It is always interesting to see what government officials say when they think the American people aren't listening. One good example is the recently-published racist remark of Earl Butz. Many others came out during the Vietnam War--for instance, presidential advisor McGeorge Bundy's 1965 statement that "the imperium must first and foremost go to war to support its imperial representatives. Such tautological reasoning lies at the foundation of the imperial role." (reprinted in The Chicago Sun-Times, 7/11/71). What those in power say in private often contrasts sharply with the public image they would like to create.

Henry Kissinger is no exception. In his speeches and press conferences he is the cool-headed academic, the rational technician of international affairs. He cultivates the image of peacemaker, one who would use force reluctantly and only when necessary. But his private statements give a different impression--for example, "I wanted to bomb the daylights out of Hanoi, but Congress wouldn't let me." (The New York Times, 12/26/73). Or his justification of CIA efforts to instigate the military coup in Chile: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." (The New York Times, 9/11/74).

Most Harvard students would probably agree that Kissinger has adopted many policies that are wrong or even immoral, particularly in Vietnam and Chile. But at first glance his "shuttle diplomacy" looks less evil. In Africa or the Mideast he moves from country to country in what the press describes as an effort to avoid bloodshed, a goal that certainly no one would criticize. The bulk of the press coverage of Kissinger's recent moves in Southern Africa gives the impression that a plan for a peaceful transition to majority rule has been endangered by unreasonable black militants. Many people who would criticize other policies of Kissinger's feel, therefore, that he is doing a good job in this new arena.

Radical Africa?

But there is a great deal of evidence that Kissinger is not really interested in majority rule, or in ending violence. In fact, he openly stated his main concern before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last May, just before the first of his meetings with Vorster: "We have a stake....in not having the whole continent become radical and move in a direction that is incompatible with Western interests. That is the issue."

Kissinger showed no concern about violence in Southern Africa until it threatened white minority regimes and the U. S. investments that support them. In Zimbabwe, (the black nationalists' name for Rhodesia), Namimbia, and South Africa, violence against black people has been a daily event for decades and ignored by the U. S. It is still ignored today. Kissinger uses the word "violence" in reference mainly to anti-apartheid guerillas, not to the white regimes' internal security police. Black demonstrators have been shot down by South African police during Kissinger's meetings with Vorster, but there has been a "gentlemen's agreement" to avoid the subjects of repression and South African apartheid in their talks.

Majority rule is also a new goal for Kissinger. Until recently he accepted the Byrd Amendment, which allows U. S. corporations to import Rhodesian chrome, in violation of U.N. sanctions. Even after he publicized his opposition to the Amendment last summer, the Ford Administration did very little to actually get it repealed. Nor has Kissinger done anything to press for prosecution of U. S. businesses like Mobil Oil that have broken the boycott illegally.

An examination of the U. S.-British plan for Zimbabwe, which Kissinger is currently pushing, shows just how committed he is to majority rule. The transitional government would be divided between a council of state and a council of ministers. The council of state would be the decisive body, for it would have the power to write the country's new constitution and pass its laws. While it would include equal numbers of black and white members, the council would be chaired by a white and all decisions would require a two-thirds majority, giving the whites--who are outnumbered more than 20 to one in the population--the ability to veto any real challenges to their privileged political and economic status. The state council would appoint a majority black council of ministers, but defense and internal security ministries would remain under white control. Meanwhile, with the military and police forces of the state in white hands, black liberation fighters are supposed to put down their arms. Such an arrangement does not seem likely to produce real transition in the promised two years.

White Control

But even if blacks actually came into formal political power under Kissinger's proposal, the plan would do much to ensure that they did not control the country's economic life. It guarantees "compensation" for Rhodesian whites, creating a fund that according to the Manchester Guardian would total between $1.5 and $2 billion. Details have not been released, but the plan could result in payments to whites who remain in Rhodesia as well as those who emigrate. The fund could also make loans to blacks who wanted to buy businesses--but this would leave them in debt to an institution funded largely by the U. S. and which South Africa is likely to have a large role in administering. The net effect would be to leave the Zimbabwean economy in the hands of Western capital and the white minority. For this reason the plan has been denounced by the leaders of progressive African countries like Tanzania. Robert Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, has also opposed it, saying, "Who will compensate the blacks for the years of exploitation and oppression they suffered?"

The "Western interests" that Kissinger sees threatened by radical movements in South Africa are first and foremost Western business interests. In Chile and in Vietnam, it was blatantly obvious that Kissinger was more concerned with protecting U. S. capital than protecting democracy, more interested in defending profits than defending human rights. In spite of superficial differences, the same is true of his policies in Southern Africa.

But these diplomatic priorities do not originate with Kissinger. The defense of the U.S. economic empire abroad has been a consistent aspect of our foreign policy for decades, from interventions in China at the turn of the century to the CIA-organized coup in Iran in 1953, from Teddy Roosevelt's "dollar diplomacy" in Latin America to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. In 1935 Major General Smedley Butler said,

"I spent 33 years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."

The fact that Kissinger looks out first and foremost for the interests of U. S. business is thus not exactly unusual. It says more about the system he represents than about his personal preferences.

So what does this have to do with Harvard? The answer is that Kissinger is not unique--in fact, he is an apt symbol of the well-developed relationship between Harvard and Washington, D. C. Many other Harvard professors and administrators have accepted high government positions. In foreign policy, the list includes former U. N. ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan, and presidential advisor McGeorge Bundy, architect of the U. S. strategy in Vietnam. Similar connections exist in domestic social and economic policy. As Secretary of Labor, John Dunlop designed and administered a wage-price freeze that somehow was a lot better at holding down wages than prices, and Moynihan was one of Nixon's main advisors on domestic affairs.