The Unlucky Thirteen

agribusiness corporations then emerging as major US nationally strategic corporations.

The NSSM document packaged the earlier Kissinger "food as a weapon" policy in new clothes: .

Food is another special concern in any population strategy. Adequate food stocks need to be created to provide for periods of severe shortages and LDC food production efforts must be re-enforced to meet increased demand resulting from population and income growth. US agricultural production goals should take account of the normal import requirements of LDCs (as well as developed countries) and of likely occasional crop failures in major parts of the LDC world. Without improved food security, there will be pressure leading to possible conflict and the desire for large families for «insurance» purposes, thus undermining ... population control efforts.

[TJo maximize progress toward population stability, primary emphasis would be placed on the largest and fastest growing developing countries where the imbalance between growing numbers and development potential most seriously risks instability, unrest, and international tensions. These countries are: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, The Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Colombia .. .. This group of priority countries includes soine with virtually no government interest in family planning and others with active government family'pianning programs which require and would welcome enlarged technical and financial assistance. These countries should be given the highest priority within AID's population program in terms of resource allocations and/or leadership efforts to encourage action by other donors and organizations?

The Unlucky Thirteen ... Thirteen developing countries, including India, Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Turkey, and Colombia, encompassed some of the most resource-rich areas on the planet. Over the following three decades they were also to be among the most politically unstable. The NSSM 200 policy argued that only a drastic reduction in their populations would allow US exploitation of their raw materials.

Naturally, Kissinger knew that if it were be revealed that the US Government was actively promoting population reduction in raw materials-rich developing countries, Washington would be accused of imperialist ambitions, genocide and worse. He proposed a slick propaganda campaign to hide this aspect of NSSM 200:

The US 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.

Furthermore, the US should also take steps to convey the message that the control of world population growth is in the mutual interest of the developed and developing countries alike.8

In so many words, population control on a global scale was now to be called, "freedom of choice:' and "sustainable development:' George Orwell could not have done better. The language had been lifted from an earlier Report to President Nixon from John D. Rockefeller III.

NSSM 200 noted that the volume of grain imports needed by developing countries would "grow significantly." It called for trade liberalization in grain imports around the world to address this alleged problem, a "free market" not unlike the one Britain demanded when its manufactured goods dominated world markets after the Corn Laws repeal in 1846.

Like the "population bomb," the food crisis was also a manufactured hype in the 1970's, a hype helped by the sudden oil price shock on developing economies. The image of vast areas of the world, teeming with "overpopulation" and riotings or killings, were run repeatedly on American TV to drive the point home. In reality, the "problems" in developing sector agriculture were mainly that it didn't offer enough opportunities for the major US agribusi-

ness companies. Cargill and the giant US grain trading companies were not far away from Kissinger's door.

The NSSM report added that, "The location of known reserves of higher-grade ores of most minerals favors increasing dependence' of all industrialized regions on imports from less developed countries. The real problems of mineral supplies lie, not in basic physical sufficiency, but in the politico-economic issues of access, terms for exploration·and exploitation, and division of the benefits among producers, consumers, and host country governments:' Forced population control programs and other measures were to be deployed if necessary, to ensure US access to such strategic raw materials.

The document concluded, "In the longer run, LDCs must both decrease population growth and increase agricultural production significantly:'

While arguing for reducing global population growth by 500 million people by the year 2000, curiously enough, Kissinger noted elsewhere in his report that the population problem was already causing 10 million deaths yearly. In short he advocated doubling the death rate to at least 20 million, in the name of addressing the problem of deaths due to lack of sufficient food. The public would be led to believe that the new policy, at least what would be made public, was a positive one. In the strict definition of the UN Convention of 1948, itwas genocide.

Kissinger went on to suggest the kinds of coercive measures the US policy elite now envisioned. He bluntly stated that food aid should be considered, "an instrument of national power:' Then, in a stark comment, he suggested the US would ration its food aid to "help people who can't or won't control their population growth." (emphasis added). Sterilize or starve ... It was little wonder the document was classified "Top Secret."

NSSM 200 was remarkable in many respects. It made depopulation in foreign developing countries an explicit, if secret, strategic national security priority of the United States Government for the first time. It outlined what was to become a strategy to promote fertility control under the rubric "family planning;' and it linked the population growth issue to the availability of strategic minerals.