By a turn of fate so ironic it is scarcely believable Dr. Henry Kissinger is expected to be confirmed as Secretary of State tomorrow by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at virtually the same hour he will appear in a secret session of the House Ways and Means Committee to try to kill the Jackson-Mills-Vanik amendment to the Trade Reform Act. The timing is dramatic. The House panel is to vote on the amendment the next day.
No doubt exists that the Senate committee and the Senate as a whole, later this week will confirm Dr. Kissinger with little dissent precisely because of his breadth of knowledge and extraordinary articulation. One irony is that, as the first Jew in the post of Secretary of State, he will seek in what will be his first official act to muffle the hopes of those in the Soviet Union, particularly Jews and intellectuals who yearn for individual liberty and the right to emigrate.
Another irony is that despite his almost full support in the Senate he will be opposing a measure that is the manifest desire of more than three-fourths of the Senate and two-thirds of the House.
To keep his pledge to the Kremlin that it will have “most favored nation” treatment, President Nixon is personally pressing for the J-M-V amendment to die in the Ways and Means Committee. Once a trade measure is set aside there, attempts to revive it are rarely successful. Thus the committee’s “tentative” vote Wednesday on the Trade Act’s MFN section is crucial.
Although 18 of its 25 members have sponsored J-M-V, its adoption is seen as highly uncertain unless its supporters reverse the tides against it and reverse them quickly. The MFN vote is “tentative” since the committee will take a second ballot when it considers the bill as a whole.
THREE-PRONGED THREAT AGAINST AMENDMENT
J-M-V is threatened in three ways: First, by the President’s intercession with key committee members, notably, his luncheon–with Dr. Kissinger present Sept. 13–with Al Ulman (R.Ore.), acting committee chairman, and Herman T. Schneebli (R.Pa.), its ranking minority member; secondly, by Dr. Kissinger’s appearance before the committee just before its secret vote; thirdly, by the proposal suddenly put before the committee only in the past week by its two California members–James C. Corman, a Democrat, and Jerry L. Pettis, a Republican.
Both were among the 286 House sponsors of JMV from which they have now defected. Under the proposal, Nixon could grant MFN status to the Soviet Union and other Communist countries and send annual reports to Congress on whether they show “reasonable progress” in emigration and human rights policies. Either branch would have 90 days to veto the MFN treatment for a country by a majority vote after examining the “progress.”- The President would require new Congressional authority after three years to grant MFN treatment to any country.
The Pettis-Corman proposal is being backed as a “compromise” by big commercial interests eager to do business with the Soviet Union. It is deemed unacceptable by some Soviet Jewish activists who want to know what measures will be defined as “reasonable progress” and who will define them.
The President’s own proposal is for him to have the sole decision on MFN and the right to grant U.S. credits and trade benefits on the same basis now given to any friendly country, like Canada, without any commitment from the USSR on human rights. J-M-V specifically would put into law that no Communist country can receive MFN without agreeing beforehand to emigration rights consonant with internationally agreed principles.
SWEET TALK AND HARD FACTS
In his testimony before the Senate committee, Dr. Kissinger consistently and persuasively, but not altogether convincingly, argued that the U.S. should not predicate its foreign policy on “transformation” of a country’s domestic structure. To him, J-M-V constitutes an intrusion into the Soviet internal system. He adroitly pleased committee chairman J. William Fulbright (D.Ark.), J-M-V’s harshest opponent, by testifying, “I have insisted that foreign governments have no standing in a negotiation to comment on our domestic situation.”
Dr. Kissinger also told Claiborne Pell (D.R.I.): “Senator, the question is whether an increase in tension would have a more beneficial result and I doubt that very much.”
Nixon’s “quiet diplomacy” statement in Oct. 1972 regarding human rights within the Soviet Union was intended to placate American feeling for Soviet Jewry. The issue, Soviet Jewry activists say, has gone beyond even that. In recent days, Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov twice has appealed to the U.S. to pass the Jackson Amendment to help all Soviet citizens. For that and other deeds, Alexander Solzhenitsyn nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Where “only Jews” had been involved, the country is now seeing other “dissidents” denied elementary freedoms. Apart from this human factor, the Kissinger principle of non-interference appears contradicted by his own views and U.S. practices and law. From Truman through Nixon, American presidents have favored economic and military assistance that undeniably were to affect “internal systems.” As Sen. George McGovern told JTA : “If we don’t interfere in internal affairs what the hell were we doing in Vietnam?”
The Export Administrative Act of 1969 specifically denotes trade as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. The case for MFN without a human rights attachment and opposition to J-M-V constitute distortion and exaggeration combined. Insistence on adherence in a bilateral agreement to an international social compact like the Declaration of Human Rights is hardly a “transformation of a domestic system.” Jackson has said that on this issue Dr. Kissinger is “dead wrong.” The problem facing Jackson supporters is whether their facts can eclipse business interests, Nixon’s design and Dr. Kissinger’s eloquence.
Israel Minister of Absorption Nathan Peled informed his party, Mapam, that he would not be a candidate for a ministerial post in the next Cabinet after elections. The Mapam Secretariate is expected to convene within four days to decide on its candidates for the Knesset and municipal elections and for ministerial posts. It was also learned that should Yaacov Hazan decline to run for the Knesset, Party Secretary Meir Talmi would head the Mapam list.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
