our own travail seemed to me—and still seems to me—profoundly immoral...." When that "small country" is ruled by a corrupt oligarchy, "a network of cliques held together by American subsidies" (as Frances Fitzgerald put it in *Fire in the Lake*), who's to talk of tyranny? But Kissinger's real justification for four more years of death and destruction was upholding American prestige elsewhere. Getting out with "honor" supposedly would impress the Soviets, show steadiness to China, prove reliability to allies in Europe, and reassure Israel. Kissinger's theories of linkage and geopolitics led him to assess actions in relation, not to the people most directly affected, but to power positions in a global chess game. He approached Indochina with little regard for the welfare of Indochinese, Iran with little regard for the feelings of Iranians, Africa with little regard for the interests of Africans.

Though Kissinger believes in the "moral significance" of America, he apparently sees none in the Founding Fathers' effort to prevent monarchical exercise of power. Resenting congressional and public interference, he helped Nixon deploy American power abroad, as though serving a shahanshah. He boasts of innumerable times and ways they kept Secretary of State Rogers in the dark, but fails to see that this carried implications beyond out-maneuvering a bureaucratic rival. Rogers was a presidential appointee, too, but one who had gone before the Senate for confirmation and remained publicly accountable. Kissinger was Nixon's instrument for personal and secret operations. Conventional wisdom holds that Kissinger emerged untainted from Watergate. However, if the term denotes not merely a third-rate burglary attempt but abuse of power, then he may have ranked first among Nixon's Watergate accomplices.

Tracy Early, a freelance writer, makes his home in New York.

10

# A Perverse Patriotism

BY RICHARD FALK

A representative comment by Henry Kissinger on the Vietnam experience captures the essence of what he means by moral judgment in *The White House Years*:

> A people must not lose faith in itself, those who wallow in the imperfections of their society or turn them into an excuse for a nihilistic orgy by eroding all social and moral restraints eventually, in their pitiless assault on all beliefs, multiply suffering.

It is worth noticing the twists and turns of language here. When Kissinger writes that "A people must not lose faith in itself," he means "A people must not lose faith in its government." Further, the passage so read is only sensible, given Kissinger's other main ideas, if confined to the American people (or to the people of any friendly government). It surely isn't intended for the situation pertaining in such adversary societies as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

Throughout these memoirs Kissinger reflects the view that the American performance in foreign policy, as enacted by its elected leaders, enjoys an almost inherent morality, thereby making its opponents immoral, if not worse. His venomous observations about the activist expression of antiwar sentiments in the Vietnam period express this outlook—"...egged on by a small minority expressing the inchoate rage of the 1960s with shock tactics of obscenity and violence, expressing their hatred for America, its 'system' and 'its evil.'" Kissinger believes "in the moral significance of my adopted country" and affirms its unique purpose in a typically abstract way as the assurance of "global security against the forces of tyranny." Such a moral conception of the American global role is underpinned, Kissinger informs us, by his childhood personal experience as a victim of Nazi persecution when he originally came to believe what "an inspiration" America "had been to the victims of persecution." Ironically, as policymaker par excellence for America, his role is characteristically to give aid and comfort, if not inspiration, to the victimizers rather than the victims. Kissinger never confronts the significance of siding in the Third World with the forces of order because the fate of Third World peoples is subordinated, without any rationale, to the globalist role of the U.S. as leader of the non-Communist sphere of international society.

Kissinger's intense patriotism is linked to an ambitious geopolitical role for the United States and to an antipathy toward populist tactics of dissent. His moral assessments are almost exclusively shaped by this dual orientation. Such a calculus seems awesomely deficient

as a moral foundation for foreign policy at this stage in national and world history. Indeed, what Kissinger specifies as "moral" strikes me as the essence of what I would call "amoral" (indifference as to consequences relating to human suffering and exploitation), or even "immoral" (deliberate willingness to inflict suffering on the weak and innocent for the sake of abstract geopolitical interests of benefit to the strong and privileged).

In foreign policy, aside from seeking to avoid war, various strands constitute an acceptable morality.

* a determination to treat human beings as *ends* rather than *means*;

* an attentiveness to the concrete circumstances, motivations, and voices of those who are *poor* or *otherwise* oppressed:

  * a wariness of *violence*, of *military approaches*, of claims from individuals enjoying *excess privilege*, of prideful assurance by the *rich and powerful*.

One searches in vain through the 1,476 pages of the memoirs for significant indication of moral sensitivity in any of these senses. When Kissinger writes toward the end of *White House Years* about his feelings on January 23, 1973, when Nixon's speech brought the American involvement in Vietnam to an end, he thinks only of the American casualties. He makes no mention of the suffering or devastation inflicted on the peoples of Indochina. True, in defending himself against charges surrounding the 1972 Christmas bombing, Kissinger takes some care to argue that the impact of the B-52 raids on Vietnamese civilians was not as great as critics alleged, but only out of concern for the besmirching of his image by the media. His justification for the bombing on that occasion, as with all his justifications, has to do with abstract precepts, in this case making sure that both Hanoi and Saigon become convinced of American resolve. Similarly, when it comes to a geopolitically helpful ruler, the shah, Kissinger finds kind words, calling him "a gentle, even sentimental man who had schooled himself in the maxim that the ruler must be aloof and hard." He calls the shah "a dedicated reformer," while noting almost as an aside that there were also "darker sides," including "methods of repression unworthy of the enlightened goals." Even here, however, there is no sense that the Iranian people were being massively victimized by Pahlavi rule in a cruel way that could not be compensated by abstractions about being an ally or a modernizer. In reverse, predictably, is Kissinger's presentation of Salvador Allende, of whom he could see only the dark side, indicting him for his authoritarian designs even though the evidence suggests he perished, in part, because his commitment to democratic pluralism was so unswerving.

Kissinger, the supreme geopolitical amoralist, has invoked moral fervor in support of his interpretation of what it is best for the U.S. to be doing in the world. But this fervor is reducible to little more than a mystifying layer of justification added onto the prevailing American approach to power politics. It also has a domestic thrust that is antidemocratic, corresponding to the Tri-lateral Commission's warnings in *The Crisis of Democracy*. The élite foreign policy leadership is "immoral" only if it weakens its resolve out of deference to dissent-

Richard Falk teaches at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

11

# Perceptions of Morality

BY DAVID LITTLE

Religious News Service

ers in the streets and "moral" to the extent that it perseveres in a course it deems correct in defiance of popular feelings. Underneath this "moral" code is a patrician assumption made quite explicit in *White House Years*: that bankers, corporate managers, and Wall Street lawyers, especially the ones with aristocratic credentials, are the best custodians of the national interest.

The moral deficiencies of Kissinger's orientation in foreign policy are magnified by the two greatest challenges facing the United States at this time: the danger of general war and the response to revolutionary nationalism in the Third World. His way of defining what is "right" is too statist for a nuclear age of growing interdependence and too imperialist for a historical epoch where non-Western peoples are increasingly capable of securing control over their political, economic, and cultural destinies. Besides, by condemning America to reactionary alignments with the forces of order throughout the world, he dishonors the noblest part of America's heritage: its association with the collective right of a people to struggle for independence, justice, and dignity against foreign domination and domestic oppression. Kissinger's contempt for such struggles is neatly disclosed by a comment he made recently while addressing a conference on NATO strategy: "As for Third World nations...when I was in office I never read their resolutions, I regret to tell you, which is just as well, because I might have said something rather nastly."

For all the inspiration Henry Kissinger is supposed to have received from the tradition of "power politics" and "political realism," he does not, at least on the surface, employ the notion of morality in a way that is quite in keeping with that tradition. In *White House Years*, Kissinger displays little of the skepticism and embarrassment about mixing moral judgments and foreign policy decisions that is characteristic of political realists.

In the course of his narrative he indulges rather readily in moral evaluation. He refers to the need of every nation for a "moral compass," and he writes without reticence of the "moral significance" of his adopted country. He describes Soviet strategy as essentially "ruthless opportunism." He calls "profoundly immoral" any temptation the United States may have had to abandon abruptly South Vietnam, and he several times suggests the depths of his own moral anguish over U.S. policy in Indochina.

Still, there is something strangely incidental and disconnected about many of Kissinger's moral references, despite his own disclaimers. Kissinger contends that the major difference in the "perception of morality" between the statesman and the outsider is that the outsider has the luxury of thinking in absolute terms about right and wrong, whereas the statesman must make real-world adjustments and compromises. "He can rarely reach his goal except in stages; any partial step is inherently morally imperfect and yet morality cannot be approximated without it." Even if that is true, the statesman is still bound to justify carefully one step or stage as, at least, less imperfect or more proximate, according to his moral standards, than alternatives.

However, it is just that sort of careful comparison and discrete justification of policies, according to avowed moral standards, that is lacking in some prominent places in Kissinger's account. One example. According to Kissinger's own convictions, achieving a "decent settlement" in Indochina was of fundamental moral importance. A large portion of *White House Years* is dedicated to revealing the steps and stages by which this objective was sought. Basic to Kissinger's idea of a decent settlement was reasonable provision for the survival of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia independent of North Vietnamese domination. The credibility of U.S. commitments, and the "honor" and "dignity" of the United States as a key participant in creating a "new international order" all depended, Kissinger argues, on assuring such a settlement. On Kissinger's own terms, a key question is whether the Paris Peace Agreements of (Continued on page 17)

*David Little is Henry R. Luce Visiting Professor of Comparative Religious Ethics at Amherst College.*

12

## EXCURSUS 1

### Robert J. Myers on
THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

Prince Norodom Sihanouk's brief visit to New York in March highlighted once again the ongoing tragedy in Cambodia of hunger and starvation and warfare. Our humanitarian interests are thwarted by international political aims and squabbling Cambodian factions. All this is reflected in the New York scene, where one can keep up with the Cambodian drama by an exposure to its players and politics—from the Sihanouk visit, to a movie, to the press releases of New York-based relief agencies, to the testimony of Pol Pot's U.N. representative.

A biased film made by British journalist John Pilger in August and September of 1979 was shown in Greenwich Village in March. Filmed with the cooperation of the Vietnamese puppet government of Heng Samrin, Pilger captures the horrors of the deposed Pol Pot regime—the piles of skulls and bones in the rice paddies, the torture chamber in Phnom Penh—making an altogether convincing case for the condemnation of that bloody regime, if more evidence were needed after Father François Ponchaud's *Cambodia: Year Zero*. This film has been widely credited with the decision of the British Government to break relations with the Pol Pot regime (still recognized by the U.N.) and with the outpouring of funds from the British public to finance the relief program of Oxfam.

The film's flaw, however, is its failure to mention that the Pol Pot horror has been replaced by another, and that this was accomplished by the Vietnamese army. (The fear of Vietnamese invasion was always foremost in Sihanouk's political thinking.) Most states have refused to recognize the new Heng Samrin regime, which would acknowledge Vietnam's successful aggression. This refusal has had the unfortunate consequence of slowing large-scale and prompt relief for the starving Cambodian people. After capturing most of the country in January, 1979, the new government failed to acknowledge the pressing need for relief. As tales of starvation flowed out with the refugees to Thailand, efforts of the Red Cross and UNICEF were hampered by the question of who would control and verify the distribution of food supplies. Traditionally, the Red Cross expects to be able to deliver help to all those needing it, whatever their politics. But the Heng Samrin-Vietnamese regime, understandably, did not want food going to the Pol Pot remnants to strengthen their already troubling resistance. Further, it appears that the Heng Samrin government is carrying out a Vietnamese-dictated policy of a "genocidal war of aggression" (in the words of the Pol Pot group) or of "colonization and extermination" (in the words of a rival guerrilla organization, the Khmer People's National Liberation Armed Forces [KPNLF]).

If this is indeed the Heng-Samrin-Vietnamese policy, no wonder there are charges of nondistribution and mal distribution of relief supplies. Oxfam and others, for all their humanitarian concern, have requested almost no concessions on control of distribution and verification. The Red Cross and UNICEF have been no more demanding. William Shawcross, in a series of articles in the *Washington Post*, focused on the apparent hoarding of supplies and the subsequent transshipment of some food to Vietnam. The relief agencies have been almost mute on the subject, fearing that bad publicity might interfere with the raising of funds and with the limited distribution now being car-

ried on. This is no basic criticism of the aid effort, which is substantial and important. The Church World Service, for example, had raised over $3 million by early March. The relief groups are correct to send supplies to Phnom Penh, despite the misallocation—the selling of supplies and other evils that are endemic in this situation. An increasing amount does reach the victims of a decade of unrestricted and unbelievable terror.

Vietnam now has about 200,000 troops in Cambodia, 20,000 more than carried out the invasion. It is costing the Soviets and Vietnam about $2-3 million a day to maintain this expeditionary force. But the notion that its cost will lead to withdrawal is a wishful one. How to force them out remains the problem of the moment. Pol Pot's guerrillas are stationed mainly along the Thai border, although the reports issuing from his information ministry claim raids all over the country. Aided by the Chinese, Pol Pot's people say that only a successful resistance will expel the Vietnamese. His forces, estimated at from 30,000-40,000 armed men, are by far the strongest in the field. Other non-Communist groups, like the KPNLF, led by Son Sann, finance minister and prime minister under Sihanouk, have far fewer and less well trained forces. His return from comfortable exile in Paris to the jungles of Cambodia at age sixty-nine has earned him support among the non-Communist Cambodians. But he has not been able to unite all the non-Communist resistance, like the KhmerSEREI, groups that are often little more than bandits, feeding on the suffering of the refugees.

How Sihanouk fits into any of this is a matter of conjecture. Khieu Samphan, ostensible head of Pol Pot's government, has called for a new united front. But Sihanouk turned that down, having had an experience with the same group back in 1970. He considers Pol Pot enemy No. 1 and feels nothing can be done until his influence is reduced. In Washington in March Sihanouk's request for military aid for the non-Communist guerrillas fell on deaf ears. In New York the same month he expressed the hope that the U.N. would follow the Havana conference of last fall and recognize neither the Pol Pot nor Heng Samrin governments, leaving the Cambodian chair vacant. The vacancy would then be filled by a new, neutralized government to be formed at an international conference. He fears that otherwise Cambodia will disappear as a nation and a people. As for himself at the moment, Sihanouk hopes for a role as a roving ambassador to help the refugees. He will return from Europe to Pyongyang, noteking, to show his differences with China over Pol Pot.

A Cambodian proverb has it that the Cambodians will be fighting among themselves until the survivors can sit in the shade of a single tree. Somehow the fighting needs to be stopped and more and more outside help provided to keep the Cambodians alive and make possible a happier future than their own proverb allows.

Robert J. Myers is President of CRIA.

## EXCURSUS 2

### Thomas Land on
CHINA'S LONG MARCH TO FEMALE EQUALITY

Women in rural China are facing a long march toward equality with men, according to an authoritative new sur-

13

"I'm sorry, gentlemen, but some things are simply not negotiable."

Their greatest barriers include their own prejudices, despite all the revolutionary changes that have swept their society. The slow change of widely held basic values is hindered by centuries of tradition keeping women tied to their husbands' families. The recent, rapid transformation of socio-economic structures toward a measure of equality of the sexes has failed to penetrate the basic fabric of life, especially in rural areas. The Chinese experience is important because related movements toward the equality of women are taking place everywhere—although the depth of prejudice and the impact of political change have been far less drastic in most societies.

For nearly three decades now the Peking administration has been committed to full female emancipation. Yet the past stubbornly lingers in the power structure of the communes and in the minds of their inhabitants, writes Elizabeth Croll in her study *Women in Rural Development: The People's Republic of China*, published by the United Nations' International Labor Organization in Geneva.

The transformation of Chinese agriculture has removed many of the structural restraints hitherto imposed on women. The introduction of communal health and welfare facilities has effectively freed women of some of the burdens of domestic chores. By the late 1950's, 90 per cent of adult women in the rural areas were reportedly engaged in "social" production. These changes stem from the assumption held by the authorities that the involvement of women in production is essential, not only for the success of the national program of rural development, but also for the improvement of their social status. The reorganization of agricultural work has thus enabled women to form their own production brigades, with wages

paid to them directly rather than to the head of the household.

Yet the ILO study finds that, contrary to Marxist theory, economic independence does not necessarily lead to social equality. Men still tend to hold the "responsible" jobs while women do the more mundane work. This dividing line is especially apparent between agricultural and nonagricultural work. It is also reflected in earnings, because women are usually allocated the least remuneration tasks such as sowing and raising pigs.

One of the crucial social structures hindering the advancement of women that remains rigidly intact in modern China is the power hierarchy of the traditional family group in rural areas. The removal of the bride to the husband's family home weakens her status. And it thrusts her, a relative outsider, into an environment in which all economic and social power relationships have been determined before her arrival. Thus the social as well as ideological limits to the freedom of women have proven to be some of the most intractable. Women are not making decisions; and, significantly, many women consider themselves unfit for any but menial tasks. Among the basic-level people's deputies, men outnumber women by more than three to one.

Change can be hastened, but traditional attitudes cannot be legislated out of people's minds. The ideological shift toward a measure of real equality between the sexes could prove what the author of the ILO study describes as the most "arduous and difficult phase in the process of redefinition." One lesson of the Chinese experience is that political will and radical measures to grant women full equality are not enough. To achieve their purpose they

14

must be accompanied by a revolution in basic attitudes. Future battles in that revolution—in China and elsewhere—will have to be fought in a theatre in which even the smallest skirmishes are difficult to win: the human mind.

*Thomas Land is an author and correspondent who writes on world affairs from Europe.*

## EXCURSUS 3

### Stephen D. Hayes on SOVIET INTENTIONS AND THE GHOST OF HEGEL

The rumbling of Soviet tanks into Afghanistan has sent the foreign affairs experts scurrying to their files in an effort to ferret out the Russian intentions behind the move. Many claimed surprise. Others, like Adam Ulam of Harvard, said it was a rather straightforward extension of recent Soviet behavior.

Is it a short-term move to provide temporary support to a pro-Soviet leader? Or a calculated move to take greater advantage of turmoil in the Middle East and what is perceived as American vacillation in the international arena? Or something else entirely? Apparently, no one is really sure what the Russians are up to. Could it be that the Russian leadership itself is unclear about its own long-range goals? If this is the case (and it's my guess it is), then another factor—the Soviet sense of history—takes on added importance in determining the eventual outcome of the affair.

For Hegel, the philosophic forerunner of Marx and Engels, there was an inevitability to the direction of history, a predetermination by "geist," ultimate Reason or the Spirit of the State in the world. For the traditional Marxist the course of history is set, rather, by "objective" economic factors. Marx and Engels tossed out large portions of Hegel's philosophy. But the intellectual tradition undergirding Communist doctrine is laden, very heavily laden, with the Hegelian theme that the direction of history is set. Its march is inexorable. It is the unfolding of an ordered plan.

With regard to Afghanistan in the winter of 1980, the particular tactical considerations weighed by Brezhnev or Gromyko may ultimately matter less than the general philosophical milieu in which both men operate. Brezhnev doesn't reread Hegel and Marx in the middle of a crisis any more than Carter and the National Security Council consult the Federalist Papers. But none of them have to in order to be influenced, likely in an unconscious way, by these philosophies. Perhaps it was a subconscious acknowledgement of the Communist philosophy of history that prompted a Soviet diplomat to comment the other day, "The armies of Socialism march in only one direction."

Where will the Afghanistan incursion lead? Might the Soviets be saying to themselves, "We will take care of the troops and tanks and let history take care of the outcome"? (After all, Hegel believed that "individuals and nations are the unconscious tools and organs of the world mind at work within them.") If such thoughts are creeping even surreptitiously into Soviet thinking, it is ominous indeed. It is ominous because it reinforces the old belief

(once disregarded?) in the inevitability of Soviet hegemony. It is ominous also because it will run the Soviets smack up against America's own view of future history. When John O'Sullivan first wrote of Manifest Destiny in the New York *Morning News* in 1845, he was speaking of America's justification for civilizing and democratizing our Western frontiers. By the latter part of that century the concept had become one of global scope; it was America's providential calling in history to serve as the vanguard of freedom in the world. Despite the ebb and flow of cold war and détente, the spirit of Manifest Destiny still simmers beneath the surface of American foreign policy, still courses through the veins of the American people. The stage is set, once again, for the clash of future histories.

In his monumental *Philosophy of Right*, Hegel argued that history moves from East to West. He went on to say that a nation is, in effect, "selected" to carry out the predetermined work of history and that such a nation is "dominant in world history during this one epoch and it is only once that it can make its hour strike.... The minds of other nations are without rights and they, along with those whose hour has struck already, count no longer in world history." The Soviet Union just might suspect that this is its hour. It might be trying to demonstrate at the same time that history also moves from North to South.

In the final analysis the affecting worry over the Afghanistan move is not who controls Kabul or even whether it is, as President Carter said, "a stepping stone to possible control over much of the world's oil supplies." The essential question is whether the ghost of Hegel still stalks the halls of the Kremlin.

*Stephen D. Hayes is a foreign affairs officer at the U.S. Treasury Department. © 1980 Stephen D. Hayes.*

## EXCURSUS 4

### M. Archer on A CRY FOR HELP

It happened in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1948, when riots burst forth in response to Israel's War of Independence. The Muslim's were running down the street yelling, "First the Jews, then the Christians."

From 1864 until after World War I, Lebanon was a part of the Ottoman Empire, under Turkish rule but governed by a Christian military governor (a *mushir*) and twelve elected representatives of the three religious groups, Christian, Muslim, Druse. After World War I the country became a French mandate under the League of Nations.

In 1920 the French established the independent state of Lebanon, separating it from Syria to increase Christian influence in the area. France made Lebanon the seat of the French high commissioner. Lebanon remained independent under the French mandate until 1941, when it became a republic.

The president of the country is elected to a six-year term by a two-thirds majority of the Chamber of Deputies. He chooses the cabinet and nominates one of its members as prime minister. It was understood that the president would be a Christian, the prime minister a Muslim. Until the arrival of the Palestinians, Christians were a majority, with the Maronites the predominant sect.

15

In 1975, Lebanese Muslims joined with the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, in an effort to destroy the Christian power in the country. When the Syrian Government came in to establish hegemony, claiming that Lebanon had always been a part of Syria, Christians fled to the south.

Only in south Lebanon were the Christians able to hold onto their freedom. Here, with the aid of Israel, which was attempting to eliminate PLO terrorist camps in the area, the Christians made a stand. These Christian villages are now a major target of the PLO. About a hundred villages with some 100,000 inhabitants are fighting back, aided by Israel and by their neighbors, the Shi'ite Muslims.

But where are the Christian groups in other countries during all this? Has their need for oil frightened them off? The United States sponsored the Syrian takeover as a "keep-the-peace" plan. "First the Jews, then the Christians"....Is the forecast to become reality?

A United Nations force sent to establish a no-man's-land in south Lebanon was given the job of keeping the terrorists out. But the PLO has infiltrated and set up bases, where even some American arms originally sent to Saudi Arabia have been found.

Why haven't Christian organizations come to the aid of their brethren? Or at least helped filter some information about the situation out of Lebanon and into the West? The only endeavor of this sort we know of is Radio Station HOPE, sponsored by an American Christian ministry group, that broadcasts from south Lebanon. A California-based Christian group has taken some steps in Lebanon to aid the Christians who are defending themselves against the PLO. These are among the few signs that someone besides Israel is concerned. If the Lebanese Christians had had to depend on their fellow believers up to now, they would have been exterminated or subjected to Muslim rule.

The middle-class Lebanese who live in America resent bitterly the Palestinians who are turning their country into a battlefield. But they must be afraid to speak out, for we hear little from them. Beirut, once the Paris of the Middle East, seems hardly to have changed. Mercedes sports cars, Cadillacs, chic shops displaying Paris clothes, crowded restaurants, and beach clubs are evident. But electricity and telephones work only half time and garbage collection has almost halted. Squatters, refugees from the fighting on the southern front, break into vacant houses and apartments. Crime has increased.

Some American black leaders, sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, back the Muslim terrorists instead of their religious brothers. In Israel one significant U.S. group found no time to meet with Major Sa'ad Hadad, a leader of the Lebanese Christian forces, or with the commander of the Lebanese Christian forces, Bashir Gemayel. The town the Southern Christian Leadership Conference people visited at the invitation of the PLO had been devastated in the Lebanese civil war in 1975. Its inhabitants had fled and Palestinian refugees from the nearby camps had come to live there when the Christian militia lost it in the summer of 1976.

Bashir Gemayel would support a conference to discuss this crucial issue if it included Muslims and Christian from Lebanon, with the United States as mediator. With 600,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and the PLO drawing most of its support from Muslims, the Palestinians now form a state within a state, an army within an army. Gemayel has said that any diplomatic initiative in Lebanon must try to remove the Palestinians from the country, but where they would go and under whose aus-

pices remains an unanswered question.

Where are the Christian humanitarians who should be playing a large part in preparing a political and moral response? They seem indifferent to the annihilation of the Christian Arabs in Lebanon.

M. Archer is a freelance writer who makes her home in Florida.

## QUOTE/UNQUOTE

### My daughter, the uh, er...

*Customs and Immigration, Newcastle Docks, England.* "Welcome to England; a good trip from Norway? May I see your entry form please? Ah, yes, Miss...Streeter, your occupation is...eth-i-cist? I say, does that mean you teach ethics, or simply that you are a person of high moral character?"

*Children's Hospital, San Francisco, Weekly Medical Rounds with my friend and colleague, Dr. Andrew Jame ton.* "Dr. Cassel invited me to attend these rounds. I am an ethicist."

M.D.: "Anesthetist?"

*Home, New Jersey.* My mother: "My friends ask me what you're doing and I say you're a, uh, freelance ethicist."

Me: "What do they say?"

Ma: "Well, they ask me what that means, and I say I think it means you can't find a job."

—Deborah Streeter in *Ethics & Policy*, Summer, 1979

### Toward Global Education Without Values

InterEd is a leadership seminar on global education that will encompass aspects of business, government, and academic resources....We think this conference will be unique for you because, rather than emphasizing the normative and theoretical approaches, we intend to do away with the rhetoric and semantics and give you....

—from a conference invitation received in March

### Have It Your Way

Other sins include "the picking up of girls and women, anti-Islamic and inhuman, immoral acts in clubs, self-service cafes and restaurant and inviting female singers and dancers to perform in public places."

—*Iran Voice*, March 3, reprinted from *The Daily Telegraph*

### Jail Is Better the Second Time Around

Apartment—2nd Floor—4 rooms and bath, refrigerator and range. Heat and water furnished, ideal for retried person or couple. Security system in building.

—*The Evening Sentinel*, Carlisle, Pa., March 15

### A Real Fish Story

*Fish? Ask Delta Fish Market at Your Next Door Always! For Fresh & Free Delivery and Prompt Service to Your Order.*

Cleanliness & Perfectness Is Our Business.

—Handout from Delta Fish Market, New York City

16

1973 amounted to the "least imperfect" course of action available to the United States in trying to achieve a decent settlement. Against those who claim that the same arrangement could have been attained in 1969, Kissinger responds: "Not even the slightest acquaintance with the record sustains that argument." Yet Kissinger's own account of the record lends support to it. "Analytically, it would have been better to offer [in fall, 1969] the most generous proposal imaginable—and then, if rejected, to seek to impose it militarily. Nothing short of this could have produced Soviet cooperation, for in the absence of crisis there was no incentive for a concrete Soviet step. (When a crisis finally developed in 1972, we induced some Soviet cooperation.) If we had offered at one dramatic moment all the concessions we eventually made in three years of war, and if the military actions we took with steadily declining forces over 1970, 1971, and 1972, in Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam..., had been undertaken all together in early 1970, the war might well have been appreciably shortened—though it is hard to tell at this remove whether Saigon would have been ready to carry the burden of going it alone after settlement."

The most remarkable thing about this startling admission is its offhand quality. An earlier settlement would have saved untold lives, and would have terminated all the sooner the crushing psychic, economic, and political costs to the United States of continuing the war in Indochina. Yet Kissinger vaguely and casually cites "domestic turmoil" and the "divisions within the administration" as the sole reasons why "I did not fight for my theoretical analysis." There is not the slightest hint that Kissinger appreciates the moral price of neglecting this opportunity. He was not similarly subdued at other decisive points during the White House years. Why at that point? Why didn't he fight? Where is the detailed vindication for failing to pursue what on its face and by his own account appears a much less imperfect outcome than the one finally achieved in 1973 by the Nixon administration?

On evidence entirely internal to *White House Years*, we are entitled to some skepticism concerning the depths of Kissinger's moral judgment in shaping foreign policy.

## The Ironic Consequences of Conservatism

BY PAUL E. SIGMUND

In *The White House Years*, Henry Kissinger is, as ever, faithful to the conservative view of international relations he has espoused since his early study of Metternich. Yet, unlike Metternich, he is writing in a liberal democracy and must justify the survivalist ethic of balance-of-power *Realpolitik* in terms that give it what he calls at one point a "moral compass." What that consists

in is not explicitly enunciated, but presumably it is related to the "idealism...humanity...and the embodiment of men's hopes" that in an eloquent passage he describes as his image of America when he was a boy suffering persecution in Nazi Germany. It also seems to include the freedom of Americans from governmental interference, which in Kissinger's discussion of White House wiretapping he describes as "an even more fundamental national interest" than national security considerations.

Yet this commitment to idealism and freedom stops at the water's edge. In international politics, actions must be taken that are "inherently morally imperfect," and it is America's failure to recognize that in international relations geopolitical considerations must take precedence over idealism and legalism that has caused most of its difficulties in foreign policy.

How is this viewpoint applied to the foreign policy problem that dominates *The White House Years*—Vietnam? While Kissinger says that "to abandon a small country to tyranny" is "profoundly immoral," the real "moral compass" of his policy is described in the rest of the sentence: "and destructive to our efforts to build a new and ultimately more peaceful pattern of international relations." "Naive idealism" got us into Vietnam, but Kissinger says his Vietnam policy was aimed at permitting an American withdrawal, not under duress, but as "an American choice made with dignity and self respect" and without undermining the American people's "faith in itself." The initial commitment in Vietnam was an error committed by the liberal internationalists, but the pattern of U.S. withdrawal was to be determined by how domestic and world opinion would view American resolve, determination, and honor. Thus, when Kissinger later berates the Ivy League presidents who favored immediate withdrawal for being willing to "consign millions of South Vietnamese who had relied upon us to a Communist dictatorship," it seems evident that it is not the fate of the Vietnamese that concerns him but the impact of a hasty withdrawal on others who have relied on U.S. assurances of support.

The one place Kissinger appears to accept an international role for the U.S. in promoting democracy in other countries is also where his explanation is least convincing and his actions most immoral: Chile. Since the book ends with early 1973, it does not discuss the September, 1973, Chilean coup, but a full chapter is devoted to U.S. policy before and after the September, 1970, election of Salvador Allende. The chapter is necessary because the 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee investigations revealed the existence of a secret "Track II," after Allende's election, in which Kissinger and Nixon attempted to promote a military coup to prevent him from coming to power. The use of U.S. arms and money to induce the Chilean military to overthrow a democratic government after an indisputably honest and free election would seem to qualify as immoral by almost any definition of the word. Not by Kissinger's, however.

Paul E. Sigmund, *Professor of Politics at Princeton, is author of*
*The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile.*

17

Once again he blames the liberals—in this case the Latin American Bureau of the State Department—for creating the problem by their earlier unwillingness to give U.S. covert assistance to the conservative candidate, Jorge Alessandri. Kissinger defends his support of an anti-Allende coup with two arguments. The first, the impact of a Communist-dominated Chile on neighboring countries, is an application of the classic balance-of-power approach. As he said in June, 1970, "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." More emphasis is placed, however, on an argument that sounds very strange coming from a conservative. A coup was necessary because Allende had been elected with only 36 per cent of the vote in a three-way race, and military intervention would be "a prelude to new elections," which would give Chileans the possibility of electing a president by an absolute majority. Never mind that the fanatic rightists with whom the CIA was in contact gave no indication that they would call elections—or that the Chilean constitution that the Kissinger-Nixon policy was bent on subverting called for a run-off vote in the Congress which would give one of the top two candidates a majority. (When the coup failed—but not before the Chilean army commander-in-chief was assassinated—Allende was elected by the Chilean Congress by a vote of 153-35.) One can only conclude that Kissinger is rewriting history in terms that will find support from precisely the American liberal internationalist idealism that he has consistently attacked.

The Kissinger view of morality in international relations—that is moral which enhances the security of the United States as a free society—is simple and clear. In World Wars I and II, however, during the Kennedy presidency, and again under Jimmy Carter, Americans have believed that U.S. foreign policy should represent more universal values. Liberal internationalism may involve a more complex and difficult policy process than the simple guidelines of Kissinger conservatism, but at least it avoids the result that Kissinger's own policies in Vietnam and Chile have produced: the loss of confidence, self-respect, and faith in America.

## One Man of Conscience, Perhaps

BY DAVID McLELLAN

The keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati World Affairs Council in March, 1972, was Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. The dinner was held in a cavernous banquet hall, with forty or fifty of Cincinnati's leading citizens seated in two tiers on a raised dais at one end. Midway through Laird's address a figure arose from the darkened audience and began working her way forward. Everyone, including Laird,

pretended to ignore her steady progress toward the speaker's lectern. Arriving directly in front of the secretary, the woman unfurled a small white sign—"War Is Murder"—and pinned it to the front of the lectern. Someone then got up and quietly escorted her to the sidelines. It was one person's way of protesting the ongoing agony of the Vietnam war.

As a foe of the war, I was relieved that nothing untoward had happened to the woman as she performed her solitary act of protest. Was not Laird just as culpable as his master Richard Nixon and his Faustian associate Henry Kissinger? Because he never broke publicly with Nixon, we have been unaware of Laird's quiet but persistent opposition to Nixon administration excesses during the Vietnam war. Improbable as it may seem, the only person to emerge from Kissinger's memoirs with his reputation enhanced is Melvin Laird. But perhaps it seems less improbable if we remember that Laird was one of the few professional politicians in the Nixon entourage, one with a political base in the Congress and in the House Appropriations Committee (where he had served for a dozen years). Laird is also a long-time elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Marshfield, Wisconsin. He is one of the very few people of whom Kissinger speaks with unfeigned respect.

Kissinger writes of Laird's aggressive bureaucratic style, of his devious efforts "to outsmart and outmaneuver anyone with whom his office brought him into contact." He also writes that Laird could be ignored by the president only at serious risk; Laird's base in Congress made him the only man in Nixon's cabinet who could safely challenge Nixon on an important issue. Not that Laird ever publicly challenged Nixon's policies, but Laird's opposition behind the scenes, however ineffectual, to some of Nixon's more irrational and dangerous proposals puts him in a class by himself. Kissinger admires Laird for preserving America's military strength and laying the foundations for its future expansion at a time when that policy was under fierce assault from critics in the Congress, the media, and academia. Since it was the indefensible prolongation of the war by Kissinger and Nixon that triggered the assault, we can legitimately honor Laird as one of the few high officials who sought to limit America's involvement as much as possible and bring the conflict to a rapid end.

Laird was a consistent and determined advocate of the speedy withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, not because he was a dove, but because he perceived the hopelessness of trying to defeat the VC/DRV forces and recognized the destructive inroads the war was making on U.S. military capabilities. Paradoxically, in his opposition to expanding the war he had to deal with the professional military, who still sought victory and backed every Nixon move to expand the war.

The first crisis in which Laird demonstrated his good sense involved the shooting down of an American reconnaissance aircraft off the coast of North Korea.

David McLellan teaches in the Department of Political Science at Miami University, Ohio. He is co-editor of the recently published *Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson*.

18

Nixon's immediate reaction, shared by Kissinger, was that North Korean bases should be bombed in retaliation. Laird, joined by the Joint Chiefs and the State Department, successfully resisted a White House policy that they feared would only engage the U.S. in a second war at a time when America's military capabilities were already dangerously overextended. This was one of those occasions on which Laird discovered that intelligence flights by U.S. aircraft had multiplied over the years without a periodic review of their rationale or utility.

A year later Laird put up at least token opposition to Nixon's decision to launch a full-scale American incursion into the Parrot's Beak and Fishhook sectors of Cambodia. This was the incursion that was to convulse the country in connection with the deaths at Kent State. According to Kissinger, Laird had been the strongest advocate of shallow border-crossing operations, but he opposed General Abram's initial recommendations that an incursion be made to destroy the sanctuaries altogether. If an all-out military incursion was to occur, writes Kissinger, "Laird wanted to make sure that no American ground personnel would enter Cambodia, not even air controllers...." Nixon, knowing the opposition he would confront from Laird and Rogers should he make clear his determination to invade Cambodia, arranged for a charade to be played out at meetings at which the decisions were being made. These meetings were treated as no more than briefings. Kissinger reports that Laird and Rogers "fell in with the charade that it was all a planning exercise and did not take a position."

Laird still did not believe that Nixon would seriously consider an incursion by American forces. "Nixon was immensely relieved [that the charade had not been challenged]. He construed silence as assent; at any rate [and all costs] he had managed to avoid controversy." As soon as the charade was over, Nixon instructed Kissinger to issue a directive authorizing the invasion by American forces. No wonder Kissinger comments that "The President's meeting with his senior cabinet officers did not lack a surrealistic quality."

Nevertheless Laird manifested his opposition both directly and indirectly. "He repeated his fear of high casualties; he implied that there had been a terrible misunderstanding about [General] Abrams recommendation...." Messages were sent to Ambassador Bunker and Abrams to insure that there was no misunderstanding that the U.S. field commanders favored simultaneous operations against both the Parrot's Beak and the Fishhook. General Abrams confirmed that both operations were regarded as necessary. "Laird restated his earlier position: He opposed the use of U.S. combat troops in Cambodia...." Unfortunately, Laird did not choose to resign or reveal publicly his opposition to an operation that had such disastrous repercussions.

Earlier, Laird had opposed the renewed bombing of North Vietnam; he did not oppose the initial limited bombing of the Cambodian sanctuaries, although "he did not think it possible to keep the bombing secret, on practical, not on moral, grounds." It is not evident from Kissinger's memoirs whether Laird favored the subsequent all-out bombing of Cambodia, since he was effec-

tively cut out of the chain of command on that decision.

By 1972 Laird's opposition to any lengthening of the war was intensified by the realization that congressional opposition to the war was beginning to focus on the Defense budget. Congressional pressure for a cut-off on military support for the war was becoming heavy. The successful North Vietnamese offensive of that April had cost the U.S. $4-6 billion in reinforcements and ammo, costs that would come up for funding and review in the 1973 budget requests. The folly of the war's prolongation was now being manifested in outright congressional hostility toward the administration. As a former congressman, Laird was acutely sensitive to the disenchantment that had now come to infect the traditionally hawkish Senate and House Armed Services committees. Finally, Laird opposed the Christmas, 1972, bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. It seemed to him that little if anything would be gained by the bombing, and it would once again open up the administration to criticism and charges of duplicity. Kissinger's "peace is at hand" statements had raised public expectations that would be costly to disappoint. The time had come to write finis to the U.S. involvement. Laird was not deceived by Kissinger and Nixon's last-minute machinations into believing that the chances of peace would be improved by yet another bombing campaign.

Why is Laird's record more sane and moderate than that of Kissinger and Nixon? Perhaps the former Wisconsin congressman was just a more levelheaded person or had more of a conscience. Unlike Kissinger, Laird also had a well-defined constituency and an established reputation with a peer group whose respect and support he could count on. His personal ego needs and ambitions were apparently more restrained and tempered than Kissinger's. Finally, Laird was a seasoned politician whose experience in the House had given him a sense of proportion and accountability. Unlike Kissinger, Laird was not deluded by unrealistic geopolitical or academic abstractions. He was not convinced that America's credibility as a superpower would somehow disappear if it did not preserve the independence of South Vietnam. Laird knew a mistake when he saw it. Kissinger says it all when he writes that as "a finely seasoned politician Laird did not believe in fighting losing battles."

19

> There may be no limits to growth, but there are
> limits to waste. There are also alternatives.

# Progress for a Small Planet

BY SUDHIR SEN

Because of Barbara Ward's unflinching effort to uphold the highest values of Western civilization she has, in the eyes of many, become a conscience-keeper of the West. Her anxious call over three decades about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer has echoed widely. Although the call has fallen mostly on deaf ears in key policymaking circles, that detracts neither from its nobility nor from its validity.

Barbara Ward's work, then, rests firmly on moral values. Yet her approach is anything but romantic: Passionate pleas are supported by cold logic and hard facts. Soaring idealism is tempered by a down-to-earth realism. Ethics and economics, in her case at least, are never divorced. They are mutually reinforcing, as indeed they must be if economics as a social science is not to forfeit its raison d'être.

Recurring through her major works are a few basic ideas: In an age of overflowing abundance there is no need for a large segment of humanity to remain trapped in poverty, with about a quarter semistarved and steeped in unimaginable misery. This is intolerably wrong and also shockingly anachronistic, since science and technology have given us all the tools we need to stamp out hunger and poverty from the face of the earth, just as they have enabled us virtually to liquidate deadly diseases such as malaria, cholera, and other mass killers. Moreover, a world one-third super-rich and two-thirds desperately poor is a dangerously unstable place to live in, like regions with deeply faulted geological formations. The search for a stable and peaceful world must begin with attempts to heal this chasm and raise all of mankind above the subsistence level. If the present dichotomy of the world has grim implications, Barbara Ward believes it also has a brighter side. A crippling liability today can be turned into a valuable asset for tomorrow. The economies of the poor nations, once nourished and upgraded, will impart a new vigor to the world economy and, with their expanding trade, will help support the flagging economies of the affluent West.

There is nothing novel or fanciful in this last assumption. In the last few decades, national prosperity

in Europe and America grew enormously as efforts were consciously directed to raising the living standards of the masses of people. It is a commonplace that the New Deal, born in the depth of the Great Depression, laid the foundation for the widespread prosperity the U.S. has experienced since the 1940's. The same principle needs to be extended beyond the frontiers of the "North" to embrace the long-neglected "South." The poor nations have been waiting a long time for a New Deal, one tailored to their circumstances. Prosperity, when shared globally, will be more robust and more sustainable than the present dichotomy.

No other Western economist has grasped these fundamental truths so firmly and advanced them so fervently as Barbara Ward. Hers is a special niche in today's misty world of economic thinking. In recent years she has increasingly articulated another vital truth that had been long forgotten: the fragile character of the earth's ecosystems and its physical resources on which we depend for our survival. The words of Adlai Stevenson, spoken almost on the eve of his death, come to mind:

> We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and I will say the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free....No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

This was the keynote of Barbara Ward's *Spaceship Earth* (1966) and *Only One Earth* (1972); and it has remained the dominant theme of practically all her subsequent writings. Her latest work, *Progress for a Small Planet* (W.W. Norton; xii+305 pp.; $13.95), reflects the same overriding concern: how to handle the limited resources of this small planet—its land, water, minerals, forests, and air—with loving care; how to husband them, especially the nonrenewable treasures like oil, gas, and key minerals, with a spartan sense of thrift; how to tap the sun's unlimited gift of energy; how to produce, with the help of science and technology, the food, fiber, and manufactured goods needed to

Sudhir Sen is author of *A Richer Harvest* (1974), *Reaping the Green Revolution* (1975), and *Turning the Tide* (1978), among other works on the subject of food and development.

20

support the burgeoning human family; and to do all
these things in ways that will not draw an undue draft
on the future, but will preserve and, where possible,
enhance the earth's resources.

Today, progress on this small planet is proceeding in
a dismayingly chaotic fashion. If God created the earth
out of chaos, it seems that mankind is returning it to its
original condition. Barbara Ward offers an explanation
for this perversity. Historically, the periods of collapse
between imperial systems have been the most tumultu-
ous. Was this, after all, the real meaning of the Bud-
dha's "melancholy wheel," she wonders, symbolizing
his concept of life with the "deadly repetition of impe-
rial rise, conquest, decline and fall," rather than the
revolving constellations and returning harvests? She
hastens to add that the present "imperial interregnum"
is without parallel in human history because of the
convergence of several unique factors. Imperialism
itself has been ostentatiously ostracized; the clock can-
not be turned back. The liberated colonies, as was to be
expected, are increasingly wielding their newly won
political independence to dismantle the lopsided eco-
nomic system they inherited from the colonial era; the
struggle for their economic independence, as reflected
in their demand for a new international economic
order, is bound to dominate the world scene for years to
come. Superimposed on this is a runaway population
growth, with the virtual assurance that by the century's
end the total will reach six billion, compared to two
billion in 1930 and three billion in 1960. Meanwhile,
an amazing revolution in transportation and communi-
cation has knit the world more tightly than ever before;
knowledge and ideas travel with incredible speed and,
inevitably, they kindle hopes and aspirations all over
the world.

This postimperial epoch has yet another aspect, more
far-reaching and sinister in its impact: the cold war and,
as its concomitants, intense superpower rivalry and ide-
ological bloc-building. This has vitiated the entire
world climate and fueled a frenetic arms race diverting
huge sums of money, currently estimated at $400 bil-
lion a year, into destructive channels. It has in effect
pushed even the most pressing development work to a
secondary place. It is at least arguable that, but for the
lethal fallout of the cold war, the brighter side of
human nature—its idealism, rationality, and creative
genius—might have prevailed in the tasks of building a
better world. Is it still possible for mankind to end
hunger and poverty, to support the swelling human
family on a reasonable standard of living with the lim-
ited physical resources of the planet, and do so on a
sustainable basis? Or are we about to hit some inexora-
ble limits to growth that would spell stagnation in the
industrial nations and perpetuate mass poverty in the
developing countries? These are the seminal issues Bar-
bara Ward addresses in her latest book with her charac-
teristic genius for simplifying complexities, isolating
causes from symptoms, and mingling economics with
science and technology to promote science-based, re-
source-oriented development.

The central idea of the study is as follows: There are
**no limits to growth**, at least not yet. But there are limits
to **waste**, which are already very real and in some

instances dangerously so. The waste may stem from
abuse, nonuse, or sheer neglect of physical resources.
This is true of both developed and developing coun-
tries, although its causes and the forms it assumes are
often quite different in the two cases.

The limits-to-growth thesis has enjoyed a certain
plausibility largely because of the looming energy cri-
sis. Yet the genesis of this crisis and the remedies it calls
for have been widely misunderstood, largely because it
is a progeny of unsuspected parents. The crisis has been
mothered by what Barbara Ward calls "bone-cheap oil,"
less than two dollars a barrel, gushing out of the Middle
East and fueling a dizzy rate of growth in the industrial
economies for about twenty-five years, thus killing
many promising lines of research for developing alter-
native energy sources, especially research in coal tech-
nology. The crisis has been fathered by a commitment,
both excessive and obsessive, to nuclear power, which,
it was assumed, would open a limitless cornucopia of
low-cost energy in plenty of time to offset any shortfalls
when oil and gas wells began to run dry.

Today we know better. In six years the price of crude
oil has gone up ten or twelvefold; supply is already
precarious and threatens to be even more so in the
coming years, while the price curve shows no sign of
flattening out. Meanwhile, the dream of a nuclear
bonanza has been dashed. It is nowhere near as cheap,
or as safe, as had been assumed. Its future is further
clouded by the unresolved problem of disposing of

Georges Dauphin

nuclear wastes and the multiplying risks of weapons proliferation.

Barbara Ward refuses to join the fashionable ranks of those who lament the passing of the glorious era of cheap oil. On the contrary, she believes the Arabs have unwittingly rendered a valuable service by boosting the crude price now, rather than, say, in twenty years, plunging the complacent industrial nations into a truly calamitous shortage. The quantum leap in price, however troublesome, has helped "wonderfully to concentrate" their minds, has given them time to reflect and sort out their options and to develop new energy sources on an adequate scale.

Such reflection, as the study points out, should lead to four major conclusions. First, the nuclear option has been dangerously overestimated for various reasons—a subconscious desire, after the "atomization" of two large cities, to "redeem" the bomb for peaceful purposes; a sense of triumph and excitement over man's ability to split the atom and control its energy; an honest belief that it opened the door to energy abundance at a minimal cost per kwh; and just because, in the nature of the bureaucratic world, commitment breeds commitment. Whatever the reasons, in the light of the experience already accumulated it is clear that reliance on nuclear power must be downplayed. It may still be an option, especially where alternatives are unavailable, as in Japan and France. But it should be the last and not the first resort.

Second, the energy gap, disquieting as it may appear at first, can be bridged without any real sacrifice of sound growth. The reason for this is paradoxical. There is so much waste of energy in the industrial economies, especially in the United States, that growth can be maintained for years through waste control and management; that is, through conservation. The technologies needed for the purpose are already available, and they can be further refined and supplemented. European experts believe that as much as a third of the energy used in the U.S. could be saved without sacrificing production. This book provides ample data in support of that belief.

Third, the least beneficial use of oil is to burn it merely for its BTUs. It makes poor economic sense, since the same oil can be used as feedstock to turn out such essential (and higher-valued) products as fertilizers and drugs. In other words, the "opportunity cost" of oil as a fuel is far too high. That is what the former shah of Iran had in mind when he stressed off and on that "oil is too noble to burn." He was right in his perception, though unwise in his husbanding of this resource and of the enormous wealth it fetched from the world market.

Fourth, if today's energy gap can be gradually narrowed and then closed through "painless saving" of oil and gas—that is, without sacrificing real growth—the risk of a new gap emerging after a decade or so can be forestalled through timely actions to develop alternative sources of energy such as heavy crude, shale oil, tar sands, and coal, all of which, though nonrenewable, are available in abundance. Then too there is water power, which even in a developed country like the United States still offers substantial scope, and nonconvention-

al renewable sources such as solar power, geothermal, waste heat, firewood, wind, plant and animal wastes, and alcohol. Together these can make a significant impact. For most of them the technologies are already in place.

The twenty years of hectic economic boom propelled by cheap Arab oil brought in its wake an explosion of consumption along with extravagant waste and wasteful habits. The mindless march of a "throwaway" civilization could not continue indefinitely. Industrial growth was bound to run up against the built-in constraints of a small planet, and it did so with a sudden jolt in 1973, when the oil price quadrupled overnight. Now the recycling revolution is catching on; its benefits to industrial societies have been demonstrated by countless examples, and new technologies are being developed to aid the process. It will surely continue to gain momentum.

## A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

As we turn to the Third World, we are confronted with a far more formidable set of problems: hunger, poverty, soaring population, overcrowding of cities, denuding of forests, which aggravates erosion and floods, the pellmell rush into modern industrialization, which spreads pollution and damages the environment. The tasks, intimidating in themselves, have been greatly complicated by confused priorities, faulty planning, hasty commitments, and glaring omissions. This tragedy of errors reflects a combined failure of the developing countries and of the external expertise they have been liberally supplied with under the various aid programs.

"Imitation is suicide," said Emerson. These three words should have been emblazoned across the Third World as it belatedly started on the long march to the modern scientific age. The last thing they could afford to do was to imitate the Western pattern of progress, far less the furious pace of industrial growth that characterized its postwar phase. The reasons for this should have been obvious. Their problems are radically different, and so also are their physical endowments and their opportunities. England began its industrial revolution two hundred years ago with coal and iron. The developing countries, on the other hand, must begin their economic transformation with land and water coupled with sunpower and manpower—that is, with the agricultural industry—because that is where, under nature's scheme of things, their comparative advantages are overwhelmingly concentrated.

But they can, as late-comers, enjoy two unique advantages. They have access to a vast pool of scientific knowledge and technology, and they can benefit enormously from the experience of the West. As Barbara Ward rightly points out, if history has denied them a "pioneer's" role for two hundred years, as a compensation it now offers them the "follower's" advantages—they can avoid many of the pitfalls and costly errors the West has made.

The hunger-poverty-population problem has escalated dangerously for three decades while we have laboriously tinkered with development problems. By far the best, if not the only, hope of the developing countries

22

(barring of course oil-rich desert lands) lies in capitaliz-
ing on the spectacular productivity of tropical agricul-
ture as fast as possible. But as I have explained else-
where (see *Worldview*, October, 1978, and June, 1979),
they can shift to science-based, high-productivity mod-
ern agriculture only when they do two things: first,
abolish the feudal, or semifeudal, system dominated by
absentee landlords and crowded with tenants-at-will
and sharecroppers-at-will, giving land to the actual till-
ers and turning them into owner-cultivators to the max-
imum possible extent; second, end the physical isola-
tion of tiny villages by linking them to readily accessi-
ble market towns with all-weather roads. These are
inescapable imperatives. Once they are fully satisfied,
and farmers are freed from their double bondage, feudal
and spatial, the stage will be set for a grassroots upheav-
al that will propel traditional agriculture irresistibly
toward the modern age.

In many parts of the world farming must become essentially a kind of gardening. Output and income can be substantially stretched when they are combined with cattle, poultry, and pond fishery, which can go a long way to meet the crippling shortage of protein foods. Those who worry about the tiny size of holdings in Asia should consider the productivity of farms in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, as well as the private plots in China and Soviet Russia. If small is ever beauti- ful, it should above all be a small, family-owned tropi- cal farm, intensively cultivated for mixed crops and aimed at maximum production, income, and jobs per acre.

Barbara Ward, unlike most Western economists and their Third World counterparts, understands these facts. She understands that developing countries can escape from the bondage of poverty using agriculture as the "lead factor," provided they carry out "land-to-the-tiller" programs to ensure intensive cultivation of farm- lands with genetically improved seeds and other essen- tial inputs. Only light mechanization is needed to raise productivity without displacing labor. Agriculture will then throw up surpluses whose multiplier effects will spill over in many directions. They will create a solid base for rural industries, expand the market for manu- factured goods, and help counteract the rural "push factors" that are now responsible for the heavy exodus of people to the overcrowded cities. As an added bonus, a rising living standard will dampen the population growth, especially among the rural poor, who tradition- ally have the highest fertility rates.

Non-oil-poor nations can also meet their basic energy needs by turning to the sun. The possibilities are many: quick-growing plants and trees, including "fuel trees," along with reforestation of wastelands and better man- agement of forests; crop wastes and dung turned into "biogas" (mostly methone) in small low-cost plants, supplying gas for fuel and organic manure for the fields; and ethyl alcohol derived from sugarcane and cassava, as in Brazil, which has launched a national program to "grow its own fuel." These are all within easy reach of most developing countries. Besides, solar energy can be tapped directly to serve many essential needs. For example, the use of solar-powered water pumps, water desalinization units, air-heating units in

crop-drying sheds, water-heating units in workshops
and health care centers, and even small refrigeration
units are coming into vogue in some countries. Not too
far down the road is the prospect of photovoltaic cells.

THE TWENTY-YEAR PLAN

This is the context of Barbara Ward's overriding con-
cern, her *cri de coeur*. Can the West repeat the vision
and generosity that marked the Marshall Plan, which
paid off so handsomely for all concerned? Can it—
wallowing in "fat-dripping prosperity" and investing
every year some $200 billion for perfecting and stock-
piling the means of destruction—divert just 1 per cent
of its combined GNP, say, for twenty years, to develop
the Third World? Such an act will be more than twice
blessed. It will rescue two-thirds of humanity from the
grip of dehumanizing poverty; it will create vast new
markets and save the rich nations from the stubborn
stagflation they are now saddled with; it will help save
the planet—and its fragile biosphere and ecosystems—
from the injuries that are being recklessly inflicted on
it at countless points through both overdevelopment
and chronic underdevelopment; it will help steer man's
mind away from today's arms race toward the nobler
challenges of building a better world; and it will bring
the dream of a stable, peaceful, and harmonious world
community closer to our reach.

Last August, on the occasion of the 16th World Con-
ference of the Society for International Development,
held in Sri Lanka, Barbara Ward, as chairman of SID,
made an impassioned appeal for such a twenty-year
food, forest, energy, and resource plan. On the eve of
the 1980's, she declared, "The world economy is work-
ing badly, indeed dangerously, for practically every
group of nations." She offered this recipe for curing
inflation while ensuring steady growth in the industri-
al economies. "If you deal with inflation simply by
cutting demand, you hurt the poor most—the unem-
ployed in the North, the marginal men and women in
the South. We must fight inflation by the opposite
route—a vast increase in resources, above all the renew-
able resources of harvests and forests and water power
and solar energy and the incredible plant fertility—the
biomass—of the tropical belt." Productive capacity har-
nessed to this expansion is the only way to ensure non-
inflationary economic growth in the North.

This *cri de coeur* is also a voice of reason. There are
signs that the West, driven by energy crisis, stagflation,
and the restive mood of the developing nations, is stum-
bling toward a sounder global economic policy. The
work of Barbara Ward has already helped us to stumble
in some of the right directions and, if heeded, can turn
our stumbling into a measured pace toward a more
humane global future. WV

23

Human rights, prosperity, and international business

# The Improbable Alliance

BY J. FREDERICK TRUITT

The strident first-round offensive in the Carter administration's human rights crusade is over. In retrospect the first phase of the human rights movement had a noble purpose, yet failed to capture and hold the high ground of national policy and public support. It failed as national policy because it did not comprehend the fundamental relationship between human rights, prosperity, international trade, and investment. Public support declined because asymmetric, therefore hypocritical, publicity of human rights violations concentrated on minor blemishes on the record of U.S. business abroad while ignoring more terrible disfigurements of human rights. The current lull in the once billowing media coverage of international human rights provides a good opportunity to examine the most important—and most overlooked—connections between human rights, multinational corporations (MNCs), direct private foreign investment (DPFI), and foreign trade.

One starts with a polite question: Why is the state of the art of explaining the connections between MNC, DPFI, and human rights so relatively underdeveloped? Or less politely: Why do so many corporate statements on the topic of international human rights look so pale and squirmy, sounding at best lame and defensive, at worst downright soulless and mercenary?

The answer is deeply lodged in the fact that most MNC managements really had not given the topic of international human rights a lot of thought until forced to it by organizations as diverse as American Friends Service Committee, Resist, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, and the Institute for Sport and Social Analysis. Not much thought was given the topic because most U.S. international business is simply not in places that violate human rights, and most U.S. business abroad has quite sensibly followed the age-old advice to stay in the business of business. Wherever possible, business has stayed out of activities that are primarily political in nature. That is, the great majority of U.S. MNC managers put overwhelming emphasis on their economic activity in host countries that did not and do not violate human rights. MNCs are concerned about and involved in politics only to the extent necessary to protect and enhance their economic involvement.

First consider the proposition that most multination-

al business is not located where most human rights are most frequently and severely violated. A quick look at the yearly Freedom House surveys of political and civil rights around the world—directed by Raymond D. Gastil and published in the January-February number of Freedom at Issue—reveals two basic patterns of human rights violations. First, there is the systematic deprivation inherent in the political Communist states. Under

FIGURE A

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="3">Patterns of Human Rights Violations</th><th colspan="3">U.S. Business Involvement</th></tr><tr><th>Share of U.S. Foreign Trade</th><th>Share of U.S. DPFI</th><th>Share of New Capital Expenditures by Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates of U.S. Companies</th></tr><tr><th>1977</th><th>1977</th><th>1978</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Deprivation inherent in political system<br>USSR & other Communist states</td><td>1%</td><td>0%</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>Republic of South Africa</td><td>1</td><td></td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Ad hoc violations (not inherent in the political system)<br>All Third World states</td><td>46</td><td>23</td><td>21</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: IMF, *Direction of Trade, Survey of Current Business*.

systematic deprivation we can also include the Republican of South Africa, although its legalized and institutionalized racial separation and discrimination might put it in a class by itself.* The second pattern is the ad hoc deprivation of human rights in various Third World, less-developed countries (LDCs).

*Yet in spite of all the noise about South Africa, the 1978 Freedom House survey of South Africa categorized that country as *partly free*.

J. Frederick Truitt is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Seattle.

24

There is very little U.S. trade and even less U.S. direct private investment in countries where human rights deprivation is inherently imbedded in the system. In 1977 South Africa and all Communist states together accounted for only 2 per cent of U.S. foreign trade and 1 per cent of U.S. DPFI. The trade with all Third World states, whatever their record on human rights (and, of course, many do not violate them), accounts for less than half of all U.S. trade, while Third World states were host to about a quarter of U.S. DPFI (see Figure A). As we shall see in a moment, a huge chunk of this trade is directly related to one single commodity—petroleum.

Since 1972 Freedom House has been scoring nations on a scale of 1 to 7 for both "political" (participation in the determination of who rules by what law) and "civil" (rights of the individual against the state, such as free expression, fair trial, and so forth) rights. Nations receiving a score of 1 or 2 are "free," 3, 4, or 5 are "partly free," and 6 or 7 are "not free." How do the direction of U.S. trade and the location of U.S. DPFI measure up when viewed through the criterion of degree of political freedom in our international business partners?

Figure B suggests that two-thirds of our trade is with "free" states, while Figure C suggests that by far the greatest share of U.S. DPFI is in free states and only 4 per cent is in "not free" states.

Lurking beneath the surface of Figures B and C is a disturbing revelation. Of the $40 billion of U.S. trade with nations that average below 5½ on scales of political and civil rights, trade with oil-exporting countries accounts for a large and growing share. In 1972, 15 per cent of our trade with "not free" states was carried out with oil-exporting countries. By 1977 that share had risen to almost 70 per cent. Thus it is quite clear that the human rights protest movement might have taken aim at the wrong target. Because trade—especially trade with oil exporters—makes as much sense as a connecting link in the protest, one might wonder why the splinter in the investment eye takes priority over the timber in the trade eye. In fact, the human rights quotient of U.S. trade relations actually has deteriorated slightly since 1972, when only 11 per cent of trade was with "not free" states, while the human rights quotient of U.S. investment relations has improved rather dramatically since 1972, when 8 per cent of investment

was located in "not free" states. In 1977 only 4 per cent of U.S. DPFI was located in "not free" states, but 14 per cent of our trade was with "not free" states.*

## A PAINFUL LESSON

There is a painful lesson in this data for international human rights advocates, whether they be in the Carter administration, on a picket line at a university regents meeting, or in a corporate board room. If commitment to human rights is to be believable, it must be persistent and across the board, it must be principled and wise and ready for "long distance" action. Otherwise it is not a commitment to human rights but, rather, a commitment to something else. That something else—the oust-

### FIGURE C

Pattern of U.S. DPFI: Share of Investment Located in States That Deprive Human Rights 1977

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Value<br>$ bn</th><th>Share</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>112.6</td><td>76%</td></tr><tr><td>Part Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>23.6</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Not Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>5.6</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>International and Unallocated</td><td>7.0</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>148.8</td><td>100</td></tr></tbody></table>

*From Freedom House survey for 1977.

Source: Survey of Current Business.

of a fascist dictator in country A, overthrow of the mad military tyrant in country B, restoration of legitimate property rights in country C, provision of an adequate and nutritious diet in country D—may be a good and noble cause, but it is not truly the cause of human rights. It is commitment to something else in human rights clothing. Dedication to human rights must be persistent and impartial because, if we condemn political prisoners in Cuba while excusing them in Brazil, or deplore torture in South Africa and Chile while ignor-

*It should be added that this improved human rights quotient was given a substantial boost by widespread nationalizations in the oil industry since 1972, thus reducing substantially U.S. ownership in countries that have a tendency to violate human rights.

### FIGURE B

Pattern of U.S. Foreign Trade: Share of Trade Done With States That Deprive Human Rights

<table><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">1972</th><th colspan="4">1977</th></tr><tr><th>Exports to<br>$ bn</th><th>Imports from<br>$ bn</th><th>Exports plus<br>Imports</th><th>Share of<br>Total<br>Trade</th><th>Exports to<br>$ bn</th><th>Imports from<br>$ bn</th><th>Exports plus<br>Imports</th><th>Share of<br>Total<br>Trade</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>40</td><td>44</td><td>84</td><td>79%</td><td>82</td><td>95</td><td>177</td><td>64%</td></tr><tr><td>Part Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>3</td><td>7</td><td>10</td><td>10</td><td>22</td><td>38</td><td>60</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>Not Free<sup>a</sup></td><td>7</td><td>5</td><td>12</td><td>11</td><td>16</td><td>24</td><td>40</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>50</td><td>56</td><td>106</td><td>100</td><td>120</td><td>157</td><td>277</td><td>100</td></tr></tbody></table>

*From Freedom House surveys for 1972 and 1977, respectively.

Source: Freedom at Issue, IMF, Direction of Trade, Statistical Abstract of the U.S.

25

FIGURE D

<table><thead><tr><th colspan="3">TRADE</th></tr><tr><th></th><th></th><th>1972</th><th>1977</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1. U.S. foreign trade with NOT FREE states ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>12.1</td><td>40.3</td></tr><tr><td>2. Trade with NOT FREE states that are oil exporters ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>1.8</td><td>27.6</td></tr><tr><td>3. Trade with NOT FREE states that are under Communist rule ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>1.2</td><td>3.4</td></tr><tr><td>4. Trade with oil exporters as share of U.S. trade with NOT FREE states (row 2 ÷ row 1)</td><td></td><td>15%</td><td>69%</td></tr><tr><td>5. Trade with Communist states as share of U.S. trade with NOT FREE states (row 3 ÷ row 1)</td><td></td><td>10%</td><td>8%</td></tr><tr><th colspan="3">INVESTMENT</th></tr><tr><td>6. U.S. direct private foreign investment position in NOT FREE states ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>7.6</td><td>5.6</td></tr><tr><td>7. Investment in NOT FREE states that are oil exporters ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>2.8</td><td>(2.3)<sup>a</sup></td></tr><tr><td>8. Investment in NOT FREE states that are under Communist rule ($ bn)</td><td></td><td>—<sup>b</sup></td><td>—<sup>b</sup></td></tr><tr><td>9. Investment in oil exporters as share of U.S. investment in NOT FREE states (row 7 ÷ row 6)</td><td></td><td>37%</td><td>—<sup>a</sup></td></tr><tr><td>10. Investment in Communist states as share of U.S. investment in NOT FREE states (row 8 ÷ row 6)</td><td></td><td>—<sup>b</sup></td><td>—<sup>b</sup></td></tr></tbody></table>

<sup>a</sup> Because of the widespread nationalization of foreign ownership in the petroleum industry since 1972, the net U.S. direct investment abroad in NOT FREE states that are oil producers is actually negative.

<sup>b</sup> Except for a small amount in Yugoslavia, no U.S. investment in Commerce Department data is allocated to Communist states.

Source: IMF, *Direction of Trade, Statistical Abstract of the U.S. and U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis*.

FIGURE E

Ranking Nations by Political Rights and GNP Per Capita

<table><thead><tr><th colspan="2">Free</th><th colspan="2">Part Free</th><th colspan="2">Not Free</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>5</td><td>6</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>AUSTRALIA</td><td>Colombia</td><td>El Salvador</td><td>Bhutan</td><td>China (ROC)</td><td>Algeria</td><td>Afghanistan</td></tr><tr><td>AUSTRIA</td><td>FINLAND</td><td>Guyana</td><td>Brazil</td><td>Egypt</td><td>Argentina</td><td>Albania</td></tr><tr><td>BELGIUM</td><td>GREECE</td><td>Malaysia</td><td>Dominican Republic</td><td>Indonesia</td><td>BAHRAIN</td><td>Angola</td></tr><tr><td>CANADA</td><td>India</td><td></td><td></td><td>Kenya</td><td>Bangladesh</td><td>Benin</td></tr><tr><td>Costa Rica</td><td>ISRAEL</td><td></td><td>Guatemala</td><td>Korea (S)</td><td>Bolivia</td><td>BULGARIA</td></tr><tr><td>DENMARK</td><td>ITALY</td><td></td><td>Lebanon</td><td>Lesotho</td><td>Cameroon</td><td>Burma</td></tr><tr><td>FRANCE</td><td>Jamaica</td><td></td><td>Mexico</td><td>Madagascar</td><td>China (PRC)</td><td>Burundi</td></tr><tr><td>GERMANY (W)</td><td>JAPAN</td><td></td><td>Morocco</td><td>Nicaragua</td><td>Ecuador</td><td>Central African Republic</td></tr><tr><td>ICELAND</td><td>Papua New Guinea</td><td></td><td></td><td>Nigeria</td><td>GABON</td><td>Empire</td></tr><tr><td>IRELAND</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Paraguay</td><td>Ghana</td><td>Chad</td></tr><tr><td>LUXEMBOURG</td><td>Portugal</td><td></td><td></td><td>Philippines</td><td>Guinea-Bissau</td><td>Chile</td></tr><tr><td>NETHERLANDS</td><td>SPAIN</td><td></td><td></td><td>Qatar</td><td>Honduras</td><td>Congo Republic</td></tr><tr><td>NEW ZEALAND</td><td>Sri Lanka</td><td></td><td></td><td>Senegal</td><td>HUNGARY</td><td>Cuba</td></tr><tr><td>NORWAY</td><td>TRINDAD &amp; TOBAGO</td><td></td><td></td><td>Sierra Leone</td><td>IRAN</td><td>CZECHO-SLOVAKIA</td></tr><tr><td>SWEDEN</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>SINGAPORE</td><td>Ivory Coast</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>SWITZERLAND</td><td>Turkey</td><td></td><td></td><td>South Africa</td><td>Jordan</td><td>Equatorial Guinea</td></tr><tr><td>UNITED KINGDOM</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Syria</td><td>KUWAIT</td><td>Ethiopia</td></tr><tr><td>UNITED STATES</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>UAE</td><td>Liberia</td><td>GERMANY (E)</td></tr><tr><td>VENEZUELA</td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Upper Volta</td><td>Mauritania</td><td>Guinea</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Zambia</td><td>Nepal</td><td>Haiti</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>OMAN</td><td>Iraq</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Pakistan</td><td>Kampuchea</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Panama</td><td>Korea (N)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Peru</td><td>Laos</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>POLAND</td><td>LIBYA</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Rhodesia</td><td>Malawi</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>SAUDI ARABIA</td><td>Mali</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Sudan</td><td>Mongolia</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Tanzania</td><td>Mozambique</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Thailand</td><td>Niger</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Transkei</td><td>Rumania</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Tunisia</td><td>Rwanda</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Uruguay</td><td>Somalia</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Yemen (N)</td><td>Togo</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Yugoslavia</td><td>Uganda</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>USSR</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Vietnam</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Yemen (S)</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td>Zaire</td></tr></tbody></table>

Source: *Freedom at Issue and IBRD, World Bank Atlas*.

26

ing it in the USSR and Cambodia, our lopsided advocacy lacks credibility and in the end is not credible or effective in the cause of human rights. We must also be principled and wise because absolute consistency is very difficult to achieve in a complex world, where a blind, across-the-board advocacy could help replace a bad regime with a horrible regime (the formulation is Robert Pickus's, in his remarks at the October, 1978, International Human Rights Conference in Seattle).

It is sobering to realize that while the loudest decibels of human rights protest in the U.S. have centered on South Africa, Chile, South Korea, and the Philippines—often singling out the role of U.S. corporate and financial involvement in these countries—two much more comprehensive and systematic blows for human rights could be struck by focusing on oil and trade with Communist nations.

Fully 70 per cent of our trade with "not free" states is with oil-exporting countries, which do not tend to have very good records on human rights. In his book *The Story of Sugar* W.R.K. Akroyd writes that eighteenth and nineteenth-century European appetites for slave-cultivated cane sugar brought to the New World human suffering incomparable in the whole gloomy history of mankind. Will human rights bibliographers in the twenty-first century judge our dependence on the automobile and our inability to bridle our consumption of energy as aid and abetment of a vast and tragic human rights deprivation? The next condemnation of IBM in South Africa (a company with an excellent record of progress on human rights in a difficult environment) might stir at least the counterproposition, "Yes, but while we're at it, for symmetry's sake, let's also tell Algeria, Ecuador, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Saudi Arabia to keep their bloody oil. We'll do without that $30 billion per year trade, build a nuclear reactor in every fault-free valley, walk, take the bus more often, and turn our thermostats down to forty-five degrees Farenheit."

Trade with Communist countries, small but growing rapidly, seems to excite little concern among traditional human rights advocates. Yet all Communist states—1.3 billion people—are "not free." The next condemnation of bank loans to Argentina or Indonesia might for consistency's sake carry an addendum on financing trade with the USSR and the People's Republic of China, two countries with a fuller and longer record of human rights abuses than Argentina and Indonesia.

The "which" and "what" of human rights remain immensely complex and controversial. The ultimate "why" of human rights activity may need a point of transcendent accountability that is most securely grounded, not in the Trade Reform Act of 1973, or even in the Bill of Rights or Declaration of Independence, but in the religious belief of the American people (see Richard John Neuhaus's "What We Mean by Human Rights and Why," *Christian Century*, December 22, 1978).

## A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP?

A thought-provoking experiment is to superimpose an income per capita map on the Freedom House survey. Such a superimposition sheds helpful light on the

broader and underlying connections in the international human rights, MNC, and DPFI forest. Figure E is based on the Freedom House survey conducted in 1977 and appearing in the January-February, 1978, issue of *Freedom at Issue* and the World Bank's 1977 *Atlas of Population, Per Capita Product and Growth Rates* for 1976, the most recent available at the time of writing.

First, in order to simplify the table, countries with a population of less than a million have been eliminated. Second, "rich" countries with a GNP per capita of more than $2,000 (i.e., 25 per cent of U.S. GNP per capita) have been listed in block letters. In a world in which a billion people have a GNP per capita of less than $200, $2,000 per capita is rich.

After studying Figure E, one is tempted to conclude, at least tentatively, that by and large:

1. Free countries are rich;

2. Rich countries (with the exception of certain sparsely populated freaks of nature that have been generrously endowed with hydrocarbon deposits) are free;

3. Communist countries are not particularly rich (the weighted average GNP per capita in all Communist states is only $1,115, even in the USSR and other European Communist states the weighted average GNP per capita is less than $2,800) and never free.

These observations should not be misinterpreted as a call to a simple-minded or dogmatic assertion that "you never had it so good and human rights will take care of themselves." As an academic, I have a vested career interest in keeping problems complicated and issues unresolved. It would be foolish to conclude simply that freedom causes wealth (what about India?) or that wealth causes freedom (what about Singapore and the OPEC countries?). Every important human rights violation is an affront to the American understanding of what it means to be human and how men and women should treat each other. Each offending country's pattern of human rights deprivation has its own complex history, problems, causes, and solutions. But as we enter the next phase of the continuing struggle for human rights, we should not lose sight of the symbiotic relationship between wealth and political and civil rights. We should not forget the fundamentally positive relationship between prosperity and freedom. ■WV■

27

Books

HOW NATIONS BEHAVE: LAW AND FOREIGN POLICY, 2ND ED.

by Louis Henkin

(Columbia University Press/Council on Foreign Relations; xv + 400 pp.; $25.00/7.00)

THE QUEST FOR SELF-DETERMINATION

by Dov Ronen

(Yale University Press; xiv + 144 pp.; $15.00)

William V. O'Brien

Louis Henkin and Dov Ronen are both comparing prescriptions about how nations and other international actors ought to behave with how they actually do behave. Henkin's "ought" is that of the dedicated international lawyer. He contends that international law not only ought to be observed but that it is an important, integral component of the foreign policy processes of nations. Henkin undertakes to prove that this is the case, mainly with respect to U.S. practice, in a second and greatly improved edition of *How Nations Behave*.

Henkin knows that traditional, Western-grounded international law is challenged by the East-West ideological

conflict and by the increasing impact of Third World states, which have overwhelming voting majorities in international conferences and organizations. He concedes the difficulties of maintaining and expanding the gains of international law made by the developed Western nations, but nonetheless concludes that this body of law is in fact surviving and developing. He argues that this is true in terms of international behavior, even with respect to the most difficult and political of all subjects, the law governing recourse to armed force (which I shall refer to by the traditional designation, the *jus ad bellum*).

Henkin claims that the essence of the modern *jus ad bellum*, the renunciation of the threat or use of force embodied in Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, has been vindicated by post-World War II history. This period has not been characterized by international, that is interstate, war. To be sure, mixed international-international conflict has abounded, but Henkin believes that the prevention of the interstate conflict is a significant achievement. He is realistic enough to acknowledge a number of reasons for this decline in international conflict, of which fear of nuclear escalation is obviously foremost, but he insists that respect for the *jus ad bellum* regime of the U.N. Charter is an impressive factor in abstention from war.

One is left with doubts. In the first place, if one subtracts from the total occasions of potential war all instances in which war was avoided because of nuclear deterrence and then goes further and subtracts all cases in which the safer, less provocative (but nonetheless deadly and illegal) means of indirect aggression camouflaged by internal war were carried out under the nuclear umbrella, the remaining sample of potential wars prevented by respect for international law may be modest. Second, in a book that holds out the prospect of examining state behavior, it is lamentable that a more serious attempt is not made to illustrate cases in which war, seriously contemplated, was eschewed.

Henkin does, in fact, attempt to show the restraining influence of international law in three brief studies of the use of force: the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. He addresses the question of the effect of legal restraints by arguing that a state could respect but nevertheless decide to override these restraints in virtue of a calculus of probable benefits and costs. Thus, Henkin claims that the British and French calculated poorly in 1956 but were called back to sanity and respect for the law by the combined influences of a hostile Soviet Union and a law-abiding law-enforcing ally, the United States. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, respect for the law resulted in the least use of force contemplated. In the Vietnam war, Henkin is heartened by the seriousness of U.S. legal arguments.

Still, these analyses are highly limited and impressionistic. One has no sense of the totality of situations in

which the United States, since it is the
principal source of examples, resisted
the temptation to use the military
instrument in substantial measure out
of respect for the *jus ad bellum*. There
remain, of course, all of the other actors
in the international system. Henkin
remarks on the paucity of old-fashioned
international wars since 1945 (like
those between India and Pakistan and
Israel and the Arab states), but he does
not indicate the identity or magnitude
of other such potential wars that were
prevented (presciencing from those de-
terred by fear of nuclear escalation or
substituted for by indirect aggression
through internal wars).

Henkin's claims for the *jus ad bellum*
may be substantially valid. His prob-
lem is that having persisted in using
the provocative title "How Nations Be-
have" (rather than "How Nations
Ought to Behave"), he lays himself
open to expectations of empirical evi-
dence that he does not produce. Other
parts of the book are devoted to the
international law of peace: internation-
al economic law, the law of the sea, and
human rights. Here Henkin surveys
trends but does not seriously advance
the effort of the *jus ad bellum* sections
to prove that the law is a critical deter-
minant of the way nations behave. In
brief, Henkin reveals more of himself,
as a compassionate human being and
dedicated international lawyer, than he
does of nations and statesmen in his
effort to relate the "ought" of interna-
tional law to the reality of international
behavior.

Dov Ronen, in *The Quest for Self-Determination*, is more successful than Henkin in relating an analysis of international behavior to a normative "ought." It is widely, near universally, assumed that the "self" in the self-determination that is normatively en joined and frequently invoked is a corporate group self, a "nation," a "people," or a "minority." Ronen asserts, however, that the drive for self-determination, first realized in the French Revolution, is based on the aspirations of the individual human being to be free from alien rule. This drive, says Ronen, is directed to a particular identification with an "aggregate group" perceived by the individual as an "us" contrasted with an alien "they" group that stands as an obstacle to the individual's quest for freedom and self-fulfillment.

Ronen argues that the individual
drive for self-determination has been

activated by varying situations and op-
portunities resulting in five different
manifestations at differing times and
places: nineteenth-century European
nationalism, Marxist class self-determi-
nation, Wilsonian self-determination
for minorities, contemporary African
and Asian decolonization, and contem-
porary ethnonationalism or subnation-
alism (instances of the last are Basques,
Scots, Biafrans, Québécois, Bengalis,
and Palestinians). He argues forcibly
and with serious evidence that the "ag-
gregate groups" involved in the battles
for self-determination are not "natural"
or "objective" or "perpetual" selves.
They are the appropriate vehicles for

activating the self-determination drives
of human beings perceiving themselves
to be in a we-they situation.

Ronen observes that virtually all
thinking about international relations
has rested on the assumption that the
present international system of sover-
eign states will continue indefinitely.
Accordingly, prescriptive speculation
has centered on nation-building, mod-
ernization, and development as the in-
dicated lines of improvement for the
units within the system, and on inte-
gration and transnational union as the
self-evident norm for the future. From
Ronen's very different perspective, the
status quo (particularly its central fea-

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ture, the sovereign nation-state) is challenged by disintegrative forces of self-determination that may bring us a world with independent identities such as Quebec or Scotland or a Palestinian state. But this is not incompatible with the integration that may link such ethnonationalist entities, as well as more traditional states, with larger economic and normative combinations as indicated by integrationist trends.

Ronen's analysis emphasizes "is" over "ought." He contends that the international system and its component elements can best be explained by his exposition of the nature and operation of self-determination. One is left uncertain as to how committed he is to the normative "oughtness" of his concept. He appears to be very committed. Ronen's next task is to elaborate the origins and nature of the right of individual self-determination and the right to pursue it through many aggregate groups, as balanced against whatever community or corporate rights such groups may rightly claim.

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"The great virtue and service of Sidra Ezrahi's *By Words Alone*

is that more than any other book I know on this literature, it helps us to see the terrible events that formed it. Although her book is essentially a literary history, and displays the kind of quiet judgment that literary history requires, Mrs. Ezrahi makes us see the Holocaust itself as inevitably more real, urgent, terrible, than the writing that came out of it. That is as it should be. In the history of Jewish literature generally, the creation comes before the word and transcends it... To be a Jew is to know that words strive after the reality but can never adequately capture the human situation."

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BY WORDS
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*The Holocaust in Literature*
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi

$15.00 University of Chicago Press

LITERATURE AGAINST ITSELF:
LITERARY IDEAS IN MODERN
SOCIETY

by Gerald Graff

(University of Chicago Press, 260 pp.;
$15.00)

Martha Bayles

...Then a ragged urchin stepped out from the crowd and said in a clear voice: "Look, look. The Emperor's not wearing any clothes."

To those of us who have been hanging on the corner watching the latest in advanced fiction and literary criticism parade by, Gerald Graff is that one clear, welcome voice. Unlike the urchin who just points out the obvious, Graff sets himself the further task of unraveling the whole hoax, warp and woof. *Literature Against Itself* explains and refutes an impressive number of literary ideas in an impressively short time, showing that in most cases a literary idea is a perfectly good idea from somewhere else, down on its luck because the literary intellectuals have got hold of it, usually by the throat.

From structural linguistics, for instance, the idea that the forms and sounds of words bear no necessary relation to their referents has fallen into

the hands of such structuralist critics as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Geofrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller, who stretch it to absurdity. Graff writes:

"From the proposition, unexceptional in itself, that no signifier can mean anything apart from the code or sign system which gives it significance, one infers the conclusion that no signifier can refer to a nonlinguistic reality—that, as Perry Meisel puts it, 'all language is finally groundless.' There is, then, no such thing as a 'real' object outside language, no 'nature' or 'real life' outside the literary text, no real text behind the critical interpretation, and no real persons or institutions behind the multiplicity of messages human beings produce. Everything is swallowed up in an infinite regress of textuality."

From the philosophy of science, the idea that truth is a function of intellectual "paradigms" that may or may not correspond with the ultimate nature of reality gets carried to the extreme of saying reality doesn't exist, and all our statements about it are equally "fictive structures," "shadowy manifestations of the ego." And from fiction itself, the fictive status of characters and plot elements gets extended first to theme and

content, then to the readers and writers of fiction, and finally to the world. In the words of one critic. "To create fiction is, in fact, a way to abolish reality, and especially to abolish the notion that reality is truth."

Graff is patient with all this, bringing in Wittgenstein's observation that "the act of doubting can only take place within a system of beliefs, that programmatic skepticism itself takes for granted that many things are known and established." Over and over Graff reveals how these critics beg the question, argue a priori, and torture ideas most outlandishly. We wonder why he bothers, surely such illogic will eventually collapse under its own weight. But Graff is doing more than refuting certain recklessly trendy ideas. He is trying to place them in a broad historical and social context.

Ever since the Romantics, he tells us, literature has retreated before the advance of science and technology. Structural linguistics is not the first scientific discipline to invade literature's territory, nor the first to be assisted in the task by literary minds all too eager to use its insights to further diminish their own truth-claims. They have done this, Graff argues, because, like the emperor's subjects, they wished to appear virtuous. In an effort to keep from being contaminated by bourgeois rationalism, the Romantics and the great modernists held up art as a substitute for lost religion. But for the same reason religion was lost, art was lost; because it was defined as having no authority to find or speak the truth. They had already conceded that authority to science. Then came the New Critics and today's postmodernists, each in different ways reinforcing "the division of labor which made 'imagination' the province of the artist and abstract thought, logic, and common sense the monopoly of other people."

All this in the name of virtue. After all, who would want to defend literature, or claim that it has anything to do with reality, if doing so entailed defending reality? Who would want to deny that reality rots, especially social reality? Who would want to defend it, after all it's done to us? Not even Graff dares stray this far from the ranks of virtue. His final point places him right back in the literary-intellectual crowd, turning up his nose with the best of them at what he calls "the regimentation and determinism of a mechanical

society...mass man's drugged acceptance of his status as a manipulable object."

It is unfortunate that, after arguing so lucidly that literature must not lose touch with social reality, Graff should offer a version of that reality that is not rooted in lived experience but patched together from sociological smatterings. Like so many ideas before them, the lonely crowd, the end of ideology, the mass society, the cultural contradictions of capitalism, and others are appropriated and exaggerated by Graff exactly as though he were just another literary intellectual spinning out an-

other literary theory. He ends up justifying today's antirealist fiction on the grounds that it portrays the utter unreality of our crass consumer society—a justification as hopelessly academic in its own way as those of the worst deconstructionists. We are disappointed, because the rest of *Literature Against Itself* has led us to expect a clearer, more promising conclusion: that there are still human beings living on this planet, and that literature must concern itself with them or disappear.

Martha Bayles, a novelist, teaches writing at Harvard.

## Now in paperback

> "A masterful analysis of the problem of international order in contemporary society and the feasibility of alternative models."

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THE ANARCHICAL SOCIETY by Hedley Bull

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Ford boosts Kissinger

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - Former president Gerald R. Ford says Henry A. Kissinger could be a valuable asset in a Reagan administration as secretary of state.

“I think Henry could make a significant contribution to any Republican president, including Gov. Reagan,” Ford said in an interview here Sunday night.

Besides boosting his former secretary of state, Ford had these other political observations:

-Sen. Edward M. Kennedy has an opportunity to defeat President Carter for the Democratic nomination because “of the seriously deteriorating economic conditions around the country.”

-Rep. John B. Anderson, R-Ill., has an outside chance of being elected president as an independent, but the main thrust of his candidacy probably would be to throw the election into the House of Representatives. Ford said it is unlikely that either the Democratic or Republican candidate would get a majority of the electoral vote with Anderson in the race.

***** MAY 19 1980