CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY The corporations can’t hack it putting Carter in office, or voting to create an independent, ongoing progressive constituency in the form of the Citizen’s Party? My judgment is the latter. CSQ: A t the beginning o f the Carter presidency, it seemed there was some hope anyway in the area o f foreign affairs. He was talking about Human Rights policy. He got the Panama Canal treaty passed, and he ’s handled, at least to some degree, the Nicaraguan situation, although things have fallen apart elsewhere this last while. What fundamental differences are there between Carter’s philosophy and approach to running things internationally, and the way you ’d like to be able to do so i f you were elected. Commoner: The Carter foreign policy is a foreign policy of belligerence. I think that his treatment of the Mideast situation has been disastrous. Look, he’s now created a rapid deployment force which is directed towards the Middle East, flatly, and the general in command, Kelly, said before Congress the other day, when he was pressed, we are ready for war tomorrow. But Carter, as far as I ’m concerned, should have made a clarifying statement that the Mideast force is not a force directed toward conducting a war. Of course, that raises a question, what is it all about? That’s just one example. I think that his foreign policy has just been disastrous. CSQ: How would you see your fo r eign policy i f you were in the position to conduct one, toward our traditional allies, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France. Commoner: Is Japan a traditional ally? CSQ: In the last 15 to 20 years, it certainly has been a partner o f an alliance. Commoner: I think that the United States has tried to form an alliance against the Soviet Union, which I think is a disastrous step, because it can only lead to war. The Soviet Union feels itself surrounded and responds to threats, unfortunately, by belligerence, as in Afghanistan. I think it’s been a mistake for the United States to put together alliances which are really only directed toward the Soviet Union, not toward the maintenance of peace. CSQ: Another area that’s been hot — and is going to be hotter — is South Africa. What is your position toward South Africa? Commoner: We’re all on the side of the blacks and against the rightwing white governments. We think that, more important, all of the Third World countries need constructive economic support from the United States, not military equipment. Hell, we’re distributing a lot more military equipment than we are economic aid. CSQ: What would you really like to see happen as far as the U.S. ’s role in the Middle East? A t this time it has a traditional alliance with Israel that has been a bugaboo from the word go. What would you really see happening there? Commoner: The first thing for us to do is to stop shipping arms — to the Middle East, to anybody, anywhere in the world, but particularly the Middle East. The next thing to do is to take positive steps toward settling our differences with Iran. I have already proposed two things: One is re-establishing diplomatic relations; the other is releasing all of the documents that record our intervention in the internal affairs of Iran. I have good reason to believe that this would facilitate the release of the hostages, which, in turn, I think, wduld help settle the war with Iraq. 1 also think that we ought to disassemble the Rapid Deployment Force. I think that is a threat to peace in the Middle East, a threat to peace in the world. When the Iraqi dictators learned that we’re getting ready to prepare a force to operate in the Middle East, I’m sure they said, “ Yeah, we’ve got this century-old conflict. This is our chance to really do something about it.” They moved in. I think we encourage that belligerence. CSQ: What do you see as our role vis-a-vis Israel. The relationship it has with the United States is a longstanding one. Commoner: I think that if we withdrew the shipment of arms to the Middle East, it would actually help Israel. You know, Israel confronts two armies of any significance. One is the Egyptian Army and the other is the Saudi Arabian Air Force. They’re at peace with Egypt for the moment, which is a good thing. But we have been arming those two potential adversaries of Israel, which is insane. CSQ: All three sides . . . that’s interesting. Commoner: Well, and the other side of it is that Israel is the only country in the area that produces its own weapons. I think, on balance, Israel would benefit from our complete cessation of arms shipments. CSQ: William Appleman Williams, writing in The Nation, said that the United States ’ biggest problem in the next period o f time is to deal with the loss o f empire and the psychological adjustment as much as anything. I f we were not able to maintain the empire and our direct access to the material goods that we’ve been exploiting fo r these many years, what do you think would happen in this country? It would appear that we would at least have some diminished production, that we’d see some shift in the actual social and economic balance in this country. How would you like to see that change? Commoner: It’s already happened. The inability of the corporations — guided only by profit-oriented decisions — to maintain the American economy is now notorious. Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last November that there’s no way to deal with our economic problems without reducing the standard of living of the average American. That means making the poor poorer. The corporations can’t hack it, to put it simply. We’re in the process of disindustrialization — in the steel industry, the auto industry — our railroads are the only railroads in any industrial country that are deteriorating. In other words, our corporations are already in retreat, and not because of a shortage or difficulty of access to natural resources. You have to make much broader decisions than profit-oriented ones, decisions based on the national interest, on the question of the environment, jobs, and so on. CSQ: What rate o f unemployment are you willing to live with? Commoner: Zero! Our position is, everybody who wants to work ought to have a job. You know, it’s rather easy to predict the number of people who are going to be looking for jobs from year to year, from demographic data. We say, we ought to build into the system of production sufficient jobs for those people. CSQ: What areas would you like to see this job building? You’re not talking about make-work jobs; you ’re talking about new jobs that’ll make this country come alive again. Commoner: We have an awful lot of things that we have to do. We have to rebuild the railroads. We have to develop a total solar economy. Those two things alone are enough to give everybody jobs, providing we organize in order to do such social purposes rather than to make profits for a few corporations. CSQ: I t ’s significant that the Citizen’s Party has nominated both a woman and a Native American fo r Vice President. What role has she played so far in the campaign. Commoner: LaDonna campaigned down in Eugene. She’s been campaigning, particularly in the Southwest and western states, although she’s been in New York as well. She’ll be on the road steadily from now to election. CSQ: She’s part o f some Native American group [CIRC] that is concerned about uranium, uranium mining, and is also open to having it continue; fo r job reasons, I would assume. 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