Confronting the Critics

In seeking support for his foreign policy last week, Henry Kissinger had to deal with one rather embarrassing critic of Soviet-American detente--Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It was Kissinger who advised President Ford not to receive Solzhenitsyn because of his view that the meeting might somehow harm relations with the Kremlin. Kissinger misjudged the effect on the public that this decision would have. Conservatives were outraged, and Senator Henry M. Jackson scornfully attacked Kissinger and Ford for "cowering in fear" rather than talking to Solzhenitsyn.

On the day Kissinger spoke in Minneapolis, the Russian Nobel prizewinner warned a group of Senators and Congressmen about the European Security Conference scheduled this month in Helsinki to settle East-West disputes unresolved from World War II. Solzhenitsyn predicted that in Helsinki "an amicable agreement of diplomatic shovels will bury and pack down corpses still breathing in a common grave."

Kissinger picked up the challenge. In Milwaukee, he made it clear that he had great respect for the Russian as a writer. But then the Secretary declared, "If I understand the message of Solzhenitsyn, it is that the U.S. should pursue an aggressive policy to overthrow the Soviet system. But I believe that if his views became the national policy of the U.S., we would be confronted with considerable threat of military conflict . . . I believe that the consequences of his views would not be acceptable to the American people or to the world."

Along with these words, Kissinger tried to repair the breach--and his own miscalculation--by having Vice President Nelson Rockefeller attempt to arrange a private meeting between Kissinger and Solzhenitsyn. The Russian rejected the proposal.

In his carefully wrought addresses in the Midwest, Kissinger touched on a number of U.S. foreign policy issues, including those in the Middle East (see THE WORLD). Key points:

THE UNITED NATIONS. Criticizing "bloc voting" in the General Assembly by members of the Third World against the industrialized nations, Kissinger warned that the coerced countries were under no compulsion to submit. "To the contrary," he said, "they are given all too many incentives simply to depart the scene." Kissinger also cautioned the Arab nations and their allies among the underdeveloped countries against trying to expel Israel from the General Assembly this fall. Said he: "We fear for the integrity and survival of the General Assembly itself, and no less for that of the specialized agencies. Those who seek to manipulate U.S. membership by procedural abuse may well inherit an empty shell." Kissinger pointedly declared that "the American people are understandably tired of the inflammatory rhetoric against us."

WORLD ECONOMY. Kissinger frankly faced another issue with the underdeveloped nations: their claim that the U.S. has a moral obligation to help their economies grow. The Secretary pledged to make "concrete and constructive proposals" to aid them, but he declared that the Third World countries themselves have the main responsibility for curing their problems. In effect, Kissinger rejected the argument that poverty in the Third World is due primarily to the policies of industrial countries.

Said he: "Either societies create the conditions for saving and investment, for innovation and ingenuity, for enterprise and industry which ultimately lead to self-sustaining growth, or they do not. There is no magical short cut and no rhetorical substitute. And to claim otherwise suggests need for permanent dependence on others."

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