Toward a New Foreign Policy

Arthur Miller

o ur policy of d6tente is based on the existence of an imperfect world. "The United States cannot lecture

other governments on how to treat their citizens. Let us do business, as much as we can and wherever we can, and at the same time see to our military defenses. The internal affairs of other countries are not for us to judge, any more than they have the right to judge us." This argument is clear, concise, and persuasive. But it ignores the facts.

We do not merely "do business" with certain countries. We instituted a financial blockade of the Allende government in Chile and our influence was crucial in toppling it. Now we are aiding the bloody dictatorship that overthrew Allende. We are not merely "doing business" with the South Korean dictatorship which has canceled whatever democratic protec- tions its people once had. There are and have been numerous Latin American dictatorships which we have helped establish and/or subsidized.

America as a Postitive Influence

The problem is not how to justify injecting moral judge- ments into commercial transactions abroad; the problem is how to justify our claim that we are businessmen and do not attempt to influence the way foreign governments treat their people. We do so attempt and we always have wherever possible, and the real problem now is how to make that influence positive, how to place our weight on the side of human rights and the sanctity of the individual.

We emerged from World War II with precisely this type of influence. Our prestige at that time was unmatched by any nation in history. It was not simply a matter of military power; the Russians had demonstrated an equal if not greater military capability. The United States represented freedom,

All selections on negotiation, statecraft, and free expression origi- nally appeared as speeches delivered before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on November 18, 19"/5. They have been edited for written publication.

the freedom to read, to write, to speak, to worship without hindrance by governmental power. It was in this freedom that America's strength lay. We were not a perfect democracy then, just as we are not now. But the democratic ideal and the struggle to realize it were not irrelevancies as we faced the world. We were called hypocrites at worst, naive innocents at best; but for millions of ordinary people everywhere the promise of freedom, unrealized as it was, represented a goal and a human content for the otherwise terrifying power that we possessed. Why this prestige was lost is a complicated question. It is enough to say that we compound and confirm the loss with a foreign policy worthy of a moral eunuch.

The solution is not to establish a new State Department division which will read moral lectures to dictatorships. The solution is for the Senate and the House to inform the present administration, and administrations to come, that the hard- won wealth, resources, and talents of the American people are not to be travestied in supporting antidemocratic dictator- ships regardless of how anticommunist they advertise them- selves to be. If we resolve to clean our own hands, we will begin to move away from the defensiveness, the uncertainty, and the confusion which characterize our relations with the Soviet Union and the Third World.

The Impact o f D~tente

It is no secret that d~tente is less a policy than an agreement between the Soviet Union and ourselves to leave the status quo undisturbed. This policy would be fine if it were possi- ble, but it is not. To live is to change; and d~tente is like 9ommanding the sun not to set, or the summer not to change to fall. A policy worthy of the name either guides the future toward or away from justice, toward or away from a respect for the human person.

I)~tente is far more than the empty gesture it appears to be; its impact is far more various than its detractors or supporters are willing to see. It is certain, for example, that exchanges of

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Miller (Continued from page 10)

hockey teams, symphony orchestras, and art exhibitions are weak reeds on which to build a structure of peace. That two iron barrels are bolted together in space is bound to strike us with limited amazement and hope when in Czechoslavakia a whole generation of writers is still blacklisted, still forbidden to publish its works, its unfinished manuscripts seized by the secret police. American and Soviet astronauts can transfer from one spaceship to another; but applause comes hard

when, as Ludvik Vaculik has recently written, he and other Czech writers cannot transfer a thought from the fight to the left sides of their brains without fear of retribution.

It is foolish to dismiss drtente as a joke. With all its insubstantiality it does provide a rationale on which demands for intellectual freedom can be based. It is harder to justify repression as necessary for national security when the enemy has to some extent become a friend. No dissident writer in Eastern Europe has ever spoken longingly of the cold war situation; thus a reversion by the United States to the old hostility can only make it harder for these people. But cold war or moral impotence are not the only options.

Drtente is presently a body without a soul, but a body with enormous promise if we will only seize it. The Helsinki accords bind both sides to respect elementary human rights. Why are we so powerless to speak to this issue? Do we fear that the other side will make noises about the race situation in Boston, the tortures in our client-state Chile, the rearrest on fake charges of the South Korean poet Kim Chi Ha? The answer is not to sweep our sins under the same rug as the Soviets' or the sins of South Africa, but to rise to the chal- lenge that d&ente implicitly raises: to open our actions to the same measure and standards that we and the Soviets have agreed to. We are the freest country in the world despite all our failings. If foreign criticism should force us to take a new and resolute look at our own injustices, why must we fear such a competition? Such criticism exists anyway, but from the other side, not from ours. It is not open criticism; it does not deal with our relationships with repressive regimes. This super-politeness, at least in part, stems from a clouded conscience. But Congress has the power to begin cleating our conscience by requiring certain minimal standards of respect for civil fights, at least in those countries whose dependence on our own support is nearly total. And if one says that we cannot be held responsible for what another government does, I can only answer that we are already responsible when that government cannot exist without our support.

This question does not involve high-class speeches sup- porting academic or intellectual freedom. We are supporting repression, and we can stop. And in the process we can ask our new trading partners what they are doing to carry out the obligations which they agreed to in the Helsinki accords. It is not a question of interfering in another country's domestic

affairs; it is an attempt to implement a signed agreement. The Soviet Union has the fight, even the obligation, to demand that we live up to our part of the accords as well.

The inevitable question is whether we should sell Wheat to the Soviet Union until the human rights provisions of the Helsinki agreement are implemented. It would be unwise and unproductive to equate so many bushels with so much lib- erty. Enlarging commerce not only benefits both sides mate- rially, but it is also a manifestation of good will and good faith, and therefore can serve as a base upon which to build a new forthrightness in our relationships with the Soviet world. To think in either/or terms at all times and in every instance can only lead back to impotence, and on the Soviet side must lend justification to those officials who see a threat to Soviet power in the deepening relationship with the United States.

Drtente may indeed be a gesture empty of human content, but so is a letter of intent that precedes a binding contract. As with such a letter, proper execution depends on the next steps, and we apparently have no intention of taking such steps. It is the responsibility of Congress to decide whether such steps should be taken to implement the Helsinki agree- ment.

Repression in Czechoslovakia

A specific number of writers in Czechoslovakia is denied the fight to publish its works in the Czech or Slovak lan- guages. Certain of these writers have had manuscripts seized from their homes. Many if not most of them are former members of the Communis t party and have never advocated--nor do they now--a return to capitalism. Their chief sin is to have advocated an indigenous, independent Czech culture responsible to its own people rather than to the demands of the Soviet authorities. The blacklist against these wfiters is so broad that the regime has found it difficult to staff a literary magazine or newspaper.

The plight of the Czech writers and intellectuals is not unique in a world where repression, jailing, and the outfight murder of writers by their governments is ordinary news. But their plight is special in one respect: they have nowhere to appeal for relief. As citizens of a socialist country it is futile to look to other socialist states for support; and their case is ambiguous in the eyes of the European Left whose rabid anticapitalist stance mutes its indignation against repression in the East. The prospect, therefore, is that they will continue to be sacrificed on the altar of peace. The Soviet government evidently believes that any liberalization will ultimately menace its hegemony, and the United States must blind itself to this repression or risk Soviet displeasure.

Unlike Chile, South Korea, the late regime in South Viet- nam, and other places, the United States is not responsible for this disastrous situation. But are we not implicitly assuming a responsibility when we refuse to utilize the Helsinki agree- ment which we signed with the Soviet Union obligating both sides to protect certain elementary freedoms in our ter- ritories?

The Czech writers are not looking to us for help. The

March/April 1976 15

Miller Salisbury situation is far worse: they have long since assumed that we have decided to collaborate with the Soviet Union as a trading partner, and that is unrealistic for them to expect us to rock the boat. It is this feeling that makes their situation so mean- ingful. It has the earmarks of a long future in which small nations especially must settle for a modicum of prosperity in exchange for which their souls will be excised quietly, re- morselessly, for a good cause: the cause of peace between the giants.

A New Course of Action

We do not have to cut out our tongues in order to reassure any other country of our peaceful intentions; we do not have to adopt the impotence of moral eunuchs so that the volume of our trade may grow. The Helsinki accords explicitly ac- knowledge that our relations with the Soviet Union encom- pass far more than trade, far more than cultural exchanges, and that fundamental protections of human freedoms by both sides are essential. Congress has the obligation to decide whether Czech repression is in contravention to the Helsinki accords. If it is, the State Department should be instructed to ask the Soviet government what it intends to do about the matter as a signatory of the agreement. If, for example, the existence of the blacklist in Czechoslovakia is denied, the Senate can discover evidence that it exists. If the Soviet government still refuses to attempt to correct the situation-- indeed, if no concrete result comes from the whole effort something vital will nevertheless have been gained.

If America follows this course of action, it will begin to establish before its own citizens and the world that its power exists not only to make the world safe for American business, but also to hasten the evolution of humanity toward a decent respect for the human person. And if such an approach leads to countercharges against ourselves, so be it. A long evolutionary path lies before us too, and nobody understands this situation better than we do. It was the United States Office of Education--not foreign nations or individuals-- who told us that 30 percent of our people are effectively illiterate, that we fear to walk the streets of our cities, that a vast proportion of our black and Puerto Rican youth cannot find work.

The failures of American society are known everywhere; we can only gain by learning how others see us. Perhaps our rightful pride in our freedom does need to be measured against our institutions, and so openly as to be an element in the diplomatic process. We have nothing to hide. And if we have to accept criticism once we offer it, perhaps this neces- sity will help us- - i f only for our pride before the world to revive the will, the insistence, and the faith in our capacity to make a society that is just to all.[]

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own news media. Under such circumstances the creation of basic understanding between America and the Soviet Union is an immense problem. It is extraordinarily difficult for Americans to gain an accurate impression of the conditions in Russia; it is equally difficult for Russians to learn about the conditions in this country (or even in their own). Rumor and gossip are all that exist. The effect of this censorship on efforts to organize intelligent cultural exchange is disastrous. Russian literature, art, music, and every field of cultural achievement is crippled by the pervasive internal censorship restrictions.

Other Threats to a Free Press

Dictatorship and censorship exist concomitantly. The im- position of censorship is usually the first manifestation of an organized threat to democracy. The military rules so com- mon in much of Asia and Africa attest to this fact. Mrs. Gandhi's first act when she decided to impose dictatorial controls on India in early 1975 was to gag the press, both domestic and foreign. American reporters have been expel- led from the country for alleged censorship violation or refusing to sign so-called censorship rules; remaining corre- spondents have been subjected to continual harassment. A frequent government practice has been to sever the telecom- munications links used by news agencies and newspapers. The Indian Foreign Office has repeatedly threatened re- maining correspondents with expulsion if they continue to report the news freely. Censorship of the domestic press has been far more severe. The Indian press, once one of the freest in the world, has become a tame reflection of government press releases. Editors have been jailed; uncooperative newspapers have been repressed.

In other countries a similar situation exists. The Marcos regime in the Philippines rules the press with an iron hand. Portugal and Spain have varying patterns of repression. East- em European nations maintain harsh internal censorship while permitting foreign correspondents more latitude than they have in the Soviet Union; the foreign press there is controlled by restrictions on the issuance of visas and occa- sional expulsions. Even in Great Britain, a traditional home of the principle of freedom of the press, serious abuses have arisen. Only after a lengthy and bitter court battle have the newspapers won permission to publish the memoirs of the late Richard Crossman, a member of the Labor cabinet. In Britain the so-called Official Secrets Act has been employed to enforce internal censorship.

Only through the establishment of worldwide standards of freedom of access to information, freedom of dissemination, and freedom to publish can general world relations be genuinely relaxed. []

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