Henry Kissinger: The Author of the Famous “Kissinger Report” Is Dead
Henry Kissinger died at more than 100 years old on November 29. Secretary of State for the United States from 1973 to 1977, he is the author of the famous “Kissinger Report,” published in 1974, which was an important part of world politics on population and eugenics.
Preamble to the Great World Conferences on Population
After the Second World War, the primary concern of the eugenics movement was to contain “demographic explosion.” It was a true psychosis of overpopulation, justifying all kinds of measures, especially negative measures: sterilization, contraception, and abortion, which will not stop gaining importance.
As early as 1948, the American William Vogt launched a cry of alarm with his book Road to Survival, in which he predicts catastrophe if a plan were not implemented: “The stabilization then reduction of the European population would be one of the greatest steps that we could take toward the peace and well-being of the world” [1].
He adds that “the United States of Europe, with a population that would be half or a third of what is at the present time, could in all likelihood have a standard of living equal or superior to that of the United States of America” [2]. From this moment appeared the fundamental reason which drives the majority of these authors: an elevated standard of living cannot be achieved except by reducing the population.
In 1952, John D. Rockefeller III [3] founded the Population Council. His ideas were explained in Enrichir la Vie [Enriching Life]. “In my opinion, the stabilization of the population was not an impediment to human development, but on the contrary, a relief which, by multiplying the chances of each, renders man free to conquer his natural dignity and to develop all his potential” [4].
Warnings and Pressure to Make Birth Control Legal
In June 1965, United States President Lyndon Johnson stated before the United Nations: “Let us in all our lands—including this land—face forthrightly the multiplying problems of our multiplying populations and seek the answers to this most profound challenge to the future of all the world. Let us act on the fact that less than $5 invested in population control is worth $100 invested in economic growth” [5].
This is what draws this commentary from Alfrred Sauvy: “If the issue was not also charged with tragedy, we would be tempted to speak of childishness. [...] However, the American economists and Swedish demographers never fail to include, in their models and reasoning, that a box of pills costs much less than the education of a child” [6].
In 1969, General Draper [7] launched the slogan which would make a fortune: “Zero Population Growth” (hence the name Zégistes), a formula which would be harshly criticized by A. Sauvy [8].
1972 saw numerous reports whose authors wanted to remain unknown but would ultimately be disclosed. On February 9, it was the Memorandum of Internal Usage on the Role of Europe in a World in Danger of Sicco Mansholt, vice president of the CEE Commission, disclosed by Georges Marchais. The MIT Meadows report, entitled “The Limits of Growth” [9] was another, and finally the studies of the Club of Rome [10], which contributed to maintaining these terrors worthy of the first millennium.
Apostles arose to predict the apocalypse. René Dumont wrote in Utopia or Death: “It is no longer possible to get back to only family planning, because it contents itself with the prevention of bringing unwanted children into the world. The survival of humanity can no longer be entrusted to the goodwill of such a large number of more or less irresponsible procreators. [...]
“Authoritarian measures of birth rate control are thus going to become more and more necessary, but they will only be acceptable if they start with rich countries and the education of others. [...] In France, in Europe, [...] we will start by removing all the advantages (taxes, housing) and above all family allowance beyond the second child.
“In the United States, it must go further, taxing large families more and more heavily before arriving at authoritarian quotas” [11]. He would declare bitterly on the issue, on August 31, 1974, at the World Population Conference in Bucharest (Romania): “It will be said one day that this conference met on the eve of the greatest famine in the world and did not recognize it.”
The Kissinger Report
In 1974 there was the famous Kissinger Report, which would only be published 15 years later, and which manifested both the desire to stop the demographic growth by all means and to not do so in too open a manner in order to avoid the setbacks of the failure of the Bucharest conference, where the United States had been accused of imperialism. It reads:
The U.S. can help to minimize charges of an imperialist motivation behind its support of population activities by repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a concern with:
(a) the right of the individual couple to determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of children and to have information, education, and means to do so; and
(b) the fundamental social and economic development of poor countries in which rapid population growth is both a contributing cause and a consequence of widespread poverty. [12]
The skill of the American advisor is to highlight individual decision and development, in order to minimize the fact that the United States acts above all in its own interest, but also that it pursues the imposition of a universal social project.
This report was the foundation of American population policy and therefore participated, with other factors, in the implementation of all means of birth control: contraception, abortion, sterilization in particular, at the discretion of the international conferences on population and development, as well as the plans of international organizations (UN, WHO).
[1] Quote translated from the French edition, La Faim du monde.
[2] Vogt, W., La Faim du monde, Hachette, 1950.
[3] Grandson of John David I, who founded Standard Oil around 1859 in the Cleveland area. See P. Collier and D. Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty [in French, Une Dynastie américaine: Les Rockefeller, éd. du Seuil, 1976].
[4] Berelson, Bernard et al., Programmes de régulation des naissances dans le monde [Studies in Family Planning], éd. du Conseil de la Population, 1977, p.11.
[6] In Le Monde, 14 August 1974.
[7] Named representative of the USA in the United Nations Commission on Population and Development by President Nixon.
[8] Sauvy, A., Croissance zéro?, éd. Calmann-Lévy, 1973, p. 98-103.
[9] Delaunay, J. Halte à la croissance?, éd. Fayard, 1972.
[10] Founded in 1968, this club of the “upper class” gathers 70 experts of all nationalities who intend to refine the MIT model. The titles are evocative: “Stop Growth,” “How to Face the Doubling of the Population?” “The Survival Strategy,” “Humanity at the Turning Point,” and “The Question of Survival. The Global Revolution Has Begun.”
[11] Quote translated from Dumont, René, L’Utopie ou la mort, Paris, Ed. du Seuil, 1973, p. 49 sq. (emphasized in the text).
[12] National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 200): Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (THE KISSINGER REPORT), 10 December 1974 (declassified and released on 3 July 1989 under provisions of E.O. 12356 by F. Graboske, National Security Council), p. 81
(Sources : Cahiers Saint Raphaël - FSSPX.Actualités)
Illustration : Flickr / Herman Van Rompuy
