THE MUSHY MESSAGE ON SOUTH AFRICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350012-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: August 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350012-9
ARTICLE APPEAREfl
ON PAGE - 43
Philip Geyelin
The Mushy
Message on
South
Africa
In war, a brave attack thrown back
with heavy casualties can be seen not _
as a tactical misjudgment but as a gal.:.
lant effort, well worth trying. Amer.%
ican forces never "retreat," as I recalt
the official reports; they "withdraw to
previously prepared positions."
Not so with failed diplomacy; scarcely
anybody says "nice try." "Retreat"
spells "defeat," which is politically unac-
ceptable. There lies the cause of the
muddle in what now passes as a U.S.
policy for South Africa.
The Reagan administration cannot
bring itself to admit that its strategy of
"constructive engagement," however
creative in concept, has been overtaken
by events. Jimmy Carter tried candor.
when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan
and shattered the underlying premise of
his approach to the Soviet Union?and
look what happened to Carter.
So the Reagan -crowd clings dog-
gedly to a slogan that sounded sensible
when it showed faint signs of achieve-
ment but can no longer be defended
while the condition of the mass of
black South Africans proceeds brutally
from bad to worse. Absent an adminis-
tration show of willingness to enter-
tain alternatives, Congress can hardly
be faulted for moving into a vacuum
with its own?a mishmash of eco-
nomic sanctions.
The result: instead of convincing
U.S. policy, what is on display for the
world at large is a politically partisan
scramble for the moral high ground on
a matter in which morality is not an
American issue. It is a South African
issue; if the white supremacists in
Pretoria gave a damn about morality.
they would not be tightening the
screws of apartheid.
WASHINGTON POST
9 August 1985
And yet, if you were looking at the
collective performance of the U.S. gov-
ernment in recent days from the per-
spective of the powers-that-be in South
Africa, you would be wondering what
you had to worry about. You know well
that Americans are outraged by the kill-
ings, the jailings and the tightening re-
pression. But what do you see?
You see the House of Representa-
tives voting overwhelmingly for rela-
tively modest and selective economic
sanctions, with the promise of a grad-
ual tightening if the South Africans do?
not shape up in one or another way
within a year. You hear this action de-
scribed by the chairman of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee as "a
moral statement that far exceeds eco-
nomic leverage." And then you see
the Senate knuckling under to the
threat of a filibuster and putting off its
own vote until September, after it has.
had a vacation.
Finally, you hear the White House
threatening that the president will
veto the bill in any case and seek to re-
gain the political initiative by using ex-
ecutive authority to impose sanctions.
That's not exactly carrying a big
stick. It's not even speaking loudly
with one voice. Rather, it's a classic
case of competition for domestic politi-
cal advantage making mush out of an
important piece of U.S. foreign policy.
The mush gets even mushier when
you reflect on the dismal history of
economic sanctions as a conclusive in-
strument of policy. At most the effects
have been marginal, symbolic and .
rarely decisive.
At various times and in various ways,
U.S. economic pressure has been ap-
plied to Libya, Iran, Iraq, South Yemen;
Syria, North Korea, Cambodia, Cuba,
Poland?and even South Africa. Here-
with, some random blurbs: James R.
Schlesinger, former secretag of de-
fense and energy, and CIA director (in
1980): "Economic sanctions are a rela-
tively weak tool. They appeal to Amer-
icans because they seem to be a substi-
tute for the stiffer measures that may
be required." Helmut Sonnenfeldt, for-
mer State Department counselor:
"Really airtight policies of denial have
proved to be politically infeasible in vir-
tually all countries where they have
been attempted over the last several de-
cades." Andrew Young (while serving as
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations):
"Economic sanctions look like an easy
answer, but South Africa is one of the
most self;suificient nations in the world.
It could get along without us."
As mayor of Atlanta, Young now
takes a more positive line, arguing for
a cutoff of airline service to South
Africa, while conceding that effective
sanctions would have to include "the
Europeans and the Japanese?the de-
veloped world." But with the notable
exception of France, the Europeans
have just recently shown themselves
to be weakly divided and uncertain
about how far they are prepared to go.
True, a crushing, comprehensive,
economic squeeze might give the
South African government self-serving
second thoughts. But "graduated
measures," as envisaged in the con-
gressional legislation, can be treacher-
ous. Under pressure, resistance is
likely to harden rather than soften.
The pressure must then be toughened
and broadened, making it increasingly
difficult to sustain with international
backing. At the end of the road, theo-
retically, lies a physical blockade?
which is to say an act of war.
If the United States is ready even to
start down this road, the recent per-
formance of Congress and the execu-
tive is at worst a dangerously indeci-
sive way to demonstrate the neces-
sary national resolve. At best, it is no
more than a clumsy expression of frus-
tration over a problem the United
States could hope to ameliorate but
cannot hope to solve.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350012-9