The Kissinger Commission Report

By Dow Kirkpatrick

Vol. 6, No. 1, 1984, p. 2

The Kissinger Commission report (the President’s commission on Central America) fails to recommend an alternative for Central America. It calls for more of what has already failed.

This failure results from flawed premises. The first is that US national security overrides everything else. The second is the assumption that US security can best be assured by casting the problem as geopolitical. “The real enemy of the United States is not Russia, but the poverty of the people,” said a Central American to me recently.

The plight of the people is recognized by the Report, but the solution is to depend on the same old structures and dynamics which have been the cause of the impoverished of the region. As outlined in this article and the following interview, there is an Alternative, neither US capitalism nor Soviet socialism, which designs an economic system to bring full humanity to the majority of the people. If we really want a secure region close to our borders, then we should join the poor in reorganizing society to meet human needs.