National Security Study Memorandum 200: World Population Growth And U.S. Security delineates the development and major findings of this important study. Author Stephen D. Mumford reveals:
In March, 1970, the U.S. Congress created The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, which completed its work in March 1972. Its final report offered more than 70 recommendations. Collectively, they constituted a detailed blueprint for a superb national population policy.
And
uncovers why this commission's final report was ignored.
In the words of a Commission member, Congressman James Scheuer (D.-NY): "The reasons were obvious -- the fear of attacks from the far right and from the Roman Catholic Church because of our positions on family planning and abortion. With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that this obstruction was the first of many similar actions to come from high places."
Then he goes on to describe the commissioning of the NSSM 200 study, its major findings and the Vaticans responsibility in the failure to implement the studys recommendations.
National Security Study Memorandum 200:
World Population Growth And U.S. Security
by Stephen D. Mumford
Stephen D. Mumford has his doctorate in Public Health. He has
decades of international experience in fertility research and has recently
returned from Vietnam where he spent a month studying a new technique of female
sterilization. In 1981 he received the Margaret Mead Leadership Prize in
Population and Ecology.
We must help break the link between spiraling population growth and poverty....Where they have been tried, family planning programs have largely worked. .Many pro-life advocates .. .contend that to condone abortion even implicitly is morally unconscionable. Their view is morally shortsighted. . ..if we provide funds for birth control . . .we will prevent the conception of millions of babies who would be doomed to the devastation of poverty in the underdeveloped world.
Richard M. Nixon
Seize the Moment
(Simon & Schuster, 1992)
President Nixon has recently
reasserted his belief that overpopulation gravely threatens world peace and
stability. He ranks assistance in population growth as the most important
effort the United States can undertake to promote peace and stability. During
his presidency he authorized the study that came to be known as NSSM 200 -- National Security Study Memorandum 200. In order
to effectively examine the content and fate of NSSM 200, we need to backtrack a
bit to the Rockefeller Commission which was discussed in the Summer 1992 issue
of this journal.
From his first days in office,
President Nixon understood the grave dangers of high rates of population growth
-- more than any other president. He
responded appropriately when he perceived that his people and their way of life
were gravely threatened. Seven months into his first term, in a rare move for a
president, he delivered his Special Message to the Congress.1
The message set forth a
far-reaching commitment to limiting population growth. It set in motion a broad
range of government activities, both domestic and international. It called for
the creation of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future to
collect and analyze data that would make possible the formulation of a
comprehensive United States population policy.
In March, 1970, the U.S.
Congress created The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future,
which completed its work in March 1972. Its final report offered more than 70
recommendations. Collectively, they constituted a detailed blueprint for a
superb national population policy.
WHY WAS THE COMMISSIONS FINAL REPORT IGNORED?
1972 was a presidential
election year and President Nixon was facing a difficult reelection bid, so
when a delegation of the Commission presented the Final Report to him on May 5,
1972, six months before election day, he sharply condemned the most important
recommendations.2 Why was he attempting to distance himself from the report? In
the words of a Commission member, Congressman James Scheuer (D.-NY): The reasons were obvious -- the fear of attacks from the far right and from
the Roman Catholic Church because of our positions on family planning and abortion.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that this obstruction was the
first of many similar actions to come from high places.3
During the following two-year
period, it became increasingly clear that there would be no response to the
Commissions recommendations. In May
1974, a group of pioneer population activists acknowledged this inaction and
asked Ambassador Adolph Schmidt to speak with his friend, Commission Chairman,
John D. Rockefeller III. They met in June, 1974 in New York City. Schmidt noted
his own disappointment and that of his colleagues because no program had been
mounted as a result of the recommendations. What had gone wrong? Rockefeller
responded: The greatest difficulty
has been the very active opposition by the Roman Catholic Church through its
various agencies in the United States.4
...a definitive interagency study of the threat of overpopulation to U.S. security ... NSSM 200 details how and why world population growth threatens U.S. and global security.
None of the Commissions 70 recommendations were ever implemented. It is
tragic that the American people have been kept in the dark about this bold
opposition by the Vatican and other pronatalist groups. Lay Catholic Americans
desire the same number of children as non-Catholic Americans,5 use
contraceptives6 and obtain abortions7 in the same proportions, support
school-based population information and sex education8 for their children, and
advocate a halt to illegal immigration9 into the U.S. in the same proportions.
No doubt, both Catholic and non-Catholic Americans would have strongly
counter-balanced this bold obstruction of American policy had they been aware
of it. The quality of life for all of us has been significantly diminished by
this change in policy, in substantial measure at the behest of pronatalist
pressures from the Vatican.
PRESIDENT NIXON MAKES A BOLD MOVE
Despite the intense opposition
of the Catholic hierarchy he encountered in the wake of the Rockefeller
Commission, President Nixons
assessment of the gravity of the overpopulation problem and his desire to deal
with it remained unchanged. On April 24, 1974, in an effort to contend with
this crisis, in National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), Nixon
directed that a study be undertaken to determine the Implications of World Population Growth for U.S.
Security and Overseas Interests."10 Its findings would be momentous
indeed.
I can only speculate, but the
President must surely have been aware that this new document would meet with
the same intense opposition from the Vatican and others as the earlier one.
However, perhaps he felt that a definitive study of the national and global
security implications of overpopulation, revealing that the very security of
the United States was seriously threatened, would generate public demand for
action to curb growth. That might serve to overcome the pressures being exerted
by the opponents. Why else would he have undertaken this study, given his
painful experience after the Rockefeller Commission?
NSSM 200
To implement NSSM 200,
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, acting for the President, directed
the Secretaries of Defense and Agriculture, the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, the Deputy Secretary of State and the Administrator of the
Agency for International Development (AID), to jointly undertake a study of the impact of world population growth
on U.S. security and overseas interests.
This work was completed on December 10, 1974 and circulated to the designated
Secretaries and Agency heads for their review and comments.
Meanwhile, on August 9, 1974,
Gerald Ford had succeeded to the presidency. Revisions to the study continued
until July, 1975. On November 26, 1975, the 227-page report and its
recommendations were endorsed by President Ford in National Security Decision
Memorandum 314: The President has
reviewed the interagency response to NSSM 200..., wrote the new National Security Advisor, Brent
Scowcroft. He believes that United
States leadership is essential to combat population growth, to implement the
World Population Plan of Action and to advance United States security and
overseas interests. The President endorses the policy recommendations contained
in the Executive Summary of the NSSM 200 response...
President Ford, recognizing
the gravity of the situation, assigned responsibility for further action to the
National Security Council (NSC): The
President, therefore, assigns to the Chairman, NSC Undersecretaries Committee,
the responsibility to define and develop policy in the population field and to
coordinate its implementation beyond the NSSM 200 response.
NSSM 200 was intended to be
and is a definitive interagency study of the threat of overpopulation to U.S.
security. NSSM 200 details how and why world population growth gravely
threatens U.S. and global security. It also provides a blueprint for the U.S.
response to this burgeoning problem, reflecting the deep concern of those who
produced the report. Because of the bold nature of the suggested initiatives,
the authors recommended that the report remain classified for 5 years in order
to provide time to educate the American public as to the necessity of these
initiatives. The NSSM 200 report actually remained classified for 14 years.
Both the findings and the
recommendations are as relevant in 1992 as they were in 1975, but too numerous
to list here in their entirety. To mention a selected few:
NSSM 200 reports:
There is a major risk of severe damage [caused by continued rapid population growth] to world economic, political, and ecological systems and, as these systems begin to fail, to our humanitarian values [Executive Summary, page 10].
The sense of near emergency is electric:
...world population growth is widely recognized within the government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures [Page 194]. ...it is of the utmost urgency that governments now recognize the facts and implications of population growth, determine the ultimate population sizes that make sense for their countries and start vigorous programs at once to achieve their desired goals [Page 15].
The threat to security briefly summarized,
...population factors are indeed critical in, and often
determinants of, violent conflict in developing areas. Segmental (religious,
social, racial) differences, migration, rapid population growth, differential
levels of knowledge and skills, rural/urban differences, population pressure
and the spatial location of population in relation to resources - in this rough
order of importance -- all appear to be important contributions to conflict and
violence... Clearly, conflicts which are regarded in primarily political terms
often have demographic roots. Recognition of these relationships appears
crucial to any under standing or prevention of such hostilities [Page 66].
The report gives three
examples of population wars: the El Salvador-Honduras Soccer War,
the Nigerian Civil War, and the Pakistan-India-Bangladesh War, 1970-7 1. (With
hindsight, we can see that the two-decade-long civil war in Lebanon is another
classic example, and that the civil wars in The Sudan, Somalia and other
countries on the African continent are realizations of the projections made in
NSSM 200. South Africa is on the brink. War between Israel and Arab countries
fueled by population growth is all but inevitable.)
Where population size is greater than available resources, or is expanding more rapidly than the available resources, there is a tendency toward internal disorders and violence and, sometimes, disruptive international policies or violence [Page 69].
(This was a vital element, surely, in the 1991
U.S.-Iraq War, much more costly than decades of
successful worldwide population growth control.)
In developing countries, the burden of population factors, added to others, will weaken unstable governments, often only marginally effective in good times, and open the way to extremist regimes [Page 84].
(The Sudan is a vivid recent example.)
The depth of concern for this
ominous and progressive threat to national security is reflected in the
objectives and goals outlined in the report:
The World Population Plan of Action and the
resolutions adopted by consensus of the 137 nations at the August 1974 U.N.
World Population Conference, though not ideal, provide an excellent framework
for developing a worldwide system of population/family planning programs [Executive Summary, page 19].
At the UN World Population
Conference, only the Vatican opposed the Plan:
. . .the Conference adopted by acclamation (only
the Holy See stating a general reservation) a complete World Population Plan of
Action [Page 87].
SUGGESTED GOALS AND MEANS
Our objective should be to assure that developing
countries make family planning information, education and means available to
all their peoples by 1980 [Page
130]. ...intense efforts are required to assure full availability by 1980 of
birth control information and means to all fertile individuals, especially in
rural areas [Executive Summary, page 9].
While specific goals in this area are difficult
to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of
fertility, (a two-child family on the average), by about the year 2000. . ..Attainment of this goal will require
greatly intensified population programs ... U.S. leadership is essential
[Executive Summary, page 14].
It is now all too clear how
crucial this leadership was. The U.S. withdrew from this role shortly after the
election of President Carter, just one year after the initiation of public
policy based on the report. Initiatives for curtailment of population growth
have been deteriorating ever since.
After suitable preparation in the U.S., announce a U.S. goal to maintain our present national average fertility no higher than replacement level and attain stability by 2000 [Executive Summary, page 19]. Only nominal attention is [currently] given to population education or sex education in schools... [Page 158] ... Recommendation: That U.S. agencies stress the importance of education of the next generation of parents, starting in elementary schools, toward a two-child family ideal. That AID (the Agency for International Development) stimulate specific efforts to develop means of educating children of elementary school age to the ideal of the two-child family...[Page 159].
Despite the Helms Amendment,
which clearly ruled out abortion assistance in U.S. foreign aid programs, there
was a clear consensus that continued widespread use of abortion would be
required to meet/attain the objective.
While the
agencies participating in this study have no specific recommendations to
propose on abortion, the following issues are believed important and should be
considered in the context of a global population strategy. . ..Certain facts about abortion need to be
appreciated:
-- No
country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion [Page
182].
-- Indeed, abortion, legal and illegal, now has become
the most widespread fertility control method in use in the world today [Page
183].
-- It would be unwise to restrict abortion
research for the following reasons: 1) The persistent and ubiquitous nature of
abortion. 2) Widespread lack of safe abortion techniques... [Page 185].
An important goal in NSSM 200
dealt with leadership:
These programs will have only modest success
until there is much stronger and wider acceptance of their real importance by
leadership groups. Such acceptance and support will be essential to assure that
the population information, education and service programs have vital moral
backing, administrative capacity, technical skills and government financing [Page 195].
The report recommended
spending whatever could reasonably be absorbed to achieve these goals:
We recommend increases in the AID budget requests
to the Congress on the order of $35-$50 million annually through FY 1980 (above
the $137.5 million requested for FY 1975)... However, the level of funds needed
in the future could change significantly, depending on such factors as major
breakthroughs in fertility control technologies and LDC receptivity to
population assistance [Executive
Summary, page 24].
A ONE-CHILD FAMILY POLICY FOR THE U.S.
We know that even after a
country reduces fertility to the replacement level, that, thanks to the
phenomenon of momentum, the population continues to grow for another 70 years
before stability is achieved. A goal of NSSM 200 was to attain this stability here
by the year 2000. One of the chief coordinators of the NSSM 200 study recently
acknowledged that the government recognized the one-child family norm would be
necessary to achieve this goal and was under obligation to encourage Americans
to limit family size.
NO ACCOMMODATION TO THE VATICAN
The study frankly dismissed the arguments that
have been raised by the Vatican to counter efforts to reduce population growth.
The position of the Roman Catholic Church on population growth centers on the
need for economic development in Third World countries as a way to bring growth
rates down. NSSM 200 takes an entirely different tack:
We cannot wait for overall modernization and
development to produce lower fertility rates naturally since this will
undoubtedly take many decades in most developing countries... [Executive Summary, page 7]. Clearly
development per se is a powerful determinant of fertility. However, since it is
unlikely that most LDCs will develop sufficiently during the next 25-30 years,
it is crucial to identify those sectors that most directly and powerfully
affect fertility [Page 137].
There is also even less cause for optimism on the
rapidity of socio-economic progress that would generate rapid fertility
reduction in the poor LDCs, than on the feasibility of extending family
planning services to those in their populations who may wish to take advantage
of them [Page 99].
This directly opposes the Vatican position.
But we can be certain of the desirable direction
of change and can state as a plausible objective the target of achieving
replacement fertility rates by the year 2000
[Page 99].
These statements manifestly rule out any accommodation
to the Vatican on the issue of population growth control.
IMPLEMENTATION OF NSSM 200 IS BROUGHT TO A HALT
During 1976, Catholic activists worked diligently
to undermine population growth control efforts. Dr. R.T. Ravenholt, who directed
the global population program of the U.S. Agency for International Development
in the Department of State from 1966 to 1979, tells the story. On March 4,
1991, he addressed the Washington State Chapter of Zero Population Growth (ZPG)
on Pronatalist Zealotry and
Population Pressure Conflicts: How Catholics Seized Control of U.S. Family
Planning Programs, and described
some of these activities:
Following a meeting of Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his campaign staff with fifteen Catholic leaders at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on August 31, 1976, on which occasion they pressed Carter to deemphasize federal support for family planning in exchange for a modicum of Catholic support for his presidential race... Joseph Califano became Secretary of HEW... When Father Hesburgh [President of Notre Dame University] declined the role of AID Administrator, the appointment was given to John J. Gilligan, a Notre Dame graduate and a former governor of Ohio... John H. Sullivan moved from Congressman Clement Zablocki s office into AID... Congressman Zablocki and Jack Sullivan had persistently worked to curb AIDs high powered family planning program. In 1973, Jack Sullivan and allied zealots helped Senator Jesse Helms develop the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act.
AN IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE: TIME MAGAZINE TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
The headline on the cover of
the February 24, 1992 issue of TIME magazine was: Holy Alliance: How Reagan and the Pope Conspired
to Assist Polands Solidarity Movement
and Hasten the Demise of Communism,
referring to an article written by prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein.
He reports:
The
Catholic Team: The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics -- CIA chief William Casey, [Richard] Allen
[Reagans first
National Security Advisor], [ William]
Clark [Reagans second
National Security Advisor], [Alexander] Haig [Secretary of State], [Vernon]
Walters [Ambassador at Large] and William Wilson, Reagans first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded
the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope
and the teachings of their church combined with their notion of American
democracy.
In a section of his TIME article
headed, The U.S. and the Vatican on
Birth Control, Bernstein writes
three very revealing paragraphs:
In response to concerns of the Vatican, the
Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with
the churchs teachings on
birth control. According to William Wilson, the Presidents first ambassador to the Vatican, the State
Department reluctantly agreed to an out-right ban on the use of any U.S. aid
funds by either countries or international health organizations for the
promotion of...abortions. As a result of this position, announced at the World
Conference on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding
from, among others, two of the worlds largest family planning organizations: the International Planned
Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
American policy was changed as a result of the
Vaticans not agreeing with
our policy, Wilson explains.
American aid programs around
the world did not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family planning. AID
[the Agency for International Development] sent various people from [the
Department of State to Rome, and Id
accompany them to meet the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family,
and in long discussions they finally got the message. But it was a struggle.
They finally selected different programs and abandoned others as a result of
this intervention.
I might have touched on that in some of my
discussions with [CIA director William] Casey, acknowledges Pio Cardinal Laghi, the former
apostolic delegate to Washington. Certainly Casey already knew about our positions
about that.
Bernstein makes clear what the
cadre of devout Catholics in the Reagan Administration did to protect the
papacy and Catholic teaching from the potential fall-out from NSSM 200. He
quotes the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, who reveals that
during the Reagan Administration, papal policy on birth control and abortion
replaced the policy set forth by NSSM 200; and so the 21st century will be
irredeemably less livable because of this
intervention.
A CODE OF SILENCE CLOAKS THE FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OF NSSM 200
Immediately after President
Ford adopted the recommendations of NSSM 200 on November 26, 1975, a peculiar
silence fell over the whole matter. The report was never printed. There are
only a handful of photocopies. Those who wrote the report recommended that it
be classified for 5 years. Werner Fornos, President of the Population
Institute, with the aid of several members of Congress, succeeded in getting
the NSSM 200 report declassified for a brief period in 1976. Despite his best
efforts, and the explosiveness of this report detailing major changes in the
lives of every American, he was unable to achieve any press coverage
whatsoever. Instead, he found the report reclassified as a result of the
objections of members of the
national security establishment to
the early declassification.
In the end, as noted, the
document remained classified for 14 years, rather than the recommended 5 years.
Declassification in 1989 apparently resulted from application of the Freedom of
Information Act.
THE SILENCE EXTENDS BEYOND NSSM 200
The Vatican must be confronted
on this issue. Says Representative Scheuer: The Roman Catholic Church and its allies cannot be allowed to
dictate the rules of the game when it comes to preservation of life on this
planet at some level of decency.12
Clearly, Carl Bernsteins article in TIME has been the most important
development in revealing the influences of the Vatican on American policy. Rep.
Scheuers article, published in this
journal, and Ravenholts speech to
ZPG were both major advances.
Congressman Scheuer has put it
succinctly: The issue of population
growth is too crucial to the future welfare of our nation and of the world to
be left to the Roman Catholic hierarchy and it allies in the fundamentalist
movement.3 The pressures must be
countered so that the rational and measured policies proposed by the
Rockefeller Commission and NSSM 200 can be implemented as rapidly as possible.
NOTES
1 Nixon, R. Special Message to the Congress on Problems of Population Growth, July 18, 1969. Public Papers of the Presidents, No. 271, p. 521, Office of the Federal Register, National Archives, Washington, DC, 1971.
2 Nixon, R. Statement About the Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, May 5, 1972. Public Papers of the Presidents, No. 142, p. 576, Office of the Federal Register, National Archives, Washington, DC, 1974.
3 Scheuer, J. A Disappointing Outcome: United States and World Population Trends Since the Rockefeller Commission, The Social Contract, Summer 1992, pp. 203-206.
4 Schmidt, A.W., Personal communication, August 28, 1992.
5 National Security Council, National Security Study Memorandum 200, Washington, DC, April 24, 1974.2 pp.
6 National Security Council, NSSM 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, Washington, DC December 10, 1974, 227 pp.
7 National Security Council, National Security Decision Memorandum 314, Washington, DC, November 26, 1975. 4 pp.
8 NSSM 200, Executive Summary, p. 10.
9 Ibid, p. 194.
10 Ibid, p. 15.
11 Ravenholt, R.T., Pronatalist Zealotry and Population Pressure Conflicts: How Catholics Seized Control of U.S. Family Planning Programs, Center For Research on Population and Security, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, May 1992, 27 pp.
12 Scheuer, J., op. cit., p. 206.
13 Ibid, p. 205.
BIRTH CONTROL PERCEIVED AS A THREAT TO PAPAL AUTHORITY
Why is the Roman Catholic
Church obliged to halt legalized abortion and contraception despite the strong
wishes of Americans?
In Papal Power: A Study of Vatican Control
Over Lay Catholic Elites (The University of California Press, 1980),
Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Montreal, closely examines the sources of papal power. It is derived in
significant part from papal AUTHORITY. If the Popes AUTHORITY is diminished, papal power is
diminished. However, some AUTHORITY is derived from papal power and if papal
power is diminished, then AUTHORITY is undermined. The relationship is
circular. Less AUTHORITY means less power which means even less AUTHORITY. With
diminishing power, survival of the institution of the Roman Catholic Church in
its present hierarchical form is gravely threatened. Thus, the very survival of
the Vatican is threatened by programs to control population growth.
In April, 1992, in an
exceedingly rare public admission of this threat, Cardinal John OConnor of New York, delivering a major address to
the Franciscan University of Steubenville, acknowledged, The fact is that attacks on the Catholic Churchs stance on abortion -- unless they are rebutted -- effectively erode Church AUTHORITY on all
matters, indeed on the AUTHORITY of God himself.
This threat was recognized
decades ago by the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control which met
from 1964 until 1966. According to Commission member Thomas Burch, the Pope
himself assigned the Commission the task of finding a way of modifying the
Churchs position on birth control
without destroying papal AUTHORITY, which is absolutely essential for the continued
survival of the Vatican and the Catholic Church as we know it today. The
Commission failed to find a way and the result was the encyclical Humanae
Vitae which banned the use of contraception.
The Vatican clearly believes that if solutions to
the population problem are applied, the teaching of the church will be
undermined and the dominance of the papacy will be vitiated. Thus, it is
convinced that it cannot compromise on the issue of birth control, regardless
of our national policy. NSSM 200 forthrightly opposes Rome on population
strategy, family planning and abortion in the interest of national security.
-- Stephen Mumford
from:
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
Vol. III, No. 2
Winter 1992-93
1993
The Social Contract
3161/2 E. Mitchell St., Suite 4
Petoskey, MI 49770
A Social Contract Reprint
