Kissinger’s Shadow (39 page)

Authors: Greg Grandin

*
In his January 1976 testimony to the Senate subcommittee regarding Angola, Kissinger insisted that the U.S. needed to show resolve, to be “determined to use its strength” in “Black Africa.” “If the United States is seen to emasculate itself in the face of massive, unprecedented Soviet and Cuban intervention,” Kissinger asked, “what will be the perception of leaders around the world?” Kissinger cited the Monroe Doctrine, claiming that that 1823 presidential statementâwhich declared the Western Hemisphere off limits to European powersâgranted the president the “unusual discretion” to act in Africa without congressional oversight (Senator Joe Biden accused him of trying to implement a “global Monroe Doctrine”). But Kissinger's intrigues came first, provoking the Soviet intervention that Kissinger then said the U.S. had to answer so as not to emasculate itself. In his May 1978 congressional testimony, Stockwell, the CIA agent who ran the agency's southern African operations, is unambiguous that the Soviets and the Cubans entered the Angola conflict only
after
Kissinger and CIA director William Colby began their covert operation. The CIA and Kissinger's proxy, China, began providing training and weapons to anti-MPLA rebels in May 1974. The Soviets
subsequently
began to arm the MPLA, in September 1974. The Cubans became involved the
following
year. Stockwell described Kissinger's 1976 testimony as a complete fabrication: “The CIA director and Mr. Kissinger were surely acutely aware that the American public would not tolerate such an operation 3 months after the humiliation of our evacuation of South Vietnam, so they lied about it. Even in secret briefings to Congress they dissembled. Director [William] Colby and Secretary Kissinger testified to the Congress that no Americans were involved in the Angola conflict, that no American arms were being sent directly into Angola, that the CIA had no involvement with South Africa, and that the CIA was not involved in the recruitment of mercenaries. Their testimony was misleading on all of these points.” For Kissinger's testimony, see US Senate,
Hearings before the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the Committee on Foreign RelationsÂ â¦ on U.S. Involvement in Civil War in Angola, January 29, February 3, 4, and 6, 1976
(1976); for Stockwell's, see
United States-Angolan Relations: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on International Relations
(1978). The effects of Kissinger's and then Reagan's covert wars spread north of Angola, into Central Africa. Human Rights Watch, in its 2004
World Report
, p. 313, linked the ongoing resource-war crisis in the Congo to US covert operations in Angola in the 1970s, particularly to the support, weapons, and encouragement the United States gave to Zaire's anti-MPLA leader, Mobutu Sese Seko.

*
The Los Angeles Times
(February 14, 1974) says that the word
petrodollar
was coined in late 1973, introduced into English by New York investment bankers who courted oil-producing countries of the Middle East. Already by June 1973âwith the worst of that year's many crises still in the future (October's Arab-Israeli War, the oil embargo, and November's recession, which lasted for two years), Nixon's Treasury Secretary George Shultz gave a speech saying that rising oil prices could result in a “highly advantageous mutual bargain” between the United States and petroleum-producing countries in the Middle East. Indeed, many began to argue that such a “bargain” might solve a number of problems: create demand for the US dollar (to compensate for Nixon's 1971 withdrawal from the Bretton-Woods system); inject needed money into a flagging defense industry, which was hit hard by the Vietnam wind-down (Secretary of Defense Schlesinger said that Iranian weapons sales helped pay for military research and development); and cover mounting deficits, through the petrodollar purchase of Treasury bonds. Petrodollars were not a quick fix; high energy prices remained a drag on the US economy, with inflation and high interest rates a problem for nearly a decade. Nor was petrodollar dependence part of a preconceived plan. Rather, that dependence grew fitfully, in response to an array of global events, as illustrated by Kissinger's evolving relationship to the Middle East. Between 1969 and 1971, Nixon and Kissinger accommodated Arab and Iranian economic nationalism, working, for instance, with Muammar al-Qaddafi after he seized power in Libya in 1969 and forced new terms on Occidental Oil. During these years, “Washington,” the historian Daniel Sargent writes, “had toleratedâand even encouragedâprice increases that enhanced Iran's and Saudi Arabia's capacities to serve as guarantors of Cold War security interests.” But the Arab-Israeli War, followed by the embargo, forced a reckoning: “The United States,” as Kissinger would later sum up the problem, “has an interest in the survival of Israel, but we of course have an interest in the 130 million Arabs that sit athwart the world's oil supplies.” What to do? Washington's two gulf “guarantors”âIran and Saudi Arabiaâwere proving recalcitrant (the spiraling cost of oil made the shah giddy: “of course it is going to rise. Certainly!” he told an interviewer at the end of 1973; the Saudis, meanwhile, begged Kissinger to understand that they were under pressure from radicals: they had no choice but to send troops to fight Israel and cut oil production, including oil it supplied to the US Seventh Fleet in the Pacific). Kissinger tried saber rattling, working up various military options with Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, including the possible occupation of Abu Dhabi. “Let's work out a plan for grabbing some Middle East oil if we want,” Kissinger said. “Can't we overthrow one of the sheikhs just to show that we can do it?” he asked. But on November 28, the Saudis blinked and backed down. Within less than a year, Saudi Arabia helped end the embargo and agreed to increase production by a million barrels a day, to be sold to the United States. For his part, Kissinger began to promote the idea of a so-called oil floor price policy, below which the cost per barrel wouldn't fall, which, among other things, was meant to protect the shah and the Saudis from a sudden drop in demand and provide US petroleum corporations a guaranteed profit margin. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger began to increase US military aid and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Throughout 1974 and 1975, Kissinger continued to fantasize occasionally about a decisive strike: “We may have to take some oil fields.” “I'm not saying we have to take over Saudi Arabia,” he said at a later date, “how about Abu Dhabi, or Libya?” But the foundation for what has become the rock-solid alliance between the House of Saud and Washington's political class was already in place.

*
The rivalry between the two Harvard immigrant grand strategists, Kissinger and Brzezinski, is well known. But Brzezinski by 1979 was absolutely Kissingerian in his advice to Carter. In fact, a number of Kissinger's allies who continued on in the Carter administration, including Walter Slocombe and David Newsom, influenced the July decision to politically support the jihad. Newsom, Carter's undersecretary of state for political affairs, stated in a March 30, 1979, meeting that “it was U.S. policy to reverse the current Soviet trend and presence in Afghanistan, and to demonstrate to the Pakistanis our interest and concern about Soviet involvement, to demonstrate to the Pakistanis, Saudis, and others our resolve to stop the extension of Soviet influence in the Third World.” Newsom had earlier been Kissinger's man in Africa and the “leading public advocate” of Kissinger's “tar baby tilt”âthat is, the set of policy recommendations that led to civil wars in Angola and Mozambique and renewed support for white supremacist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia. Slocombe, Carter's undersecretary of defense, asked at that meeting if there might not be “value” in continuing to support the Afghan insurgency, “sucking the Soviets into a Vietnam quagmire.”

*
Compare Kissinger's memorandum of a conversation he had with Dobrynin (which took place before his meeting with Haig) with Dobrynin's diary entry of the same meeting. Kissinger describes Dobrynin as “ashen” and “clearly” worried about the “Cuban problem.” He says he dressed the Soviet envoy down, threatened “drastic action,” and warned of the “grave” situation, cutting him off when he tried to change the topic. But Dobrynin's diary records no such confrontation. They simply matter-of-factly record that the point of the meeting was for Kissinger to pass on Nixon's “concerns.” “Kissinger,” Dobrynin wrote, “said that the President requests that this message not be regarded as some kind of official representation or protest, but rather as his strictly confidential and important appeal to the Soviet leaders in the hope that it will receive the attention it deserves” (both found in Douglas Selvage et al.,
Soviet-American Relations
[2007], pp. 193, 197). One study noted that Kissinger's reported “language [was] uncannily reminiscent of the ultimatums of the original Cuban missile crisis.”

*
Central America was not a high priority for Kissinger, but he continued giving steadfast support to right-wing dictatorships and death-squad states already in power when he took office. In 1970 in Guatemala, for example, Kissinger and Alexander Haig were involved in passing the names and addresses of “Guatemalan terrorists” to security forces, even though Washington was well aware that the government was using its US-funded counterterror program to eliminate not just armed insurgents but
all
political opposition and that the great majority of political prisoners taken were summarily executed. Indeed, in 1971, the CIA reported that Guatemala's president at the time, Carlos Arana, was directly involved “in drawing up death lists.” Repression in Guatemala got so out of hand that a member of Kissinger's NSC staff urged that the so-called 40 Committeeâthe committee chaired by Kissinger that brought together various arms of the national security state that helped organize the campaign to overthrow Allende in Chileâreconsider US support for the Guatemalan government. Kissinger, as chair, didn't think it was an issue worth taking up and robust military support continued through to the Carter administration. The mass slaughter of Guatemalan Maya peasants between 1978 and 1983 is often not included in the genocides Kissinger is associated with since it took place after his public service. But throughout his tenure, aid provided by Washington (which strengthened the security forces that carried out the genocide) steadily increased. See note 24 for sources for this discussion.

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