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policy decisions based on the preservation of the status quo .
Human rights considerations have always been divorced from the
establishment's perceptions of its vital interests. The
establishment wants to preserve the stability of existing markets; it
wants to have the possibility of .creating new ones, and to know
that a return on their investments will be guaranteed. This is
clearly the case in the present Polish situation, where the first
reaction of the Soviet Union and the conglomeration of West
German banks, and the American government as well, was to
help the Poles by investing money, by enlarging the fantastic
loans which have already been given to Poland.
Howard:
Help the Poles? You mean help the Polish rulers?
Kavan:
Yes, that's what I meant, help the Polish rulers . The Western
mass media presents the decision as a decision to help the Poles by
lending them money . That money is actually being distributed
among Polish corporations, it is not given to the working class
who, quite correctly, state that their wages are not adequate to
allow them to buy basic foodstuffs . That money is being lent by
one establishment to the other establishment. The one thing the
West definitely doesn't do is to help the opposition movements in
the country. They are not working to help the striking workers in
Poland or the political opposition movements in Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, or elsewhere . Such help would lead to a long period of
destabilization, to a period of uncertainty . It would result in a
zone of instability where they would not be able to invest for fear
that they could never be sure of getting their investments out.
Let's jump back to 1968 for example . Czechoslovakia was in
great need of economic help and asked for a relatively small loan
from the United States. Here I must stress the fact that Czechoslo–
vakia is far richer than Poland, that it is among the richest, most
industrialized countries in Eastern Europe , the second richest
after East Germany. It is definitely a society which is capable of
paying interest on its loans, and of repaying the principal of its
loans. Despite this, the U.S. establishment, after consultations
with its various bodies, including the CIA, decided to refuse the
loan request. It concluded that Czechoslovakia, however stable it
appeared, was inherently unstable because there were movements
which challenged the existing order of things and which might
succeed, given the amount of freedom they then enjoyed . The
United States felt that this could lead to dissatisfaction, and
ultimately to invasion . Your CIA was much better informed and
