A Depth of Vision
'NEILL, WILLIAM L . O
A Depth of Vision_ Present History By Theodore Draper Random House. 458 pp. $19.95. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of History, Rutgers; author, "A Better World; The Great...
...The United States volunteered to defend the nations of Western Europe and they agreed to be defended...
...The ambiguities and contradictions of the alliance were best understood by Charles de Gaulle...
...What more can we ask of any writer...
...He does his homework and never has to make facility a substitute for knowledge...
...They, in turn, far from reciprocating, usually leave the United States to go it alone in various trouble spots...
...It could also lead to reductions in the present scale of nuclear arms if both sides calmed down and rationally decided what was best for them...
...Several qualities of mind and character account for Draper's distinction...
...We are always being told of the need for fresh ideas by people who never have them...
...Dwight Eisenhower was right, he maintains, in calling for nuclear sufficiency...
...For those with courage and brains—I am thinking especially of Presidential candidates—Draper offers a way to achieve, if not wisdom, at least the beginnings of it...
...In the lead essays Draper is superb...
...Sometimes an intellectual juggernaut, he can be deft and sardonic as well, and is a master of the lethal aphorism...
...His analysis of the nuclear deterrent brilliantly exposes the follies of Left and Right, the emotionalism of Jonathan Schell and the mindlessness of President Reagan...
...What he has done is provide a basis for rethinking policies that are no longer useful...
...This country labors to protect nations unwilling to take care of themselves...
...Not many Americans, however, are likely to fault him for this...
...But the main thing is that it does not depend on what others do...
...France sees itself playing a greater role in world politics, but has never developed the power to do so...
...Draper sums up his case by arguing that the most to be hoped for today "is a policy of plain, simple, and sufficient deterrence which any nuclear power can determine for itself...
...How many others even come close...
...His strength derives in part from his not offering easy solutions for every tough problem...
...Europe was too weak to arm itself and could be protected, if at all, only by the U.S...
...He has been writing about public affairs longer and better than almost any other living American...
...As he himself notes, he needs at least 20,000 words to get up to speed: The more he writes, the stronger he usually becomes...
...Present History shows Draper at his best, though not in every piece...
...He brings to current events an historian's depth of vision...
...The founders of nato assumed that when Europe recovered it would rearm, freeing America of the principal burden...
...The Western Misalliance," as he calls it, was always a one-way street...
...Draper has considerable respect for Gaullist defense policy, although he understands its limitations...
...Such a course might be contagious, because it is saner, safer and cheaper...
...In recent years, Germany has acquired similar aspirations...
...Draper does not spell out the policy implications of his argument...
...Enough is not only enough, it could open the way to something better...
...Comparatively brief reviews and essays cramp his style and do not permit the history that is crucial to Draper's most penetrating work...
...That never happened, among other reasons because it was convenient for Western Europe to let us go on paying, and because the Europeans were unable to decide what kind of war they should be prepared to fight...
...He points out that there is a good reason why our European "allies" fail to support us in crisis after crisis—they were never expected to...
...An important one was that de Gaulle wished to be independent of the American nuclear deterrent, yet able to fall back on it if necessary...
...Draper's critique of nato is equally fine and even more provocative...
...He is remorselessly logical, unrelenting in the pursuit of truth, brutally direct...
...Besides The New Leader, he has been a contributor to Commentary, Dissent, Encounter, the New Republic, the New York Review of Books, and the Washington Quarterly, where the essays in Present History first appeared...
...His critique of Arab and American behavior is scorching and just...
...At first this one-sidedness was inescapable...
...Faced with unpleasant choices, wishful thinking abounds on both sides of the Atlantic...
...It puts the responsibility where it belongs —on each nuclear power without alibis, scapegoats, trade-offs, loopholes, declarations of good intentions, bilateral freezes, double-talk, or reinventing the world...
...In this volume the three subjects that show him in top form are nuclear war, the Western alliance, and the Arab-Israeli wars...
...So much for Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, and for Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, too...
...On Israel he is less good, owing, I believe, to a certain discrete partisanship...
...Instead, the French vision of Europe is filled with a cornucopia of substitutes for power—alliance, independence, solidarities, nonalignment, partners, detente, America's nuclear deterrent, and a dream of pre-World War II global hegemony...
...The Great Schism—Stalinism and the American Intellectuals" Theodore Draper needs no introduction to readers of this magazine...
...As Draper puts it, "European isolationism may be dangerous and short-sighted, but it is deliberate and deep-seated...
Vol. 67 • February 1984 • No. 4
