THE REBELLION OF EUROPE
Coser, Lewis & Bromwich, David & Geltman, Emanuel & Denitch, Bogdan
An unanticipated consequence of the Reagan administration's foreign and defense postures may well be the creation of a massive West European peace movement. This movement has spread throughout...
...But today ethnic associations, with the exception of those whose membership was replenished by postWorld War II immigrants, have largely decayed...
...foreign policy under Reagan was inserted by Lane Kirkland, head of the AFL-CIO, into his speech at the November 1981 AFL-CIO convention: • On the vital issue of human rights, they have sought to pose a fine choice between lice who are totalitarian and lice who are authoritarian...
...This naturally frightens—and sickens—our allies...
...The means of controlling riots have been perfected, if that is the word, in the last decade...
...The left-wing Social Democrats in the German Federal Republic combine opposition to new nuclear weapons on their soil with support for the Polish workers and East German dissidents...
...If not, the Administration will continue its present drift into a policy of incoherence...
...To the extent that working-class and lowermiddleclass strata have succeeded because of the welfare state in moving nearer to the core sector of society, they have escaped the influence of collectively oriented institutions of their fathers and mothers...
...The same day brought the substance of an interview President Reagan had granted to newspaper editors several days before, in the course of which he was asked: "Do you believe that there could be a limited exchange of nuclear weapons between us and the Soviet Union or that it would simply escalate inevitably...
...Why should workers pay for drones...
...These and many other questions can legitimately be asked and debated...
...Let us acquit Reagan and Schweitzer of the charge that they are special cases...
...Nor do they want to hear their homelands talked of as a "theater" for tactical nuclear weapons, with all the consolation this implies of making an excellent show for the spectators...
...nuclear missiles on Italian soil...
...I agree with McGeorge Bundy's statement (New York Times, Nov...
...it has had an impact beyond the traditional left, at least in the Benelux countries and Italy...
...The case the French seem to be making is that defense has been uncoupled from those policies that are specific to the United States and are not in the obvious interests of the other allies...
...When, as suggested above, many people join unions for private rather than collective benefits and when in the churches bingo has become as important as holy communion, then the Puritan, Emersonian, Social Darwinist strain in American culture receives powerful support from strata largely untouched by it in the past...
...More skeptical about the Soviet Union than previous antinuclear and peace movements, this current movement nevertheless is directed at the NATO alliance and the "special relationship" to the United States...
...Who would have thought in the early exhilaration of the Reaganite victory that even Wall Street would dissent from the Reagan consensus...
...But such fears of unrest have receded in the last decade and seem not to be shared by the members of the Reagan administration...
...We tend to forget that it is U.S...
...Does a general detente in Europe require "good behavior" in the rest of the world—the old linkage problem...
...The French example, however, poses a serious question for the West European peace activists— and notice that no major mobilization has yet taken place in France against the French nuclear deterrent...
...But these older interest groups now have been joined by a multitude of others, from regional groups—the Sunbelt, the New West—to blacks, Hispanics, and older ethnic groupings, to women, to gays, to a variety of moral-issue groupings on the right and the left, from Moral Majorities to Right of Choice advocates, just to mention a few...
...Upper- and working-class strata, which in the past had lived in very different ideological climates and had not shared a common mental set, were now motivated, at least in part, to share a common ideological stance...
...I think, again, until someplace —all over the world this is being, research is going on, to try and find the defensive weapon...
...rockets with the U.S...
...Imagine, though, had they eaten...
...These strata may not be bourgeoisiefied, they may still adhere to some working-class styles, but they have nevertheless come to be much less distinguishable from other strata in the society than they were, say, 50 years ago...
...triad of On October 21, 1981 much of the world outside Washington was dismayed by two statements, from leading U.S...
...And these recent statements bear out their understanding of the newly feasible weapon...
...There was always an asymmetry in so-called theater weapons, which could hit Western Europe or the Soviet Union but not the United States...
...The question is not: should Europe have its own nuclear weapons—since France already has them...
...We witness now an acceleration of the scramble for group and individual advantages by various interests, all intent upon maximizing their chances...
...is, in short, perceived as ideologically mesmerized by a new confrontational get-tough policy visa vis the Soviets, and it is in this context that the U.S...
...Competent observers can differ about the exact state of East-West military balance...
...As public outlays increased, so did groups of claimants for public benefits...
...They, too, have largely been conquered by the self-help and individualistic success ethic...
...This was especially true for the various white ethnic groups that constitute the majority of these class strata...
...They know that war, under the best of circumstances, is not a you-shoot-yours-and we'll-shoot-ours affair...
...Failure to pass the SALT II treaties is having its effect...
...missiles in Western Europe...
...has simply not learned how to deal with allies as distinct from dependents...
...When it attempted to cut Social Security benefits it was quickly reminded by Congress that this was utterly unacceptable to its working- and middle-class constituencies...
...This, then, does indeed become a serious matter to be addressed by unionists, economists, politicians who haven't lost all sense of decency—well, all of us who retain some hope for the human condition...
...Army that we were witnessing a "drift towards war," and were now in "the greatest danger that the republic has faced since its founding days...
...There is a broad-based reluctance to get dragged into the present confrontation...
...The Italian peace marchers denounce the Soviet nuclear build-up and the SS-20 rockets while also opposing the stationing of U.S...
...The world holds possibilities that are interesting to tease the mind with in proportion as they have not been experienced, and this seems to be one of them...
...understanding on limiting nuclear exchanges in Eastern and Western Europe unrealistic...
...This led to a fairly rapid erosion of a sense of communal solidarity, as witness Proposition 13 in California and the large working- and lower-middle-class vote for Reagan...
...What difference do the more sophisticated antiarmor rockets and munitions make in considering the Russian superiority in tanks...
...delegation to the U.N...
...The problem is, unorganized groups can't play this game...
...In 1955, American cities employed 1.9 police officers per 1,000 population...
...Our government declares it will only be (partly) receptive to "politicals," privation presumably not being a "political" issue...
...I don't honestly know...
...Now largely without collective vision, they have left the public arena in favor of privatized pleasures and individual, largely narcissistic goals...
...It is: if one is opposed to the stationing of the nukes, must one not be armed (unless one is a pacifist) with a substantial conventional deterrent...
...Most of their bodies have now been shipped back to Haiti...
...While it is true that the treaty would have done little, refusal to ratify even so limited an agreement makes the U.S...
...Perhaps they are right: I would love nothing better than to be contradicted by the events...
...I do not want to pretend that the "illegals" who flee hunger or terror in "Little Doc's" junior version of "Papa Doc's" sadism are not a problem...
...The Catholic Church, at least since the end of the last century, accentuated a reform-oriented collective message that stressed the need for greater social justice and some egalitarianism...
...and oddly, even a war that has to be fought, such as the war against 6 nuclear weapons on submarines, in land-based silos in the U.S., and in airplane-delivered nukes...
...This would not be a bad achievement for the most conservative U.S...
...This distrust is not eased by staffing the U.S...
...Thus, thanks to the new Administration in Washington, an increasingly independent Western Europe is emerging as a force with autonomous needs and priorities vis vis the superpower confrontation...
...At first the older, stable working class looked upon such efforts with some indifference...
...Similarly the college young, who produced a number of imaginative leaders in the civil-rights, antiwar, and campus battles of the '60s, have lost this leadership through cooptation...
...They have gained self-respect through such legislative enactments as Social Security, unemployment insurance, and Medicare...
...In which case it is the reassurances following the statements that constitute the real danger, and defraud the public of what should be public knowledge...
...But they can be beneficial only if they take place against a background of some overall consensus...
...the implicit point was that the deployment of new theater nuclear forces by the U.S...
...administration since Coolidge...
...As a result, interest rates remain astronomical—to the dismay of such traditional Republican constituencies as the construction industry and small business...
...It is not merely that, in Western Europe, the Soviet Union has no appeal as a model...
...How long can the social fabric unravel before it tears altogether, or before a new corporatist statism takes command...
...labor now also is not very rich in ideas...
...They have achieved home ownership with tax-deductible mortgage rates, and they own the standard middleclass household applicances, TV sets and automobiles, even though they may still feel many insecurities and deprivations...
...We are planning a special section taking up these matters from a variety of viewpoints...
...5 much depends on judgment...
...judgment...
...The client groups know how to make themselves heard...
...Each "leg" of the triad is supposed to be independently capable of inflicting sufficient damage on the opponent to act as a deterrent—and, in any case, the U.S...
...nuclear weapons on British soil...
...In addition, and perhaps even more important, technical equipment to contain riots has become vastly more sophisticated and is now in abundant supply...
...Allen's staff who said in an interview . . . that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable unless Moscow changed its political system...
...The U.S...
...Nobody on the liberal left has any plan on how to counter the Reagan thrust...
...There is little vision on the left, largely because it too has been captured by interest-group liberalism...
...They see the neutron bomb as a weapon calculated to ease our thinking about war with the Russians, by screening out the thought of any unlucky consequences to ourselves...
...P.S...
...While the new peace movement has not yet dealt with the problem of what, if any, defense policy is appropriate for Europe, there are at least some examples of independent defense policies that can provide some guidelines...
...The irony is that the only ally today not making policy problems for the United States in Europe is Mitterrand's French Socialist government, and that is in good measure because the French are a part of "the West" but on their own terms...
...To what extent are the SS-20s simply a modernization of existing forces...
...In its familiar forms at least, it therefore can no longer evoke much devotion, enthusiasm, or commitment, though attempts to dismantle its benefits would encounter strong resistance...
...they said the sort of thing they hear said every day, and not only in meetings of the National Security Council...
...It is not just that huge mass demonA Choice of Lice The following paragraph on U.S...
...As for the Murray Weidenbaums and Ed Meeses, and other presidential advisers who supposedly pad the charm with brains, there isn't an ounce of compassion in all of them to inflate their weight...
...I yield to no one in my appreciation of the vital role of group conflicts in democratic societies...
...Had they been starving or had they eaten before drowning...
...Either the crazy idea just popped into their heads—in which case both men are dangerously incompetent if not deranged, and should at once be relieved of their posts...
...They are far more dependent on oil imports, much too dependent (one might argue) to allow their needs to be insured by the degree of skill the U.S...
...may be forced to start negotiating arms reductions seriously...
...If you're going to drown, do it on any empty stomach...
...Poland and Afghanistan are not manifestations of the strength and appeal of Russian communism...
...But Pipes, in the best Harvard tradition of courtly servility and a tenacious love of power, knew how to make his qualifications stick, and he remains on the scene...
...In fact, all of them extended it to a significant extent...
...The question may well come up: what do they add to the U.S...
...A second element left out of most American debates is the presence of an independent French nuclear force, which is by no means negligible and makes any Soviet-U.S...
...Ever since the Kennedy-Johnson years and the war against poverty, attempts were made to extend welfare benefits to the lowest strata of society, those that had previously been largely neglected by the welfare state...
...But such programs as Aid to Dependent Children, Food Stamp programs, School Lunches have suffered severe cuts, and will suffer more in the future...
...In the past, the working class and the lowermiddle class were largely reared in institutional settings that stressed the primacy of collective goals over individualistic achievements...
...With the growth of the welfare state has also come the proliferation of a variety of interest groups, all intent upon maximizing their own speWhen 33 Haitians, whose frail craft had capsized, drowned and were washed ashore on Florida beaches last November while 34 others managed to swim ashore, what do you suppose agitated some government officials, apart from their declared policy of preventing any "illegal" Haitians from landing in the U.S...
...also developed unilateral advantages —in the Middle East, in cruise missiles, etc...
...This movement has spread throughout the NATO alliance...
...Of all countries we are now the novices of suffering, and we should be glad of that...
...Hence it must also be seen as an attempt to contain the spread of such unrest, as a means of social control...
...This issue has not been faced by most of the West European peace or, rather, antinuclear activists: if Europe is to be autonomous in the Soviet-American confrontation it must have its own defense policy, and that costs a good deal...
...This kind of talk confirms Europeans in their suspicion that war, let alone nuclear war, is as unreal to our president as it is to most of us...
...policymakers' judgment and motives...
...In Britain E. P. Thompson, probably the most effective leader, speaks out in support of the free Polish trade unions and calls for antinuclear mobilization within the Soviet alliance...
...Thus a beefing-up of missiles in Europe increases the number of weapons that can reach one superpower without an equivalent balance...
...3) the increasing belief among West European strategists and informed publics that the Russians are not coming—that the old military scenario of a massive Soviet tank assault across the West German plains is simply not probable in the foreseeable future...
...Unless the U.S...
...But a cosmetic smile, however broad, does not elevate a cliché to wisdom, nor does it camouflage stupidity...
...Sweden, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia have all tried to deal with this problem, and these three have come up with similar conclusions: broad citizen-based defense policies do not come cheap...
...12...
...While not of much obvious military value, however, the new rockets do endanger the West European population by making it a pawn in the superpower struggle...
...The West Europeans have had a far more direct stake in detente, economically, than the United States...
...The militaryindustrial complex pushes for huge increases in the military budget, while supply siders push for a reduction in the taxes of the rich...
...This figure has grown to 2.3 by 1965, and 2.5 by 1975...
...The same goes for Vietnamese in leaky boats, Cubans, Mexicans sneaking across the border, other Latin Americans who come in other ways...
...THE KENNEDY-JOHNSON WAR ON POVERTY was in part sparked by powerful idealistic motives, but it was also partly a reaction to the social unrest and riots in many American cities in the '60s...
...Discounts on the purchase of household goods for union members or cheap life insurance illustrate this...
...Its major achievement consisted of the integration of the stable working class and the lower-middle class into American society...
...proposals for theater nuclear forces (TNF) are judged...
...The sociological underpinning of this revitalization, I would suggest, is largely to be found in the integration of the working and lower-middle class in the core sector of American society and culture...
...And then, our government chooses to sort the countries into "good" countries (no escape), and "bad" countries (from which limited escape will sometimes be tolerated...
...They can no longer balance interests, and thus have lost their primary role as power brokers and adjusters...
...But later, as tax bills mounted, these extensions of welfare benefits began to encounter increasing hostility and resentment...
...EDS...
...THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION now discovers this fact to its dismay, and the extraordinary incoherence of its policies seems largely to stem from this state of affairs...
...has decided after getting over its post-Vietnam syndrome...
...is seen as being primarily responsible for the new sharp turn in the arms race and the absence of any real negotiations...
...THE DISARRAY WITHIN NATO goes further and the strains are more basic than the peace demonstrations indicate...
...What was new, and it is no small thing, were two points, one explicit, the other implicit...
...It is not only the British Labour party that has made clear its distaste for U.S...
...DAVID BROMWICH 7 Social Democrats—for an outline of a defense policy they support for a Europe that is becoming increasingly independent of the traditional U.S.dominated alliance system...
...Or this is what is in the air...
...A significant black middleclass stratum has come to the fore, but a good many of its members have largely lost contact with, and interest in, the black ghetto masses...
...In addition, while blacks were led by strong and determined leadership in the '60s, such leadership is no longer present...
...nuclear arsenal stationed on submarines and airplanes within the European theater...
...The ethnic mutualaid and fraternal associations had similar goals...
...The stress on reliance, on individual effort, which had begun to sound quaint at the height of the welfare state, has regained an astonishing revitalization under Reagan...
...I NOW WISH TO SKETCH another set of circumstances that is not unrelated to what has been said above and has also contributed to the present decline of the welfare state...
...Finally, large portions of the labor movement have become almost totally routinized and bureaucratized, an interest group among many others...
...Meantime, those autopsies...
...But it could—and the only defense is, well, you shoot yours and we'll shoot ours...
...There never has been a weapon that someone hasn't come up with a defense...
...How effective is military technology and hardware on the two sides...
...While there is a recognition that the Soviet Union has attempted to upset whatever the traditional balance was in Europe—if not by stationing the SS-20s then at least by the rate at which it continues to deploy them—the U.S...
...How many Soviet divisions have to be stationed on the long frontier with China...
...The West Europeans —and this is by no means limited to the socialist left—are skeptical about the utility of viewing every Third World revolt in terms of U.S.Soviet confrontation, and they increasingly distrust not only U.S...
...But perhaps at heart Rostow is still an academic, and was only trying to get his periods right...
...New York Times, October 21 Reagan outranks Schweitzer, so it was Schweitzer who was dismissed, on the ground that he failed to clear his statement with the White House...
...The welfare state is no longer something aspired to, hoped for, striven for...
...On the other hand, Reagan's speech does show that the increasing unhappiness of the West Europeans is now being noticed in Washington...
...Another source of support of Reagan rhetoric is an increasing acceptance by the working class of the antibureaucratic and antiregulation mood, which was previously largely limited to middleclass and upper strata...
...The peace movement indeed has transformed the political landscape of the NATO countries...
...In Scandinavia the call for a nuclear-free zone clearly is directed against the Soviets as well as against NATO...
...Tax benefits for homeowners will be largely maintained, but outlays for public housing and public transportation will dry up...
...You shoot yours and we'll shoot ours...
...The Soviet bloc is seen as far more vulnerable internally and more like any other imperial power externally than at any time in the past...
...It is a routinized part of their ordinary social environment...
...q strations are mobilizing more West Germans than did any previous peace movement...
...The West Europeans do not have to suffer from excessive paranoia to believe that the only real function of the rockets based in their countries is to guarantee that they will be targeted in the case of nuclear exchange...
...they were simply repeating what passed for the innocuous matteroffact sentiments of the hour in Washington, in the year 1981...
...and if shortsighted experts in Washington look forward to a more conservative coalition in the Federal Republic, the long-range effect may well be a further shift to the left in Europe...
...The U.S...
...New welfare benefits were to be made available to what the Victorians used to call the "undeserving poor" and to marginal and irregular workers in the secondary labor market...
...will show in managing the Middle Eastern situation...
...As a result, not only the Reagan policies but the whole social fabric seems slowly to unravel, and drift defies any chance of mastery...
...The ReaganSchweitzer mentality is audible in more casual phrases that are too often left unquestioned...
...If the SPD goes into opposition over this issue, it will probably emerge as far more of a socialist party than it is today...
...Why should those who work hard pay for those who are largely idle...
...The Dutch and Belgian peace marchers call for negotiations for a nuclear-free Europe (East and West...
...The obscenity remains—in both places, Haiti and the United States...
...Now Pipes, a man of great sophistication, knows what signs there have been since 1917 of a willingness to change, and what signs there are likely to be...
...Some friends who read these notes before publication felt I had neglected more hopeful signs, thus creating an unnecessary apocalyptical cast...
...We reject such a choice, and we call instead for a freedom of association everywhere as the keystone of a genuine human rights policy...
...The Church has lost much of its social impact, and many unions have become instrumentalities for individual rather than communal interests, at least more so than before...
...True, all too true...
...Hence Reagan's is the first Administration in almost 50 years to conclude that it can ignore the labor movement almost entirely...
...I refer to the increasing fragmentation of the American body politic...
...The same Times article cited an earlier incident of talking out of line, which nearly resulted in the dismissal last winter of Richard Pipes, "a Soviet specialist on Mr...
...As a result, the major American parties have found it more and more impossible to serve the brokerage and socially aggregative functions they have served in the past...
...Paradoxically, it is largely its past successes that account for the welfare state's present difficulties...
...PS: David Stockman, whose doleful an cynical reflections in the December Atlantic were published after the above was written, sums it all up: "The power of these [fat-cat] client groups turned out to be stronger than I realized...
...Neither Eisenhower nor Nixon nor Ford tried to tamper with the welfare state initiated by Roosevelt...
...Women, Hispanics, and blacks in the secondary labor market will receive even less protection than they now have, but wage levels in the primary labor market, especially if a weakened labor movement is willing to make concessions, will continue to enjoy some government support...
...For a discussion from varying points of view touching the issues raised in this comment, please turn to page 103...
...There seems to be something close to a consensus in the otherwise fragmented French politics on defense or, rather, a consensus that France must have its own means of defense and its own independent policy...
...No one expects the charming arm-twister to come up with solutions...
...suspect as a serious partner in negotiations...
...Not having a unified direction, it shows great local variety in emphasis, popularity, and impact on governments and opposition parties...
...I doubt that Medicare will be significantly reduced in the future, but am fairly certain that Medicaid benefits will be cut drastically...
...Now, almost 50 years after its inception, the growth of the welfare state has been arrested, and the Reagan administration makes major attempts to dismantle significant parts of it...
...learns this lesson, we may soon see a neo-Gaullist Europe that is increasingly independent of both superpowers...
...The upshot of what I have set down so far amounts to this: The Reagan administration, banking on the new-found individualism of stable working-class and lower-middle-class strata, counts on an ideological consensus that depends on maintaining those welfare benefits that have helped integrate these strata, while it is prepared to throw overboard efforts since the Kennedy-Johnson years to extend welfare benefits to the underclass of "undeserving poor," mainly women, blacks, Hispanics...
...He wishes for a balanced budget but helps unbalance it further because of the need to support farm prices vital to his Southern and Midwestern supporters...
...The trade unions also were concerned with a more egalitarian spread of social benefits even as they stressed individual betterment...
...December 5: President Reagan's long awaited "first" major foreign policy speech was typical for this Administration: excellent in delivery and style, high on sincerity, and devoid of substantial new proposals...
...This is reflected in the size of municipal police forces...
...In addition, it has been forced to make concessions, even when it comes to 10 wage rates through givebacks in the endangered sectors of the economy, such as the automobile industry, out of fear of even higher rates of unemployment...
...There were always interest groups on the American political scene, and that was surely a major sign of democracy...
...The first came from Major General Robert Schweitzer, chief military adviser for the National Security Council, who told a gathering of the Association of the U.S...
...policy-makers, which revealed that in inner government circles the prospect of nuclear war with Russia is looked on with increasing equanimity...
...After all, Coming The complex issues raised by Bogdan Denitch in his brief comment will be discussed at greater length in the next issue of Dissent...
...The major issues in dispute are deep-seated and difficult to resolve...
...These stable workingclass strata, as well as their brothers and sisters in the lower-middle class, work mainly in primary and organized sectors of the labor market, in the monopolistic or oligopolistic sectors of industry, as well as in local or federal government services...
...They have moved from marginal locations into the center of society and are no longer viewed, nor do they view themselves, as uneasy aliens in a world they never made...
...And so, willy-nilly, the U.S...
...No American alive today knows what it is for his own country to be attacked in war...
...2) fear that Europe will be targeted through the stationing of new missiles for nuclear destruction even if there is no total war between the United States and the Soviet Union (the whole problem of whether there is such a thing as a tactical nuclear weapon and whether the two superpowers can agree to a limited nuclear exchange...
...Not only do large sections of the labor movement lack idealism...
...But he is said to be in line for a new job: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...But that's another abomination...
...While agreeing with the United States on Afghanistan and SS-20s, they clearly do not agree with regard to El Salvador, South Africa, and the Third World in general...
...All this might not be so perturbing if the antiReagan camp did not seem as rudderless as its adversaries...
...Even if we are not going to experience a serious depression—which seems at least a possibility— various battle royals over such moral issues as abortion, women's rights, busing, and the support of religious instruction in the schools are likely to lead to clashes that cannot easily be managed by the old methods of party brokerage and adjustment, and threaten to undermine the consensual basis of society...
...After all, stationing the rockets in Europe was part of a deal that included negotiations...
...One searches in vain—in Thompson's otherwise sensible speeches, or in the proposals of West Germany's antinuke Hitler, does not leave the most steadfast soldiers with a taste for more...
...EMANUEL GELTMANID 11 cial goals...
...A deterrent at least substantial enough to discourage adventures that might occur at some time in the future, given the uncertainties of the Brezhnev succession...
...And if you still had that kind of stalemate, I could see where you could have the exchange of tactical weapons against troops in the field without it bringing either one of the major powers to pushing the button...
...Yet this Administration clearly regards negotiations as something to engage in only to as minimal an extent as will satisfy the West Europeans...
...These clashes will not only come between Reaganites and anti-Reaganites, but within the Reagan camp itself...
...Within this context it is possible to think in terms of a peace movement that does not automatically act as a pawn for one of the superpowers...
...is intent on modernizing all three "legs...
...motives but also U.S...
...If riots should break out next summer, Ed Meese and the Law-and-Order types of the Reagan administration might well attempt to press for draconian measures and significant inroads on civil rights and civil liberties...
...Reagan explicitly recognized that a major change in tone is essential if the Europeans are to take the Administration's commitment to negotiate any arms limitations agreements with the Soviets seriously...
...The Puritan, Emersonian, Social Darwinist stance, which historically has been so prominent in the American mind but was previously upheld largely by a WASP minority, has now infiltrated, although in modified form, the stable workingclass and lower-middle-class ethnics who were the main beneficiaries of the welfare state...
...IN THE UNITED STATES, much of the debate about the use of the theater nuclear forces is particularly archaic and seems to ignore at least two European realities...
...in fact, many Democratic congressmen seem to think that the best policy at present is to out-Reagan the Reaganites...
...The age of what Theodore Lowi has called "interest-group liberalism" had set it...
...These strata consisted largely of 9 blacks, Hispanic and female workers, rather than of the traditional white ethnic males...
...finger on the trigger that are to be installed in Western Europe...
...When we hear statements like Reagan's or Schweitzer's, we can read them in two ways...
...But there are three major considerations that motivate the massive peace and antinuclear demonstrations in Western Europe: (1) an increasing distrust of U.S...
...The proposals for a zero option, as interpreted 8 by the Administration, are obviously unacceptable to the Soviets, since they leave in place both the French and the British nukes, a major edge that NATO has in battlefield nuclear weapons, and the U.S...
...How dare those miserables have eaten...
...Unless such a new collective ideology is worked out in the next few years, the outlook is bleak...
...Thus the deployment of new nuclear rockets has little defensive function and is part of the general "get tough" strategy on which the U.S...
...Older industries scream for protection and subsidies, while newer high-technology sectors have no desire to shore up obsolete sectors...
...A new feature in most of the peace demonstrations is the absence of Communist leadership and slogans or, more precisely, the absence of proRussian illusions and slogans...
...but our leaders show the alacrity of eager apprentices...
...What accounts for this change...
...The Social Democrats are sharply split over the issue and the whole Social Democratic-Liberal alliance in Germany is in peril...
...As though a square meal, suggesting that they had been ferried part of the way in a larger ship, were a crime to be ferreted out by gotcha forensic autopsies...
...With jobs threatened here, and an Administration planning to feed our own poor at an abysmal level, it is indeed a serious problem...
...It presented proposals that were assured a rejection by the Soviets, while playing to the gallery—the public in the United States and Western Europe...
...and how much we would cherish the world we had left to ourselves after a nuclear war however limited...
...We know where the president stands: at a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (according to the New York Times), he informed his listeners that "Men are basically good, but prone to evil, and some men are very prone to evil...
...When we hear words like "appeasement" used against critics of Reagan's foreign policy, we ought to consider very cooly to what extent the Russians resemble Hitler, whether, in fact, they have any similar plan for world-conquest...
...We live in idealless times...
...the Liberal half of Britain's new Social DemocraticLiberal alliance shares this policy...
...All of these people have a right—a human, moral right—to survive and be welcomed...
...22) that, in his decidedly nondovish view, no defense need is served by the proposed deployment of new U.S...
...Big Capital, Small Capital, Big Labor were always represented in the halls of Congress, and they influenced the parallelogram of political forces in the struggle for power in America...
...with Commentary "think tankers," the gratuitous repeal of the Clark amendment, the courtship of the South African regime and Latin American dictatorships, or by Reagan's generous advice to the poor countries to trust in the miracles of the free market...
...Reagan gave up the mobile MX missile idea, or so it would seem, not because of military or technical considerations but because his Western allies vetoed the project...
...This makes it understandable that the fear of riots, despite the events of last summer in the United Kingdom, seem not to be strong in the Reagan administration...
...The French simply reject the idea that a tactical or theater nuclear weapon might take aim at Paris or Warsaw, while sparing Washington and Moscow...
...The president's vaguely expressed but quite genuine interest in what are now called feasibility studies is a good instance of what C. Wright Mills called crackpot realism...
...is not essential either to deterrence or to the basic balance between the two superpowers...
...There have been ghastly accounts of ship captains killing their Haitian passengers, hacking them up, and tossing the remains overboard...
...Unshocked by the omission of a plausible tertium quid—that we contemplate no "exchange" of any sort—the president gave the following immortal reply...
...If Reagan's economic policies are so contradictory, amounting, as John Kenneth Galbraith recently remarked, to attempts to ascend and descend from a mountain at the same time, this is not primarily because of the deficient economic knowledge among his advisers but because of the contradictory pushes and pulls among the interest groups that helped elect him...
...Meanwhile another of Reagan's advisers, Eugene Rostow, tells an interviewer in the Los Angeles Times that it is a mistake to think that we are living in a postwar, as distinct from a prewar, period...
...That would be no small step forward in an otherwise bleak prospect of an increased armament race between the two superpowers...
...NATO is clearly in trouble in Greece, and so long as this Administration in Washington persists in imposing its policies on the alliance, NATO will remain unpopular in Spain and increasingly under attack, in its present form, in Italy and in Great Britain...
...And so it goes...
...He was therefore saying a good deal more than Schweitzer—he was saying, "Expect war...
...These beneficiaries of the welfare state, and especially their children, now take that state for granted, much as they do their household furniture...
...There is not much support as yet for a Durkheimian vision of the need for rebuilding social solidarity on a new basis...
...This means that Europe must be regarded as an autonomous factor in the superpower confrontation...
...Has not the U.S...
Vol. 29 • January 1982 • No. 1
