Nuclear Policy : Jackson Sees First Use as Irrational

The following edited dialogue between the Rev. Jesse Jackson, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Times staff writer Robert Scheer was drawn from three hours of recorded interviews.

SCHEER: If Michael Dukakis gets the nomination, how enthusiastically will you support him?

JACKSON: It’s premature to say what the relationship would be except that it will be amiable, mutually respectful.

Q: Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense, and three other prominent Democrats have called for an announced U.S. policy of no first use of nuclear weapons. Dukakis disagrees. Where do you stand on this?

A: I am opposed to first use of nuclear weapons and agree with McNamara. It doesn’t make any sense to defend Europe with a pledge to blow up the world. As Henry Kissinger said, “mutual suicide cannot be made into a rational option.”

Q: So what would you do to defend Europe? Dukakis calls for conventional force modernization in Europe. What is your alternative?

Unnecessary Military Buildup

A: We have to make the military situation reflect political reality. Our allies can bear a greater burden of their own defense, since they are now creditor nations. Gorbachev has offered to negotiate significant troop reductions with asymmetrical cuts to make the forces equivalent. We should be reducing forces on both sides, not wasting more money on an unnecessary buildup.

Q: Budget projections have been a persistent source of difference between you and Dukakis. He argues that nobody can project a realistic budget in a campaign. Is he right?

A: When a President gets into office, he must put out a complete budget and project it for 10 months later. I’m not talking about a detailed budget. We are only asking Dukakis to make his priorities clear and to make it clear who will pay the cost of fulfilling the many promises he has made.

Q: Why is this budget business so important?

Mandate for Change Needed

A: We know we have a $150-billion deficit and pressing social needs. To change direction, a President needs a mandate from the people. We know that the Pentagon will defend its budgets and the rich will defend their interests and the only way the President can stand with the people to reduce the military budget and to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes is if he gets a mandate from the people in the election to do that. Otherwise this deficit will be paid off from the pockets of the middle class and working people.

Q: What’s happened with you and whites in this election? Recently, I saw you walk out of a hotel in Stockton, and the mostly white crowd was applauding you. That didn’t happen four years ago. What has changed?

A: I worked hard to raise their security level. Many of those people met me for the first time in the media, during the 1960s, when my classmates were being shot down. They met me at a time when it wasn’t fashionable to smile. We had to reserve our joy because we had to fight.

Things we take for granted today seemed beyond our scope then. Twenty years ago, a black mayor was a national hero. A black running for a county office was too ambitious. During that period, we had to use non-violence and direct action to make the case for self-evident truths about which it was humiliating to have to argue. To have to convince somebody that you should have the right to use the bathroom downtown is humiliating really.

Q: But that’s two decades ago. What’s the difference between the white people you were arguing with and the ones who are coming to your rallies?

A: These white people see me as their fighter. They want someone to argue their case for the women who need livable wages or day-care. They cannot count on politics as usual to argue their case. Politics as usual has abandoned them. What’s different now is that they identify.

In 1968, it was the garbage workers--mostly black--who were victims of economic violence. The plight of the garbage workers in ’68 is now the plight of the steelworkers, the family farmers, the deregulated truck drivers and the deregulated airline workers. I bring the moral authority of the civil rights movement to bear on their problems on an economic common ground that never could have been reached without the social justice movement of 20 years ago. There’s a whole lot of people who have a yearning for America to be good, as well as powerful.

Q: What you’re doing here is expanding your constituency in a way that looks beyond 1988?

A: Dr. (Martin Luther) King delivered the same message 20 years ago, but the chief beneficiaries of it were not even listening. After all, he started organizing the poor people’s campaign, pulling together people across race and religion and sex. But he was perceived as speaking just to the poor people or just to black people. In fact, he was addressing the structural shift taking place in the economy even then.

That’s why when I walk in and see the big crowds, I feel an obligation to say something to them, to be something for them, to do something with them. That’s why I can never give half a speech. People need more hope than help. If people have hope, they can help themselves.

Q: What is your view of Israel and the Middle East?

A: I support Israel’s right to exist with secure borders. I support U.N. Resolution 242. I support a state for the sovereign people of Palestine because I think that coexistence must be the wave of the future. But you don’t achieve that by threatening to take aid away from Israel or by making Israel less secure. You have to offer Israel more security. That is what we did at Camp David. We did not threaten to take security from Israel or from Egypt. We offered Israel and Egypt more security.

Q: How?

A: We must be a part of the buffer between two peoples until fears are calmed down. But in the meantime we must know that the occupation is too great a burden to bear. Economically it’s too expensive; we are basically footing the bill. Economically Israel cannot grow. Israel cannot expand to its true world potential; it cannot expand toward Africa; it cannot expand toward the Arab countries; it is rejected by most nations of the world. It cannot grow under this arrangement.

Emotionally, it is terribly draining to the people who live there. Militarily, it’s too bloody. We must do the harder thing than just choose sides. We must use our strength to bring sides together. That requires courage.

Q: Dukakis says that he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Would you?

A: It would just create more tension. The Catholics of the world will contest that. The Muslims will contest that. So you simply apply more pressure to Israel and reduce the prospects for peace. Jerusalem ought to be under international guardianship. It is the very sacred home of three great religions.

Q: Have you held back this time around from raising the matter of human rights in Gaza and the West Bank?

A: I’ve simply tried to be principled in my statements, and yet diplomatic in my approach. The present arrangement there--a very brutal arrangement--is wrong and will not work. But my position has been consistent: The security of Israel and the rights of Palestinians are two sides of the same coin. You can’t separate one from the other. Any other arrangement is an illusion, leaving Israel with false security, the Palestinians with no security, and neither with peace.

Q: Recently in a private meeting with Jewish leaders in Los Angeles you were critical of Israel’s role in South Africa. Why won’t you say that in a public speech?

A: Oh, I have talked about Israel selling arms to and trading with South Africa and that South Africa is the historical successor to Nazi Germany. Many of the S.S. troops who do not lie buried at Bitburg escaped to South Africa, and its leaders held Hitler as a hero. They provided a sanctuary for many Nazis, and they behave very much the same way toward black people, and that relationship hurts.

Q: Given that depth of feeling that you have about all this, how could it be that when Louis Farrakhan made that remark about Hitler being a “great man,” you didn’t jump right in and just renounce it?

A: I did reject that remark, but I was also asked to renounce his very person, which is beyond the way we relate to people. I do not believe Judaism is a gutter religion, as he called it. I’m a Judeo-Christian.

Q: But he holds those views.

A: As I grew up in South Carolina, I never had the privilege of not talking with my enemies. I had to work to separate myself from their points of view, to move on, and that’s my experience of how you engage in human relationships.

Q: Do you feel that this issue keeps coming up as a way of a avoiding dealing with your position on the Mideast?

A: The constant opening of old wounds is not healing and diverts attention away from the challenges. As I reminded my Jewish friends in that Los Angeles meeting, we as human beings make errors and correct our ways. We forgive each other and move on. There must not be a double standard for forgiveness. Reagan opened his campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Miss. The only thing it’s known for is the place where the civil rights workers (Andrew) Goodman, (James) Chaney and (Michael) Schwerner were killed by racists. There is nothing else there--no railroad, no airport. The signal was so clear. And the klan endorsed him.

Then Reagan--against the overwhelming appeal of world Jewry--went to Bitburg. Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Bitburg to Johannesburg is an unbroken ideological line. Yet he was forgiven and permitted to move on. In my heart and in my politics, I have moved on.

Q: Have you also moved on and forgiven Mayor (Edward I.) Koch?

A: Yes. Koch hurt a lot of people, as well as himself, and showed real patterns of sickness. But I would not lower the tone of my campaign to wallow with Koch as he sent his racial and religious signals to further hurt people.

But no one called for him to be repudiated by the Democratic Party. He’s not challenged, although he has hurt many people. In some sense, the capacity to forgive is a great gift because the burden of unfolding yesterday’s problems is substantial. We cannot go forward looking backwards, unless you run slower and eventually stumble and fall. You have to move on.

Q: But why do your past remarks keep coming up?

A: I do not know. I know, for example, I’ve been fairly consistent across the years trying to foster better relationships between blacks and Jews. Some years ago, the Nazis were going to march on Skokie, and many people thought the Jewish community overreacted. I did not. The ACLU was on one side, and I was on the other. I stood in the temple, because I thought the Nazis were robbing the spirit of the law, so we stood together. But then there was the Bakke case. And even though some Jewish organizations did not oppose affirmative action in that case, a lot of high visibility Jewish organizations did.

Many blacks were traumatized because they had never known the relationship between Jews and blacks other than our marching together in the South. That spirit was symbolized by Dr. King’s close relation to Rabbi (Abraham Joshua) Heschel, who was the theologian I was most driven by. I have an autographed copy of every book Heschel’s ever written.

Q: How serious were Bakke and the other attacks on affirmative action?

A: Clearly, we blacks have lost ground since Bakke. Universities no longer feel any motivation to pursue affirmative action as a remedy.

My point is that we should be fighting together for equal funding in public education for all children. That’s the kind of area in which we can work together. If you agree on seven issues out of 10, if you focus on the seven, you can handle the three. If you focus on the three, you’ll never get to the seven. That’s my way of looking at relationships.

Q: And the past hurt of Hymietown?

A: I took a stand without any qualification at the San Francisco Democratic Convention in a speech. I said if my words caused any harm and pain, forgive me because that’s not my true self, that’s not what I’m about. That should have been enough for us to move on.

When Gorbachev met with me, I raised the issue of Soviet treatment of Jews and immigration, and he said at first: “Well, it’s not true, some of my best friends are Jews.”

Q: Did Gorbachev really say that?

A: Yeah. But, you know, I’ve heard that before. So, I said, some of your best friends may be Jews, but this question is about Jewish immigration. He said, well there are some Jews in high places in the Soviet Union. I responded for a third time and said we’re talking about immigration and treatment of Soviet Jews.

Q: Do you and Dukakis differ on defense issues?

A: Europe and Japan must bear more of the burden of their own defense. We should focus more on deeper cuts and on Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer to make even bigger cuts in Warsaw Pact forces, thereby bring more security to Europe without more expenditures. Unless you do that, you will not have the money to pay for your dreams. Dukakis says he wants to put up a half billion dollars in some kind of revolving fund for infrastructure redevelopment. The Williamsburg Bridge in New York alone cost $250 million. So, a bridge in Massachusetts and a bridge in Brooklyn and that’s it. Our estimated need for infrastructure redevelopment is a trillion dollars for the next 10 years. That’s why I say we do not need a marginal alternative to Reaganomics. We need structural change.

Q: Are you suggesting that because of changes in the Soviet Union, we may be able to move beyond the Cold War?

A: Yes. Objective conditions have changed in the Soviet Union and the leadership has changed. Every time that we have challenged Gorbachev, he not only has met the challenge, but he’s also been on the offensive. Stop nuclear testing; stop deploying missiles--Gorbachev took the initiative. For the first time since World War II, a Soviet head of state seems more credible in Western Europe than an American head of state.

Q: What’s your impression of Gorbachev after having met him?

A: One thing I knew when I met Gorbachev, you’ll never see him taking off his shoe, hitting it on the desk like (Nikita S.) Khrushchev. He is a stable leader with a world view. He seems to know the weaknesses of his system and ours.

Q: What do you say to people who say you can’t trust him?

A: Every agreement that we make with him should be mutually verifiable. You can trust him to operate in his own interests. He’s willing to have on-site verification for example of these agreements on nuclear weapons. My own position on the destruction of these weapons, by the way, is that when they destroy them, it should be on television. The whole world should have the joy of watching the missile reduction.

Q: Most of the breaks in the Cold War have come under Republican administrations because they’re not afraid of being red-baited. Doesn’t that suggest that if the issue is improving relations with the Soviets, the country would be better off with George Bush?

A: Bush would not be in the mold of Republicans who break through. He is in the mold of the Republicans who clean up.

Q: For all of his evil empire talk, Ronald Reagan has taken an opportunity on arms control that even some Democrats attack him for taking. For all your own honeymoon with the Democratic leaders, aren’t there some voices in your own party that still support the Cold War?

A: Oh, no question that there is an element in our party that is reelected on the politics of fear and the politics of ignorance. For example, I’ve tried to get Dukakis to define South Africa as a terrorist state. By every definition of a terrorist state, it fits the description. And if we define it as that, it will trigger anti-terrorist policy relative to South Africa. Do we trade with a terrorist state? Of course, we do not. Do we supply arms to countries that do? Of course, we do not. Defining South Africa as a terrorist state would be a sign of our will to really fight apartheid.

Q: If you were sitting down with Dukakis right now, what would you suggest he advocate in Southern Africa?

A: The sooner he goes and sees it for himself, the better. A summit meeting with front-line heads of state to hear them is another step. Defining South Africa as a terrorist state against whom you have full sanctions is a good third step. Fourth, we should invest in building the corridor out of Mozambique and the Limpopo railroad. Zambia and Zimbabwe can then trade through Mozambique and not be forced to trade through South Africa, which effectively isolates South Africa.

If that happens, then South Africa has to go to the bargaining table, because the legs of the octopus have been cut off. The great advantage for us--beside the moral rightness of it--is that once South Africa no longer has hegemony over Southern Africa, then you also reduce the cost of trading with the region. There’s not one valuable mineral South Africa has that Southern Africa does not have.

Q: Do you favor American military protection for Angola?

A: No. The front-line heads of state are not requesting that we offer troops, just that we train and enable them to defend themselves. They will offer the manpower. They need the minimum amount of aid, and our ending of the complicity with South Africa. That’s all they really need--that we enforce our own anti-terrorist policy.

Q: What have you accomplished in this campaign?

A: We have expanded the party to make room for new people. We’ve made room for young people, women, Hispanics, blacks, Indians. We expect to see those new people represented in the party committees, in testifying on whatever is going on. We expect to see a more inclusive convention. From 1964 to 1980 the demonstration outside the conventions got bigger and bigger. There were more folks outside than in.

What have I contributed? Expansion of the party; adding millions more voters. Turning the Senate back to the Democrats. And no other Democrat can match that as an investment in the party.

Q: What do you need to get for your supporters from the Democratic Party so that you are not betraying them?

A: They must play a role at every level in the party and in its convention that will be new. They must have their issues reflected in the convention’s platform.

Q: Which issues are non-negotiable?

A: We must establish in that convention some Democratic priorities that distinguish us from Reaganomics. We must put forth a plan for building affordable housing and for making small business loans. We need a plan for a comprehensive international war on drugs. There should be a commitment to affirmative action. We ought to draft a plan to reduce this arms race and pursuing alternatives to it. We need a plan for Middle East peace. We must treat South Africa as a terrorist state.

Also there must be a plan, very early on, to shift incentives of corporate behavior from merging and purging workers to reinvestment and retraining, with some particular focus on conversion because that is the future for us.

My quest for inclusion, expansion, investment in people, re-investment in this country, a foreign policy view that’s beyond racism and sexism, anti-Semitism, escapism and fear is a consistent position. I’ll refer to it in my convention platform positions and in my speech to the delegates.

Q: Can we really expect a smooth conversion from a military-oriented economy to a peacetime one?

A: On the one hand, Reagan has put us in the box because he’s created all these good jobs for people in the military industry. These people deserve the good jobs, but the problem is they are working on something for which there is a diminishing market in the world--that is, on weapons nobody can use.

They need alternative jobs for engineers and scientists. Whether it’s the non-military development of outer space or joint ventures with the Soviets to Mars, a comprehensive Third World development plan, there’s work for them to do other than making weapons that cannot be used.

Q: Here in Southern California we have three of the top four counties of the military industrial complex. Why should workers here have any confidence that they would be given new jobs if peace breaks out?

A: If we freeze the military budget for five years, we are still looking at a $300-billion proposition. That does not constitute radical, unilateral dislocation of people’s jobs. That amounts to a 10% cut over a five-year period, which will be saving us $60 billion a year by 1993. One way to keep the workers secure is to get control of our budget deficit, because our budget deficit continues to grow, the national debt continues to grow and the trade imbalance persists, so weakening us that we cannot protect those jobs anyhow.

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Q: But the history of the whole post-war period demonstrates that it is a lot easier to get money out of Congress to build weapons when we’re afraid of the enemy than it is to get money for schools.

A: We have to change that. I remember in 1957, when the Russians shot Sputnik up, we became frightened because they had the jump on us. The way Congress justified giving money for education was to call it the National Defense Education Act. If it was a defense act, then it was all right. So students began to get scholarships, teachers went back to school in the summertime to get their masters in science and stuff like that. So, we’ve always had to put our medicine in a military capsule to take it.

In some real sense, though, education still is a defense act. It’s our first line of defense. We cannot compete with the nations of the world if we’re illiterate. We cannot remain competitive while limited to one language. The West Germans and Japanese are getting the big building contracts in Brazil, and they’re speaking Portuguese. They’re doing business in Portuguese, and we’re not. While we are pursuing communists, they’re pursuing contracts.

Here we are next door to 400 million potential customers, which represents an economic expansion greater then Europe was after World War II, and we’ve spent 10 million-plus dollars chasing 3 million Sandinistas. That money could have been spent being the foundation for a tremendous economic boom for our country. We misappropriated our money because our perspective was flawed.

Q: What do you think of Dukakis’ record as governor of Massachusetts?

A: There is no doubt Dukakis supports the 1954 Supreme Court decision against discrimination based on race. But in Massachusetts the state pays $5,000 a year to educate children in wealthy districts and $1,600 on children in poor districts. That’s discrimination based upon class. Two hundred years ago, only property owners could vote. Under this arrangement only property owners’ children get a first-class public education. Those who get the $5,000 invested in them are on their way to one of Massachusetts’ elite schools. Those who get the $1,600 are on their way to one of Massachusetts’ overcrowded jails.

Q: Have you raised this with him?

A: I certainly have made it clear that just as we had to fight denial of access based upon race, we must fight for equal funds for education without regard to your parents’ income, class, caste and sex. Dukakis also says there is no underclass. There is. Three and four generations of people with no ambition, no opportunity, lack of education, lack of jobs, lack of housing and limited health care set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle. Dukakis’ educated parents begot an educated son, who has begotten educated children.

I understand this cycle because I come from the underclass. My father had to get his veteran’s benefits, and my mother had to go back to school to become a cosmetologist. Then they got into a public housing project. I had to get a scholarship in order to get the right to vote. A combination of will, government and structural changes gave me a way out. It couldn’t have been done with just management. It required a change in structural opportunities. Those who have been abandoned need to be empowered. Structural changes for empowerment will break the underclass cycle, not well-managed Reaganomics.

Q: Is that what you think Dukakis represents--well-managed Reaganomics?

A: When Dukakis says the first issue is collecting taxes, he accepts the presuppositions of Reaganomics. Reagan had a premise that must be challenged. It was: The poor had too much money; the rich had too little money. So, the top 1% of our society now is paying 200% less in taxes; the bottom 10% is paying 20% more.

Q: What would you do about this country’s foreign debt problems?

A: Right now we’re becoming dangerously overdependent upon foreign capital. It runs us full circle. We cannot maintain a first-rate military with a second-rate economy. Why are we now in the Persian Gulf, spending $2.50 for every dollar worth of oil we bring out? Because Kuwait, a country with 1.5 million people, in effect, says, “You flag our ships, or we’ll buy nine from the Soviet Union,” and the thought of that made Reagan jump.

That shows just how vulnerable we are. So this military industry this Administration has built up has a very fragile foundation because of the level of deficit, foreign debt and trading imbalance that we have.

If we can work out troop reductions in Europe, we can work positively with the Soviets. Clearly, Third World development is something we can do with them together, and space development and joint ventures are other things we ought to pursue. That is our future.

Q: Don’t you and Ronald Reagan have a similar relationship to your parties? Aren’t you both people who have come from outside the mainstream, from outside the Establishment consensus? And haven’t you both used a kind of popular insurgency to force your views on the party regulars?

A: Yeah, and in our party those regulars lost. They came to Iowa, and they are now back at the jobs they once held with reduced ambitions. They lost, and I won. Even Dukakis has adopted my views and language. Our wing of the party won with the public. Many of those losers now want to use the convention to regain through the committee system what they lost with the public.

Q: So, you do include Dukakis in this winning faction?

A: I think he has a lot of the right instincts, and in the areas where he does not have experience--well, intelligent people can grow. Sometimes people’s growth is constricted by their advisers. Sometimes people have intellect to grow, but their cautious tendencies and lack of courageous actions will stymie their growth. I do not know those things about him, yet. But I do know that in my quest to expand our world view, in my quest to make the party just and sensitive, I will not surrender, and the people who want justice, jobs and peace shouldn’t surrender.

Q: If I understand you, you’re saying that in this presidential campaign the Cold War wing of the Democratic Party and the anti-affirmative action people, the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives have lost.

A: They all lost. They were stung in Iowa, stymied in New Hampshire, lost at home on Super Tuesday, and after Super Tuesday, they just disintegrated.

Q: Then you think you’re accomplishing on the Democratic side, what Reagan did on the Republican side. He’s just been pulling them in one direction, and you’re pulling Democrats in the other.

A: That’s true. Both of us are authentic leaders. The difference is that his view of the world is narrow and mine is expansive. You know, when he and Gorbachev meet, only one-eighth of the human race is represented in the room; seven-eighths are locked out. Your children and mine must know that the seven-eighths are going to demand either a place in that room or they’re going to have a meeting of their own.

Q: Recently, Dukakis said that the great thing about having you two guys emerge from the primary process is that he is the son of Greek immigrants, and that you are a black man from the South. Do you see this as sending some important positive message as he does?

A: It’s positive, but there are differences. Dukakis comes from a tradition of immigrants; I come from a tradition of slaves. Those are two very different ships. One came voluntarily, one involuntarily. One found acceptance here, the other one found chains.

Q: If the Cold War declines in importance, all sorts of tensions will remain, many of them involving religious antagonism. As a minister, you talk all the time about religion as a unifying force. But when you take a look around the world and see the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Northern Ireland, the tensions caused by Islamic fundamentalism in the Mideast, the bloodshed between Sikhs and Hindus in India, religion looks pretty divisive.

A: When its vision is skewed, religious passion is a formula for massacre without conscience. That’s why we have this interesting combination here in America of religious freedom without religious domination. We do not have leaders who come from heaven down, but from the people up.

Times researchers Nina Green and Nona Yates contributed to this story.