Ideology and Foreign Affairs

...By any definition and in any practical situation, collective security means stabilization of some status quo...

...Or to put it more succinctly: we should have intervened in Santo Domingo not on April 28, 1965 but should have on September 5, 1963—we should have intervened not to prevent the return of Bosch but to prevent his ouster...

...Not the Soviet striving for hegemony in Europe has created the post-war tensions, but the hypocritical imagination of U.S...

...Some liberals are so obsessed by the specter of John F. Dulles that in their view conflicts of power merely reflect an irrational fear of imagined "Communists...

...Going through the lists of interventions which the authors allow and disallow, we find that in support of rebellions in Hungary or East Germany "there is nothing the U.S...

...If Johnson were not a victim of his im agination, he would not need to fight over influence in the "Third World...

...Not Soviet aggression, but our own ideology "for almost 20 years" was "partly the cause . . . of the power struggle...

...But precisely since the authors support "radical nationalism" and hence must favor the changes which its convulsions will work, they must agree with Johnson's dictum that civil war and international war, or cold war and power competition, are one and the same thing...

...The West is less "anti-Communist" than the East is "anti-imperialist...

...But the Russians are unable to shake off the Chinese because they are afraid of losing the ideological fight in the Communist camp, and it should not be forgotten that the "revisionists" Tito and Khrushchev felt that for ideological reasons they could not tolerate the fall of a Communist government in Budapest...

...In Vietnam, QZ11 on the other hand, the issue is not "Communism" but Chinese power...

...Nor is it possible to reduce the behavior of a government to the simplistic terms of a "cold war ideology...

...But instead of denouncing this abuse of good faith, the authors chose to fall for it...

...I mention Greece because the Truman Doctrine belongs in the category of interventions which the authors would not condone...

...they are the cement of coalitions...

...even countries which wish to stay "neutral" are intervening in the affairs of others either by their own actions or by their inaction...

...barbarous Russians," the "absolute Czar" or the "bloody Tartar...

...Obviously, this is more likely to happen in a totalitarian state than in a pluralistic society...

...All that seems to be "radical" in them is the loudness of their anti-colonialist protestations, but some of them practice colonialism themselves...

...I will admit that the State Department, weary of explaining to stupid Congressmen why a particular country needs help, often resorts to the easy short-cut of conjuring up "Communism...

...To support their contention that "a defeat for the one side is not necessarily a victory for the other side," the authors say that a defeat is a defeat "only if we recognize it" as such: a topless bikini will not provoke sinful thoughts unless you believe in sin...

...By now everybody has seen that the "Communist infiltration" theory in Santo Domingo was nothing but a jerry-built justification for an oldfashioned imperialist intervention on behalf of the ruling class...

...but the point is of some importance since this intervention was not "cold war": Stalin had given the country to the West whereas the authors brush Czechoslovakia off with the remark that it had anyway been "assigned to the Russian sphere of influence...

...They are more reactionary than the classical capitalistic development pattern...

...presence in Europe...

...The U.S...

...Presidents who used the "perspective" to justify their own interventionism...

...If this is the ideology offered to us as an "alternative to Communism and anti-Communism," I beg to pass...

...Comments on John Schrecker and Michael Walzer, "American Intervention and the Cold War" in DISSENT, Autumn, 1965 One always preserves the fears of his youth...

...Presently we shall see how the authors dispose of this arena of conflict by simply not believing in conflict...

...But I am not con cerned with the question whether this or that intervention was justified...

...efforts to prohibit it...

...It belongs to the normal game of diplomacy that powers promote subversion next door, and if the authors imagine that by not "recognizing" it they might be rid of the power game itself, they are in an advanced stage of solipsism...

...If we have to opt for an ideology, I would humbly ask Schrecker and Walzer to consider democratic reformism as represented by Bosch, Betancourt, the Praja socialists of India, Senghor...

...In their essay on "American Intervention," Walzer and Schrecker argue that the cold war is a mere "phantom," a fantasy of ideologists and crusaders...

...The experience of "neutralism" so far has not been encouraging...

...Once they have banished the cold war from their heads, everything becomes marvelously simple: we only need to promote "modernization" in the "Third World...

...there always will be change, and some of that change also involves changes in the international configuration...

...even countries which, like Switzerland, have no foreign policy in the power sense, count on the balance of power which other countries establish among themselves...

...I find none of these systems either attractive or progressive...

...In the atomic age, we cannot retreat into non-partisanship...

...Even the Congo action which—strangelythe authors praise as a model of desirable "collective intervention," was viewed by the U.S...

...Instead of saying "there is no Communist world conspiracy," they deny that Communist power uses ideological weapons...

...for the "cold war" is the sum of local conflicts, -and a big power cannot disengage itself from them because, if, when or as long as it needs allies...

...Communists never conquered power in a viable democracy...

...Finally, misapprehension is compounded by misrepresentation when they maintain that "the U.S...

...must not interfere militarily...

...governments as well as nongovernmental movements need them as flags...

...But they rarely succeed in shaking off their partisans: every local conflict may become international...

...Far from having the sinister connotation which the authors read into it, "cold war" signifies a political warfare in which the powers try to avoid a military show-down...

...One is the nostalgic return to a precontemporary world where there would not be two powers but many...

...What about Munich...

...The fact is, however, that development aid everywhere tends to "entangle" big powers and that weak governments solicit outside support...

...One should never admit an absurd or contemptible consequence in order to save a mistaken premise...

...can do," whereas in the opposite cases, where uprisings occur within the Western orbit or even are fed (as in the case of Greece) from outside, there also the U.S...

...The fact is that the local politicians are seeking international backers, while the big powers are trying to isolate local conflicts...

...Ideologies are flexible but not entirely expendable...

...The authors isolate one kind of change which they call "modernization" and identify with changes away from "capitalism...

...government will undertake anything without considering its effect on the other...

...Unfortunately, questions of foreign policy come in a package with military, economic, social and ideological elements...

...Incidentally, the term "cold war" was coined by a facetious journalist who meant to say that the diplomatic and propagandistic tug-of-war was not a "hot" war...

...Though that may be true, the rule is that topless bikinis not only provoke sinful thought but are meant to do that...

...You see, it was only our "perspective" that made it look as though Khrushchev was sending tanks into Hungary and rockets to Cuba...

...history also shows that a balance of many powers can be maintained only if there is space for all to expand...

...The assumption in this case is that many powers are more likely to maintain a balance of peace than a few...

...But instead of saying "there should be no ideological war," they seem to say "where there is no ideological war, there is no war at all...

...Dollar diplomacy" is, after all, an American invention, and this country has always preferred the comfortable way out, spending money rather than assuming the burden of power...

...It always led to "cold war...

...they justify what one is doing and appeal to the opposition in the enemy ranks...

...On the other hand, a good case can be made for the contention that alliances tend to diminish local conflicts...

...neither the Soviet nor the U.S...

...Those who grew up in the fifties will never forget McCarthy: when they see a Communist being attacked, they are sure it's a witch hunt...

...Had the authors denounced the unconscionable attempt to sell us an "anti-Communist" war where there really is a power conflict, they would have rendered a real service...

...is far more willing to underwrite short-term counter-insurgency operations than long-term economic development...

...But it is precisely in those countries which are most characteristically "neutralist," uncommitted and "radically nationalist" that the leadership has developed an aggressive interventionism: Nkrumah and Nasser are vying for the honor of becoming Africa's Bismarck...

...nor is that an innovation of the cold warriors...

...It's a pity they don't say anything on the Berlin airlift, for their easy schematism would break down in such borderline cases—and all really important problems concern borderline cases...

...participation in this war was merely window-dressing: Korea was mainly an American "unilateral intervention" which the authors, according to their own criteria, ought to condemn, especially since "our guy" there did not have much better credentials than Diem in Saigon...

...The "legal procedures" were possible only because the Soviet Ambassador had absented himself from the Security Council, and this will not happen again, especially if Peking gets into the U.N...

...If we will abandon Vietnam, the Russians will leave East Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, etc...

...from local unheaval...

...It is the classical example of an intervention which the authors approve of: "a full-scale invasion" which was answered by "counter-intervention" according to established "legal procedures...

...Moreover, one cannot be sure that non-intervention will in all cases be in the interest of peace...

...Any equilibrist or mathematician will tell you that the opposite is true...

...The Chinese it seems, never invaded India and Sukarno never quit the U.N.—only astigmatics like Johnson stare at such specters because they believe in the "cold war model...

...The authors proclaim that (with the exception of Czechoslovakia — some exception...

...Wherever we look around us, the real world is quite different from the one which the authors so neatly organize in their minds by ordering this ideology out and another in...

...I cannot tell why...

...To Nkrumah we are giving the Volta high dam —"massive foreign aid" if the words ever had any meaning—and yet he is the instigator of forces bent on unhinging the precarious stability of the new countries in Africa, with an ideology which is a strange mixture of Mussolini and Sorel...

...There is no fast-and-hard rule which says when it is proper to intervene and when to stay at home...

...They do not understand that witches don't exist while in certain countries Communists do have power...

...supported Tito against the Soviet Union when he was "ultra-left," and we are happy to support Rumania, which supports China against Moscow...

...there is only a way forward toward collective security, but unfor tunately this term cannot be as easily defined nor its meaning exemplified as the authors assume...

...The authors think it possible to differentiate between "ordinary power competition and cold war intervention...

...or else they must decide to prevent "change," i.e., they must agree to guarantee each other's spheres of influence...

...Instead of facing the problem of power relations which has been created through these postwar developments, the authors try to get away from it by two ingenious devices...

...But the foot is in the other shoe: West Germany became viable only through U.S...

...The U.S...

...Appearances to the contrary, I do not doubt that the Administration would rather spend millions on development, as the authors suggest, than fight an uncertain war in Vietnam...

...We know now that the German generals were prepared to depose Hitler in 1936, if France and England had intervened against the remilitarization of the Rhine...

...orbit an opposition party will often embrace all "antiimperialist" slogans which Soviet propaganda can provide and moreover, will often turn to the USSR for support...

...the first holds open the possibility of insulating international politics...

...This seems to be the authors' way of being consistent...

...in this dream the authors go so far as to find de Gaulle's old-fashioned power game "attractive...

...Nor did such influence abroad wait for the "cold war model" to appear: Elizabeth I had to forbid members of Parliament to talk to the Russian Ambassador, and there always was a "Russian faction" at the Kaiser's court...

...The authors call that aim "futile," and that it is...

...I think that we should intervene on behalf of the forces behind them, and, if necessary, back them up with our own force...

...had remained in South Korea to begin with, i.e., if it had maintained a military presence which one might call "preventive intervention...

...The Korean war is a case in point...

...Are the authors serious...

...And in the last resort, the argument is circular: if the Communists were able to take over, that was proof that the government was not viable, and if they were prevented, as in Greece, then the government was viable...

...they call for "radical nationalism," which I assume fits the systems of Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah, perhaps even Peron, on the one side, and Castro, on the other...

...as the very thing the authors condemn: a "disguised anti-Communist rescue operation," and the proof is that the Russians refuse to pay for it...

...This is a normal relationship between powers, yet some people object to it when it occurs between Western capitalist governments and the Soviet government...

...The entire conception of the Alliance for Progress was to establish the opposite order of priorities and the simple truth is that pragamatically the State Department found that economic development is the precondition of political stability...

...The consequence has often been that it stumbled into a war instead of avoiding it...

...Anyway, U.N...

...Intimately connected with the first is their second device: If the cold war was a mere chimera in Europe, how much less real is it in the "Third World" to which it was only "transferred...

...the second tends to absorb local into international politics...

...But above all, the "full-scale intervention" would never have happened if the U.S...

...For the "cold war" does, of course, have overtones and a fearful polarization has in fact taken place: since either of two super-powers must be the ultimate gainer or loser in every shift of the international balance, the mitigating and mediating effects of third-power and small-power interposition are that much more dubious...

...There is not one state of mind which allows statesmen to "isolate international politics" and another which drags local conflicts into the "cold war...

...intervention there...

...Once we apply "massive foreign aid," the backward countries will no longer lure the big powers into a power game...

...and the dan ger of war will fade as soon as we abandon "the cold war perspective...

...Come now, do you really find "attractive" a policy which presupposes, wills, and actually promotes the proliferation of nuclear weapons and opposes itself to U.N...

...If this is so, then nothing should be easier than to stop the cold war: we would just have to stop believing in it...

...Though ideology rarely determines policy, it may become autonomous and force the hand of its manipulator...

...The same is true of the U.S...

...my point is that one cannot categorize or fix the legal requirements in advance, once for all times...

...Likewise, in a country that used to be in the U.S...

...Given the need of these dictators to seek glory and to subvert or conquer other countries, I don't see how the big powers can avoid either of two decisions: they may cater to the vanities of these nationalisms and thereby become involved in a power game which is not distinguishable from the "cold war...

...Yet these two were also the darlings of several American administrations: Dulles was preparing to give Nasser the Aswan Dam when the latter turned around to conclude the fatal arms deal with Molotov...

...would recognize Castro if he were able to renounce his alliance with the Soviet Union, which he must maintain for material as well as ideological reasons...

...But this space is now taken by the "Third World," which the authors diligently set apart to make believe that polarization need not exist...

...Each war has an ideological element, but if Communism were not lending itself as a justifying ideology, then we would be fighting the "dirty...

...They are so afraid of being "cold warriors" that they look away from the real constellation of forces and substitute psychoanalysis for political analysis...