To Rebuild the Image

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its influence with the old regime to make the necessary changes, and if that failed, engaged in timely diplomatic actions—both open and covert—to position itself as advantageously as possible with the new order. But Kirkpatrick and other critics of the Carter human rights policy are quite right to warn that in dealing with right-wing leaders—"our sons of bitches," as Franklin D. Roosevelt is supposed to have once called them—the U.S. must avoid either the appearance or the reality of working for their overthrow.

While maintaining and even propagating its own ideals, the U.S. ought to conduct human rights policy in the context of Realpolitik. It ought to be a matter not of moralizing about the relative virtues of a particular regime, but of analyzing its ability to survive. The Reagan Administration is afraid that it inherited a set of relations in Asia and Latin America strained to the breaking point by the Carter human rights policy. It ought to worry more about the strains within those societies themselves —notably in El Salvador. It is one thing for the U.S. to help embattled client governments combat terrorism or cross-border subversion; it is quite another for the U.S. to prop up a regime that is doomed as much by its own weaknesses and excesses as anything else.

What if revolution were to engulf Saudi Arabia? The monarchy there faces threats to its survival. Some of them are external, especially from radical Arab states but also from Iran.

Some are internal: Islamic fundamentalism, corruption, internecine rivalries within the House of Saud. The U.S. should provide military protection against outright invasion and assist Saudi security forces against subversion, but it should also keep pressure on the royal family to clean up its more conspicuous corruption and help the government cope with the social turmoil that so often accompanies booming economic development. Realistically, the U.S. should recognize that this semifeudal dynasty may not last forever. Contingency planning for that day will not be easy, since it is hard to foresee what combination of forces would replace the House of Saud. At the very least, the U.S. needs to maintain strong ties with the growing number of Western-educated and Western-influenced Saudi technocrats, who will have a stake in their country's future no matter who rules it. 11 is in the self-interest of the U.S. to help Third World nations solve their problems of poverty, social unrest and overpopulation; multilateral aid programs are the best way to do this.

The Council on Environmental Quality and the State Department last year synthesized Government and academic views on the subjects of population, natural resources and environment.

Their findings, contained in a volume called The Global 2000 Report to the President, estimate that the world's population will have increased more than 50% in the last quarter of this century —from 4 billion in 1975 to 6.35 billion in 2000. Roughly 90% of that growth will occur in the so-called less developed countries (LDCs), thus widening the gap between rich and poor nations, exacerbating worldwide shortages of food, water and energy and challenging that more amorphous but equally vital resource, political stability. There is no way that the U.S. can isolate itself from those complex problems—nor should it try. Indeed,