Henry Kissinger's Foreign Policy During The Vietnam War

I pledge that I have neither received nor given unauthorized assistance during the completion of this work." –Luke Lydon Cassidy
Luke Cassidy
History 215
14 March 2014

A POLICY OF HUMAN RIGHTS BASED ON INTERESTS NOT MORALITY
Increased civil and economic challenges at home, along with the massive geopolitical fallout of the Vietnam War ushered the United States into the 1970s with a newfound foreign policy outlook. This perspective can be surmised as an outlook of realistic pragmatism in which the US acknowledged the necessity to work with other countries, as opposed to unilaterally shape the world in accordance to America’s interests. This realpolitik strategy was helmed by Henry Kissinger in his role as National Security Advisor under President Nixon and as Secretary of State under President Ford. While Kissinger’s strategy ultimately accomplished America’s exit from the Vietnam War through Vietnamization, decreased US-Soviet

tension through détente, and forged a vital relationship with China in the new multipolar Cold War, détente seemed to lack a moral compass. In this period the US supported brutal despotic regimes in Latin America as long as they were loyal to Washington. The US also remained silent in regards to the ongoing and horrific Cambodian Genocide, since the Khmer Rouge government was China’s ally. The US also failed to condemn various Soviet human rights violations in an effort to ease tension. While Kissinger’s Realpolitik-style foreign policy decisions were in many ways effective, with the rise of a belief in global egalitarianism they also proved very unpopular domestically, leading to a broad and diverse group of Americans calling for a foreign policy more aligned in human rights. Both major political parties would modify their political platforms to accommodate and sway an American public which was increasingly concerned about global human rights and America’s role in creating a better world order. In reality, while political rhetoric and grassroots movements pushed human rights to the forefront of discussion between 1975 and 1985, American foreign policy objectives would change little with national interests coming before human rights. In the cases of the Soviet Union, Central America and Cambodia the US used human rights as a tool only when it proved useful to America’s interests in that region, otherwise they chose to ignore human rights.
In the US, the Soviet Union and communism were long seen to represent a moral evil; however the language of America’s ideological argument against the USSR changed by the 1970s as a global consensus began to emerge that sovereign states were obliged to uphold human rights. The US exploited this new and far-reaching emphasis of human rights as a tool to undermine the USSR. In this period diverse groups of Americans to include Evangelical Christians, Secular Humanists and various nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International advocated for an increased emphasis of human rights in US policy especially in Central America and in the USSR on the behalf of Soviet Jewry. In response to these grassroots concerns the US government and politicians in particular would adapt and increasingly frame their critique of the USSR in the lens of human rights.
Individual political leaders would use an ideology of human rights and accuse the USSR of violating them to their own gain. Democratic politicians promoted pursuing a policy of human rights to undermine the increasingly unpopular Ford Administration. At that time Ford was following a détente policy aimed at warming US-Soviet trade relations in an attempt to build rapport between the two superpowers to slow the arms race. In 1974 Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson passed an amendment in the Senate on human rights to undermine Ford’s policy agenda. The amendment refused to support any economic treaty with the USSR until 60,000 Soviet Jews were permitted to immigrate to Israel annually. Many Americans believed the US should be beacon of hope and freedom, and saw this style of foreign policy very refreshing. Jimmy Carter’s human rights platform helped him defeat Ford in the 1976 presidential elections.
Carter seemed to follow his original human rights platform by framing and condemning the 1978 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a flagrant violation of human rights. However further analysis of Carter’s strong criticism of Soviet human rights violations proves inconsistent as he does not apply the same criticisms to other human rights violations in Cambodia. Carter’s main concern was Soviet hegemony expanding into the Middle East. He also saw an opportunity to exploit Afghanistan by making the conflict into an economically and spiritually draining Soviet version of America’s Vietnam War. Human rights and international law were the best means of criticizing and drumming up domestic and international censure of the USSR. Hence, he highlighted Soviet violations primarily for the advancement of American interests in the guise of moral altruism.
Ronald Reagan would also criticize the USSR as a major violator of human rights to rally his political base.

His most extreme rhetoric can be seen in his speech to Evangelical Christians 1983 where he highlighted the Soviet’s secularism calling it “totalitarian darkness”. Reagan’s definition of human rights differed from Carter’s as it centered more on political, religious and economic freedoms, which according to him the Soviet “empire” withheld from the peoples of Eastern Europe. To Reagan, the Berlin Wall in particular was a physical symbol of Soviet oppression on human rights. During his administration America enthusiastically funded the Islamist Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Reagan depicted the Mujahedeen as fighters for human rights who wished to preserve their religious and political freedom from communism. By the mid-1980s as Reagan established a working relationship with Gorbachev he toned down his animosity for the USSR demonstrating that he too used a language of human rights to benefit his own political

interests.
In many cases human rights policy would seem to be at the apex of the Carter administration’s concerns, however, on closer analysis it becomes clear Carter used a language of human rights to draw up popular support for his policy goals. Carter dramatically shifted from his predecessors and chose not to support despotic regimes in the region regardless of whether they had been friendly to US interests. On the surface this policy of human rights seems purely altruistic, but on closer examination this policy of supporting increased civil liberties in Latin America can be seen as entirely consistent with Carter’s political interests and concerns.
In the case of Nicaragua, in 1977 Carter chose not to continue backing the increasingly unpopular but pro-American Somoza regime. While this major policy break seems to put human rights before immediate US strategic interests, the real difference is perspective. Carter believed US-backed despots were a bad long-term investment, as seen with the fall of the US supported Republic of South Vietnam to the communist north in 1975. Carter believed supporting democracy and free elections in Latin America would eventually create friendly governments that were also internally stable, so communist revolutions and insurgency would become less frequent in the region overall. Without US support Somoza’s government collapsed and the left-wing Sandinista party took control of the Nicaragua’s government. Many Americans who believed US power was declining abroad, were very disappointed in this outcome and believed allowing the Sandinista’s to take power would destabilize Latin America in the favor of the USSR.
These public concerns and the political repercussions of Carter’s human rights agenda in Central America caused Reagan to revert back to a US policy of funding pro-American despots and rebels upon his election in 1980. Most notably, Reagan covertly funded a rebel group known as the Contras, who had a poor human rights records and serious drug trafficking allegations, but where nevertheless supportive of US interests. From Reagan’s perspective and his political base, the Contras were freedom fighters who Reagan compared to America’s Founding Fathers. In other words, Reagans support for the Contras was a major policy shift from the Carter Administration’s position; however the argument for supporting the Contras was shaped using the same language of human-rights. The Contras seemed to be fighting communism, an ideology Americans, Reagan associated with various abuses in human rights.
The inconsistencies in the American’s push for human rights in their foreign policy can be seen quite starkly in the American government’s silence on Cambodia. When Carter took office the Cambodian genocide had been well underway for two years, and up to this point had received limited media attention which allowed plausible deniability. Carter chose to continue using a realpolitik style foreign policy in Asia, and ignore the major human rights crisis, because genocide in Cambodia was of very little political value in the late 1970s. America had very little to gain strategically and everything to lose by asserting itself in Southeast Asia again. Few Americans wanted US involvement in the region altogether in the wake of the Vietnam War, and were cynical about violence in this region altogether.
America knew censure of Cambodia could have large geopolitical consequences, as the US was still in the process of improving diplomatic ties with the China, the Khmer Rouge’s primary supporter. With the ongoing Sino-Soviet Split in this period, fully pulling China out of Moscow’s reach and into America’s was an important foreign policy objective which came into direct conflict with pushing any policy of human rights on Beijing’s new satellite state in Cambodia. When Soviet-backed Vietnam broke international law and invaded Cambodia in 1977 and usurped the Khmer Rouge regime, the Carter and later Reagan administration chose to secretly fund and support the Khmer Rouge rebels in the Sino-Russian proxy war putting US interests decidedly before human rights.
While human rights foreign policy was never seriously utilized by the US Government there were two advocates for intervention in Cambodia, and while they raised serious concern, their dubious reputations rendered them ultimately ineffective. Kissinger, who was highly discredited for his handling of the Vietnam War and détente in general, and George McGovern, an anti-Vietnam War and unpopular former presidential candidate. Many of McGovern’s contemporaries viewed him as “hypocritical” because of his past anti-war position. Hence without serious support, the US decidedly turned its back on human rights and ignored genocide for the purposes of building a relationship with China and to avoid the returning to the region of the recent and traumatic Vietnam War.
Individuals and political parties in all the above case examples would use a language of human rights to criticize and undermine their rivals. Carter and Reagan ran against Ford in 1976, both would say Ford’s détente policies had allowed communism and political repression to expand into Africa and Asia. Reagan would say Carter was too soft on the “evil” USSR and that unless they were aggressively challenged the free world would be in danger. Later, Reagan would be similarly criticized for his relationship with Gorbachev as some saw his relationship as subtly supporting the legitimacy of the Soviet’s “Evil Empire”.
US policy and individual American leaders who spoke up and advocated for a policy of human rights in a post-Vietnam and egalitarian age, did so hypocritically, inconsistently and only when these rights proved conducive with US Foreign policy interests. Ultimately the rhetoric of human rights, proved very popular with the American public, who believed their country should promote freedom and a better world, however little to no policy reforms came out of this rhetoric as the US Government, backed human rights when the Soviet Union violated them in Eastern Europe or Afghanistan, but ignored atrocities in Cambodia in order to fight the same Soviet hegemony. Moreover between 1975 and 1985 US foreign policy had little to do with human rights, instead human rights were the vessel to criticize the Soviet Union and governments unfriendly to US interests.