demnation of apartheid, but business quickly resumed as usual, and that
December the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) ob-
tained an agreement to set up three tracking stations in South Africa. The
Kennedy and Johnson administrations
(196 I -69)
were more critical of
apartheid and committed the United States to stop selling arms to South
Africa, but they continued to reject proposals for economic sanctions, and
the implications for South Africa of Lyndon Johnson's support for civil
rights at home were overshadowed by the Vietnam War.
Under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (1969-77)
there was a distinct
tilt away from the antiapartheid
lobby and the relatively liberal Africa
Bureau in the State Department toward the Pentagon and big business. In
1969, Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, ordered a review
of American policies throughout the world. The administration chose the
second of five options outlined in the Southern African review, National
Security StudyMemorandum
39, which reasoned,
The whites are here [that is, in Southern Africa] to stay and the only way that
constructive change can come about isthrough them. There is no hope for the
blacks to gain the political rights they seek through violence, which will only