Indignation Takes Wrong Turn

The City Council of Beverly Hills has bowed to the kind of demonstration that serves only to make worse the problem that it seeks to cure. In this case the council has agreed to the demands of the Free South Africa Movement to try to evict the South African consulate from Beverly Hills.

Indignation over South Africa is understandable, but there are better ways to demonstrate opposition to its repugnant racial policies than halting communication between the United States and South Africa. The enhancement of communication should be the goal.

Diplomatic posts are essential to international communication. They function to facilitate communication in both directions. Those who want to eliminate South African consulates are writing a strategy that would also eliminate the consulates of the United States in South Africa. Those posts can give useful support to the American Embassy in Pretoria, putting Americans directly in touch with more South Africans of all races. The U.S. government is wisely working on expansion, not contraction, of that network of diplomatic posts with plans for a consulate in Port Elizabeth in addition to the consulates already operating in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Local communities, trying to impose their own foreign-policy positions, can disrupt or distort that communication.

The action of the Beverly Hills City Council is reminiscent of moves at the United Nations to silence those with whom the majority disagrees. Only the vigorous leadership of the United States has preserved a seat for Israel in the face of those efforts to abrogate the norms of international relations. There is no evidence that diplomatic isolation has served to solve problems. Rather, it makes problems all the more intractable.