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For the U.S. to backslide into isolationism, or to regard every revolutionary leader as an agent of Moscow, merely exposes the Third World to even more Soviet influence. The current tendency in the U.S. to see the developing world as a playground for Communism and as essentially inhospitable to the West risks becoming a self-fulfilling delusion. This danger is especially acute in Africa, where the U.S. has interests far broader than mere access to minerals. Sentiment has been building in the U.S. for the past year to fall back on South Africa, since it is a militarily powerful, staunchly anti-Communist nation in a politically volatile, economically vital region. South Africa also happens to be ruled by a tribe of whites transplanted from Europe. While muted, that racial factor is at least one component in the resurgence of conservative sympathy in the U.S. for the Pretoria regime.
The U.S. should keep its distance from South Africa and keep up its strong advocacy of reform there. At the same time, it should avoid heavyhanded pressure for immediate and comprehensive transformation. This approach would only reinforce the fortress mentality of the Afrikaners. The U.S. should also refrain from actively supporting the guerrillas who seek the overthrow of the South African government. Even the most eloquently indignant spokesmen for the states of black Africa do under-the-counter business with South Africa, which last year hit a record $1.7 billion in two-way trade with the rest of Africa. Many leaders may be willing to settle for internal reforms that would abolish the most hateful aspects of apartheid, at least as a prelude to the black majority rule that clearly is decades away in South Africa.
With the proper emphasis, human rights is still an important component of American foreign policy.
The Carter Administration's human rights policy suffered from being sanctimonious in tone and selective in application. Now there is a danger of overcorrection. U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick earned a place in the Reagan Administration by arguing, in a Commentary article, that the U.S. should support "moderate autocrats"—that is, right-wing regimes friendly to the U.S.—rather than allowing them to be replaced by "less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion." But there is little reason for concluding, as Kirkpatrick implies, that the U.S. could have saved the late Shah of Iran or Nicaraguan Strongman Anastasio Somoza when they were in the throes of crisis. For decades those dictators were their own worst enemies. The U.S. failed them as well as itself by not pressing them much earlier than it did to reform their regimes, curb corruption and nepotism, and foster compromises to bridge the huge gaps that were developing between the rulers and the ruled. Had the Shah and Somoza liberalized their rules a decade ago, they might not have been faced with insurrection and revolution. Also, one reason why the regimes that replaced the Shah and Somoza were so anti-American was that the U.S. had either ignored or mishandled opposition political figures for so long.
There is an important lesson to be learned from the Iranian and Nicaraguan traumas: the U.S. should have understood earlier the nature and extent of the opposition forces, used