COMMENTS: Mr. Kristol Enlightens the Europeans
Bromwich, David
The March 1985 Encounter features an address to Western Europe by Irving Kristol. A warning in three parts, with the logical structure of a syllogism backed by a gun, Kristol's article is...
...Unfortunately," Kristol declares, "the world is what it is...
...The impression of a dutiful generosity is broken only once or twice, at moments of extreme vexation, by short outbursts in the presidential manner of recent press conferences: "Yes, there really are dominoes out there...
...It is only a bit of an exaggeration," Kristol admits, "to say that foreign policy professionals usually find they have more in common with other foreign policy professionals than with the citizenry of their own countries...
...For Vargas Llosa condemns not only "the insurrectionary impulses of the Left" but also "the conspiracies of reactionary castes...
...So the Tontadora' nations cannot constitute a 'third force' that would change the present realities in Central America...
...Every word of Vargas Llosa's indictment tells against apologists for tyrannies of the left, and every word of it tells with equal force against apologists for tyrannies of the right...
...We proceed to give some extracts: Specimen 1 • "When one speaks to friendly West Europeans about this matter [that is, their refusal to cooperate with us in Nicaragua], one is provided with the reassurance that much of this public behaviour is 'merely' a response to the demands of domestic politics...
...Truly a wonderful protective shell, bespeaking natural sensibilities no less wonderful...
...the future of NATO depends, therefore, on the good will of the right, and Kristol wants our allies to know what counts as a good return...
...The allies are required to choose: either the loss of America as a friend, or unconditional support for whatever we may do in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the other countries of the region...
...There is some truth to this—but not much...
...He talks to them about socialism and capitalism, equality and necessity, enchanting dreams and harsh truths, as one would talk to a very small child...
...He speaks to 20th-century Europeans much as 19th-century Europeans spoke to Americans...
...Specimen 4 • "There is much to be said, by way of explanation if not justification, for the traditional popular indifference in North America to events and conditions in Latin America...
...Given the amount of private ownership in Nicaragua, for example, and the widespread eagerness for the very stimulus Kristol proposes, a U.S...
...Blair lived on a plot adjacent to both, and tried to settle their differences peaceably...
...the social arrangements that produced it are still the only hope for improvement...
...Leftwing American opinion, Kristol argues, is moving toward a consistent isolationism...
...This profound axiom Kristol first offered to the poor of the West...
...This is a gospel preached to the poor—but welcomed as cordially as at first glance it might seem meant to be by the rich, the greedy, and the powerful...
...Perhaps, in the better system that Kristol may ask a think tank to dream up, the people will confine themselves to complaints about minor annoyances, which they can spell out on small slips of paper and drop into a suggestion box supplied by the government...
...Its proposals to our European allies are of great interest, both as an index of the mentality of some policy-makers and as a mark of the growing truculence of neoconservatives...
...There are those who claim that the United States has made its own contribution to this sorry state of affairs by its occasional blundering intervention...
...Specimen 3 • "Though everyone expresses pious approval of such mediation [as the Contadora process], the sad truth is that it is more political theatre than anything else...
...He feels that he owes an implicit trust to the soundness of their judgments: something he can never feel about the lowly, stupid (and shockable) voter, who has never heard of most of these professionals, because they have never run for office...
...and within the terms of his discussion he could easily have argued in favor of it: that would mean sliding from his second explanation (Central America is American, and can be made over in our image) back to his first (Central America is senseless, and any use of power there makes sense...
...and, curiously enough, just the solution that has been found to work in Reagan's America: economic incentives to big business, cuts in subsidies to small business, a healthy and robust strangulation of welfare payments...
...The natural sensibility of Americans withdrew into a protective shell when faced with such senselessness...
...What part in this story was played by the United Fruit Company?— whose accounts Kristol leaves out of his account, presumably because it was a corporation and not a government...
...Yet it appears doubtful that Kristol argued strenuously against the imposition of the embargo...
...Plainly, he himself is happy in the company of the Kissingers and Brzezinskis of this world, as he would be in the company of Metternich or Castlereagh...
...Specimen 5 • "It is not more generous welfare allotments that these countries need, but more vigorous economic growth...
...This system will be called Enterprise Democracy...
...A warning in three parts, with the logical structure of a syllogism backed by a gun, Kristol's article is entitled "A Transatlantic 'Misunderstanding': The Case of Central America...
...Specimen 2 • "Once you insist that everyone improve his condition equally, you have guaranteed that no one will improve his condition at all...
...In the same way, there were once two farmers, 397 McDonald and McGibbon, who conducted their feud from neighboring tracts of land...
...one of the real drawbacks of modern democracy, from Kristol's point of view...
...So, after being told that these people are different from us, the products of a "senseless" history, and hardly to be comprehended in the same human terms, it turns out that their problems have a solution...
...He consents, however, with a significant show of patience, to assist in the tedious business of trying to make them understand their predicament...
...Specimen 6 • The editors of Encounter had the clever idea of reprinting, as a companion to Kristol's article, an essay by Mario Vargas Llosa on the double standard of Western intellectuals who comment on Latin•America...
...But McDonald (who was the stronger of the two) shot Blair in the legs and arms, tied him to a tree and covered him with a bale of hay...
...Not much: Guatemala 1954, Cuba 1961, Dominican Republic 1965, Chile 1973, Nicaragua 1983—to say nothing of the invasions, at the rate of one every three years, earlier in the century...
...Though distinct from each other, they are divided only by the author's forgetfulness...
...Did the managers of United Fruit politely inform their employees that "helping poor, suffering people is not always as easy as, at first glance, it seems...
...It is for the sake of these options and methods that he now extorts the aid of Europe, on pain of the forfeiture of American participation in NATO...
...a class of persons about whom Kristol has nothing to say...
...Incidentally, it is a new conceit to suppose that the people "coerce" their governments in a system of popular suffrage...
...Vargas Llosa also observes: "When an American or European intellectual . . . advocates for Latin American countries political options and methods he would never countenance in his own society, he is betraying a fundamental doubt about the capacity of the Latin American countries to achieve the liberty and the respect for the rights of others that prevail in the Western democracies...
...Once, however, that effort has been derided as an absurd hope for total equality, the way lies open to Kristol's conclusion: no matter how desperate the misery you see before you, be content...
...What is it about domestic politics in the nations of Western Europe that coerces their governments—even nominally conservative governments, and unquestionably proAmerican governments—to act in so disruptive a way...
...396 Europeans who wish to preserve NATO will have to support Ronald Reagan's agenda in Latin America...
...He writes as a late, self-conscious, transatlantic exponent of liberal imperialism, with an unmisgiving respect for the "imperial past, about which most Europeans are convinced they ought to feel guilty...
...No such development seemed likely to Vargas Llosa when he published another fine essay, "In Nicaragua" (New York Times Magazine, April 28, 1985)—an article skeptical of the government and its enemies alike, but mildly optimistic about the country's prospects if left to itself...
...The consequences of independent action, or even of critical detachment from our policy of intervention, are sure to be severe, "even to the point of the withdrawal of US forces from the European continent...
...These and other measures to spur private investment and private economic activity hold out the hope of putting their economies on a progressive economic track...
...he now extends it (as an unlooked-for spiritual comfort) to the poor everywhere...
...right-wing opinion sees the necessity of alliances but expects a return for its investment in them...
...It has rather been to assure that something steady is done to reduce the grossness of existing inequalities...
...These countries have no independent 'leverage' on the situation—they are simply too weak...
...Thus Kristol offers two sorts of explanation of Latin America...
...But then, conscious as he was of the scandalous impertinence of the word "totalitarian" as applied to Nicaragua in 1985, Vargas Llosa may not have reckoned fully with the motives and characters of the people who abuse such a word...
...Poor governments: they should find themselves a more agreeable people...
...He treats his European readers as innocents, to whom the world must be explained for the first time...
...We can give him the answer in one word: it is the force of public opinion in the countries in question...
...and then got another neighbor (whose name was Kristol) to say: "Blair has no 'leverage' on the situation, he is simply too weak...
...trade embargo would seem the last tactic to employ in persuading its government that capitalism works...
...398...
...Kristol's style in this article is as interesting as his argument...
...It is, of course, a devious truism, for the effort of reform has seldom been to improve everyone equally...
...his article may be their last chance to take the hint...
...Anyway, "helping poor, suffering people," says Kristol, "is not always as easy as, at first glance, it seems...
...all other remedies will be catastrophic...
...From this point of view, the proper use of our economic aid should be to finance cuts in tax rates—taxes are absurdly high in all these countries—along with cuts in governmental subsidies to inefficient producers...
...The past affiliations and present conduct of the Nicaraguan rebels give an accurate impression of the political options and methods Kristol will countenance in Central America...
...Indeed, his attitude borders on contempt: these superannuated powers, thinks Kristol, are almost not worth talking to...
Vol. 32 • September 1985 • No. 4
