U.S. PAYS A PRICE FOR PAST DIPLOMATIC BUNGLES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160025-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: August 4, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
I Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160025-2
LOS ANGELES TIMES
4 August 1985
U.S. Pays a Price for Past
Diplomatic Bungles
By CM&O Mom M.y1Ns or its predecessor, although each has a man who showed so little understanding
wAsrr made important diplomatic mistakes, but of the internal situation that he accepted a
t looks as though it is happening rather at the Administration of Richard Cabinet minister's invitation to hunt small
again. Violence breaks out in a coun- M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, whose
South
most st notorious n Island-site pols political of prison-
try deemed important to the United efforts with the great powers are still game Africa's on
n-
States, in this can South Africa. The lauded but whose mistakes with the small with political prisoners as beaters?
Administration in Washington finds that powers are conveniently forgotten. In Nicaragua, the Nixon Administration
it has failed to develop adequate ties to Americans tend to allow each adminis- appointed Turner Blair Shelton, a friend
opposition forces. The choices narrow tration to begin its term with a blank of presidential confidant Charles G.
starkly to support for the current govern- slate, as if history started on Inauguration (Bebe) Rebozo. Shelton developed such
ment, which survives through savage Day. But one reason why U.S. options an extraordinary relationship with the
repression, or pressure for political seem so limited in the 1980s is that the notorious dictator Anastasio Somoza that
change, which may result in a govern- real options occurred in the early 1970s. the latter put Turner's picture on the
ment that harbors fierce resentment of It was, for example, the Nixon Adminis- national currency. Admittedly, most ad-
the United States. tration that pushed the shah into assum- ministrations have little appreciation for
That was the pattern in Angola, Iran, ing the role of regional gendarme, bank - the real responsibilities of an ambassador
Mozambique and Nicaragua. Already rupting the country and polarizing its and believe that anyone with a good
some commentators are suggesting that politics. But that same Administration personality and a tie to the President can
South Africa may soon join the list. took the view in National Security Study do the job. But this record of the Nixon
But, at least for some time, South Africa Memorandum 39 that in Africa the Administration is exceptional. Damage
is unlikely to suffer that fate. In the other "whites are here to stay" (including in was done and subsequent administrations
cases a governing class outwardly im- Portuguese Africa) and that the United now pay the price.
pressive in its strength abruptly collapsed ugh selective relaxation of Yet it is also possible to argue that it is
from within. Formerly haughty autocrats our stance toward the white regimes futile to criticize the Nixon Administra-
suddenly displayed unexpected absence of could "encourage some modification of tion, or any other, for that matter, for
will, which in turn caused a political their current racial and colonial policies." failing to shift U.S. foreign policy toward
implosion that confounded even the oppo- And concerning Central America, that such sensitive countries as Iran, Nicara-
sition by its scope. A new government same Administration showed little con- gua and South Africa. For these three
took over with ease because there was cern when Jose Napoleon Duarte won a countries had so successfully inserted
little left to stand in its way. fair election in El Salvador only to have themselves into U.S. domestic politics
The leaders of South Africa are short of the military steal it away. that significant shifts in U.S. foreign
many qualities-compassion, wisdom, tol- In retrospect, all were disastrous deci- policy may have been impossible except in
erance-but will is not among them. sions by an Administration that many still a crisis.
Contributing to their ruthless determina- argue showed real artistry in the for- The shah, through a carefully orches-
tion is the knowledge that they have no eign-policy field. An Iran that devoted its trated public-relations campaign, largely
place to go. The generals who policed Iran fabulous oil wealth to domestic concerns eliminated all serious criticism of his
for the shah could head for the ski slopes instead of massive arms purchases might regime in this country. From responsible
of Switzerland. The generals who ran have weathered the coming storm. A left to responsible right, most were se-
Nicaragua could set up residence in Southern African policy that took into duced by trips, conferences and legally
Miami. The availability of a luxurious account the fragility of Portugal's African laundered money-often spent for worthy
escape was a major source of regime empire might have adopted different causes. It is no accident that during the
instability. But the 4.5 million white South policies toward the liberation movements hostage crisis both David Rockefeller and
Africans know that they must remain soon to succeed in Angola and Mozam- Kissinger pressed a very reluctant Carter
where they are. bique. If the United States had helped Administration, which foresaw the conse-
Nonetheless, there seems to be a gener- Duarte spend the 1970s building a demo- quences but was ultimately too weak to
al consensus that the white minority cratic El Salvador, the political geography resist, to admit their friend the shah into
regime in South Africa is in grave trouble. Of Central America might be totally the United States. Years of effort had
Although the whites have the guns and different today. gone into the development of such power-
the blacks primarily their anger, the latter Nixon's ambassadorial appointments to ful friends in the U.S. Establishment.
is now so strong that the country is likely these three key areas were particularly Meanwhile, about the same time, the
to experience continuing unrest that at egregious. In light of the dark role that South African government was covertly
some point could devolve into general the shah's secret police played in Iran, can channeling funds to the United States to
chaos. there have been a more inappropriate manipulate public opinion. The so-called
So even though South Africa does not ambassadorial appointment to Tehran Muldergate affair, named after the re-
precisely fit earlier models, it is close than the ex-head of the Central Intelli- sponsible member of the South African
enough to raise a troubling question: Why gence Agency, Richard M. Helms, who Cabinet, caused temporary embarrass-
in the last 10 years has the United States Nixon wanted to move in order to appoint ment but no serious action by the United
been so inept in dealing with revolution- George Bush in his place? States to protect its political process from
ary situations in the Persian Gulf, In South Africa, what impression was such outrageous outside manipulation.
Southern Africa and Central America? the black majority to receive when the And in Central America during the Carter
There are plausible answers but they Nixon Administration sent as ambassador
point not so much to this Administration
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160025-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160025-2
2
Administration, the U.S. ambassador in
Managua entered the office of dictator
Somoza, under instructions to inform him
that the United States wanted him to
leave in dignity, only to find, to his
astonishment, that seated in the office
acting as an adviser to Somoza in resisting
Washington's advice was none other than
a U.S. congressman, John M. Murphy
(D-N.Y.) (later convicted in the Abscam
bribery scandal and sentenced to a
three-year prison term).
Can the United States do better this
time around? In South Africa itself,
immediate choices are limited. The crisis
has moved to a point where guns are now
the likely ultimate arbiter. Yet for both
moral and domestic reasons the United
States will not provide guns to the
resistance and cannot endorse the use of
guns by the government. Its main hope is
for dialogue, which the Reagan Adminis-
tration has correctly endorsed. It might go
further, urging the immediate and uncon -
ditional release of Nelson Mandela, the
only black man in South Africa who
clearly speaks for the black majority, and
by informing the South African govern-
ment that its position on future relations
will be affected by Mandela's fate.
In other areas of the wprld, if earlier
Administration's loaded the dice for the
Reagan Administration, it may be return -
ing the favor to future Administrations.
The new Third World flash points are
likely to be in such key countries as South
Korea, Pakistan and the Philip-
pines. Except with the Philippines,
the Reagan Adminstration shows
few signs of anticipatory planning.
And in Latin America, the Admin-
istration's hard-nosed approach to
the debt crisis may be paving the
way for a political explosion. In the
Great Depression the collapse of
commodity prices helped stimulate
50 revolutions between 1929 and
1933. Will we look back on the
great debt crisis of the 1990s and
detect a similar maligned connec-
tion between economic distress and
political turmoil?
For revolutionary situations
generally, the country needs to
learn some lessons from the last
decade. The Congress needs to take
steps to restrict the ability of
foreign governments to manipulate
the American political system. Ad-
ministrations need to upgrade the
quality of U.S. representation in
Third World countries. And the
country generally needs to recog-
nize that even countries that suffer
under dictatorships still have a
political life worth investigating.
Even if the contact is covert, the
United States cannot afford to
approach other societies only
through the top leader. In the long
run, in an age of mass politics, the
masses will count and U.S. identifi-
cation with narrowly based re-
gimes that stand in the way of
popular feeling are bound to fall. ^
Charles William Ma nea is editor of For-
eign Policy magazine.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160025-2