Page 4-Saturday, September 16, 1978-The Michigan Daily
hrie Mitlig1an BfalIQ
Eighty-Nine Years of Editorial Freedom
Kissinger: Human rights
stand makes U.S.'impotent
Vol. LIX, No. 9
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
School board makes life
hard for working parents
T HE ANN ARBOR Board of Educa-
tion was guilty of insensitivity
when it rescheduled elementary school
hours in August. By delaying the start
of school until 9:30 a.m., the board
created a major inconvenience for
working and student parents.
Parents who have to leave for work
at 7:30 now face the unpalatable
alternatives of leaving their young
children unsupervised or paying for
costly baby sitting services.
The School Board compounded its
thoughtlessness by making the time
change at virtually the last minute.
Not only were families with
elementary age children forced to
adapt their daily schedules to the later
school hours, but they were given
almost no time in which to make the
necessary arrangements.
School officials justified the last
minute change by pointing to the need
to use school buses for transporting
high school students earlier in the
morning.
This explains, but certainly doesn't
justify, the boards callousness.
The officials have promised to
implement an early morning
recreation/child care program to meet
the needs of children of working
parents. But this program is not
expected to start for at least several
more weeks. Further, it would be
available only to those parents
willing and able to pay the
tab. The early morning program is
too little, too late, for too much.
A number of irate parents, calling
themselves Citizens to Change the
School Board, have announced a drive
to recall the members of the School
Board through a petition drive. They
argue that the board members have
shown themselves unfit for office
through their handling of the starting
hours controversy.
We're not willing to go that far,
however.
Recalling the entire School Board
would simply not be justified on the
basis of this one actioh.
While the Daily agrees that the class
hours decision was poorly and
thoughtlessly handled by school
officials, we don't feel that it merits the
extreme measure of recall. It's also
not clear that the parents in question
have mounted the recall drive in a
serious effort to unseat the biard,
rather than as a publicity- measure.
The time to hold the School Board
members to fully accountable for their
bungling of the hours issue is in June,
when a third of them come up for
reelection.
VIC f~NP WitsSCHOOLS gA$IQS ?--UH,
'04154WA1 S BACK as.. uow I'o
TOb 3ASIC ! PL ~7IAT
Thursday evening in the Standard Club of the
Renaissance Center in Detroit, former Secretary of
State lHenry Kissinger spoke before about 200
wealthy Repubicans who each gave a $500 con-
tribution to the political campaign of U.S. Sen.
Robert Griffin. Financier Max Fischer introduced
Griffin who in turn presented the person he con-
siders the greatest Secretary of State this coun-
try's ever had." The first in a series of one-line
quips Kissinger used to warm up the group was in
response to this praise: "My father," said Kissinger
in a monotone flavored with his thick German ac-
cent, "who has collected 45 scrapbooks, would
consider this introduction a classic example of
Anglo-Saxon understatement." The relaxed-
looking ex-diplomat received a standing ovation
after his talk, some of which is transcribed below.
The biggest problem that the United States
faces in foreign policy today is that as a
nation we have to develop policies that are
unprecedented in our history. For the greater
part of our history, the United States was
either protected by two great oceans, or it
was physically so predominant that we could
wait for a problem to become overwhelming
before we dealt with it. We're now moving in-
to a period where that is no longer true.
In the 1950's we had close to 55 per cent of
the Gross National Product of the non-
communist world. Now we have something
like 35 per cent; ten years from now we will
have something like 25 per cent. That still
makes us an enormously powerful country,
the single most powerful country in the world.
But it means that our margin is shrinking.
And when you live in such a situation, then
you have to make your foreign policy on
assessments which you cannot prove true at
the time they are made. And if you wait until
the facts are clear, you may have to pay a
horrendous price.
All of us remember the tragedy of the Nazi
period. We forget that in 1936, when the Ger-
mans reoccupied the Rhineland, one French
division could have stopped them. But if they
had, the world would still be arguing today,
whether Hitler was a misunderstodd
nationalist or a maniac bent on world
domination. Five years later, everybody
knew he was a maniacbent on world
domination, but it was knowledge acquired at
the cost of 20 million lives.
To take a more recent example, in 1975, we
suddenly found that the Rusians, in the space
of three months, were introducing more
military equipment into Angola than all the
rest of the world was putting into all the rest
of Africa put together. Then shortly after-
wards, Cuban troops appeared. Both of these
events were considered by President Ford
and myself of enormous significance.
Because in a continent in which all gover-
nments are insecure, if the principle becomes
established that every issue is settled by
Soviet arms or Cuban troops, then no gover-
nment will be secure. And no leader will
anymore deal with the moderate pro-
Western, market-oriented forces.
We could not convince Congress - despite
efforts of your Senator (Griffin is a member
of the Foreign Relations Committee - Ed.) -
to let us go along with it, to let us implement
what needed to be done. It required no
American troops, it required just some sup-
port for the local peoples that were resisting.
Today there are 50,000 Cuban troops all over
Africa. And the symbolic effect in the worl -
of a little Caribbean country of nine million
being able to send expeditionary forces
around the world, while the United States is
paralyzed - the symbolic effect of that goes
far beyond the countries where these troops
are actually stationed.
There are many reasons for the upheavals
that we now see in Iran, for example. But one
has to look at the Soviet and Cuban adven-
tures in Africa as only partly in Africa and
partly as a flanking movement against the
Middle East. And when leaders see that
Afghanistan is taken over, in effect, by Com-
munists, and South Yemen has a Communist
coup, and Cuban troops are in Ethiopia, then
it is obvious that they may draw the con-
clusion where the wave of the future for their
area may be. The issue in the Middle East at
this moment has gone far beyond the Arab-
Israeli dispute. . . It is obviously in our
national interest that this conference suc-
ceeds. It would be an unprecedented debacle
if the President assembled two world leaders,
took them to a mountain top, and stayed up
there for two weeks and not come up with an
appropriate result. The loss of influence for
the United States that that would represent
would undermine all our friends in the Middle
East and would be an opening for the re-entry
of the Soviet Union. It is important for Israel,
which depends on our protection; it is impor-
tant for Egypt, it is important for all
moderate influences that it succeeds.
Now there'll be occasions to discuss how
success is defined. The minimum one can say
tonight is this: peace is not established by a
signature on a document. Most wars in
history have started between countries that
were at peace. It's'a peculiarity of the Middle
East that there, the wars start between coun-
tries that are already at war. But the test of
peace is whether all the parties have a sense
that they have had a share in the making and
an interest in maintaining and the United
States will have the responsibility not to walk
away from whatever emerges but to make
;
:
< :
mechanism for replacing their leaders.'
Leaders either die in office - and that's the
only relatively safe thing for them to do
(laughter). It is relatively safe because very
few of them have survived their own death
(laughter). As soon as they die the next thing
that happens is a denigration of all of their
achievements and a purge of all of their
followers. Or there is some sort of a coup that
replaces such a system of leadership com-
parable only to university faculties
(laughter). It's guaranteed to produce
mediocrity and stagnation..
It's not a problem of what to do with the
Communist Party in an elaborated Com-
munist state because there is this group of
super-luminaries who have no function and
that live on creating crises in order to demon-
strate the need for vigilance. But there is one
thing the Communist systems do well and that
is the accumulation of military power.
Precisely because they have no mechanism
for settling their disputes, for that reason, the
military must have a command structure,
communication system and transportation
are essential for settling all their internal
disputes. And therefore, no matter what the
problem is, it is usually settled by giving ad-
ditional resources to the military establish-
ment.
I'm not saying that the Soviets have a fixed
plan for world domination. I am saying that a
country that works for decades at ac-
cumulating military power, sooner or later
will get into a position that power makes a dif-
ference. So, one of our big national problems
is to make sure - which is well within our
capacity - that the Soviet Union does not
establish a physical predominance which
could arrest the historical trends that I am
talking about, which generally work against it
Towards the end of this year, I would expect
that a SALT agreement will be submitted to
the Congress, and that will be another oc-
casion when wise leadership will be needed in
the Congress. I don't know the terms of this
agreement, and therefore I can't state my
position with respect to it yet. But what we
can say is this: it is impossible to assess that
particular agreement on its own merites. It
must be seen inrelation to all the military
decisions that have been taken over the last
two years. And when one combines the giving
up of the B-1, the delay in our new missile, the
restrictions on our cruise missiles, the stret-
ch-out on our submarines. Theni, when you
combine what we are giving up unilaterally,
with what we may be asked to restrict in an
agreement, then we face a situation where I
believe it is important that the administration
be asked to put before the country what it in-
tends to do for the next five years and where.
we will be at the end of a five to seven yea
period.
In the previous administration, we tpo
great pride in our practical performance.i
the field of human rights. We believe that'
the basis of private diplomacy, we elevated
great deal of suffering. We increased the r'at
of emigration from the Soviet Union from ;(
a year to 38,000 a year. Since then, huma
rights has become a more vocal goal of ;ni
foreign policy. But in producing a confron
tation, it has not been allied with a willingnes
to face the consequences of that confren
tation. So that our declaration on hums
rights, vis-a-vis the Communists, has led to a
demonstration of our impotence, wh4r
people whom our President declares has Apo
had anything to do with our intelligence sir-
vices are tried for espionage the same week
that our Secretary of State is supposed't
negotiate with the Soviet Foreign Minister.
And at the sdme time, we are pursuen
pressures not against the Soviet Union, o
against Communist countries, but agaips
allied countries - the friendly countries. And
there is a great danger. I:don't know liow
many of you have interests in Latin America
for example, but if you do, you will note tha
in many countries in Latin America,.
Argentina or Brazil, or many other countp
you could mention, pro-American goke
nments are being harassed and put underla
enormous pressure by the United States. 0
behalf of whom? Not democratic forces, eve
though that may be our intention, but force
that are anti-American,; anti-market an
basically anti-democratic. And I would s
ply warn you, that if one plays around in; h
domestic politics of other countries, on, i
embarked on a course of universal intervi
tion whose consequences may not be ;pr
seeable.
When you look at all the difficulties; w
have, and all the challenges we have take
we are the most fortunate country in h
world. Because alone of all of the countriesW
can genuinely say to ourselves that p:ur
problems are soluble, and that the future-w
build depends on us.
All new achievements have to be an idea
before they become a reality. There are many
changes going on in the world, but we hive
the opportunity to manage them. But whether
we manage them depends on whether:,we
have a clear insight into what it is we'ire
trying to do, where it is that we are trying to
go.
Daily staff reporter Brian Blancherd
covered the Kissinger speech and
assembled this material.
-s-Fiel-r-w -pape c 3yndite.1 r -m AOr V
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Editorials which appear without a by-line represent a con-
sensus opinion of the Daily's editorial board. All other editorials,
as well as cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals who sub-
mit them.
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oll e Iicl i ttn at i
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