THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
29
tries seems to have declined, yet its political
power
remains con–
siderable. The reasons for this power are familiar: Communism pro–
vides deracinated intellectuals with an ideology through which to
release their ambition, distress, ideals, envy and need for a synthetic
world-outlook; it gives a technic of struggle to nationalist movements
which in their own right have little more than a grievance and a
mystique;
it
capitalizes on the deep hostility toward the white man;
it carries itself with the posture of victory; and it seems to offer, as
in some desperately inhumane and probably inefficient way it does
offer, a quick road to industrialization.
Can all this be countered by the West, even a West led by
democratic radicals? I doubt
it.
We must resign ourselves to the
likelihood that the
ressentiment
of the underdeveloped countries, a
development that would have occurred if there were not a single
Communist on the globe, will have to run its course and in doing
so will find a ready partner in the Communist movement: a model
of success, a source of language, a pattern of economics.
Still, much could be done to minimize the painfulness of this
event and to enable the political elites of the underdeveloped coun–
tries to hasten their intellectual independence. The problem goes far
deeper than providing more economic aid-much as that
is
needed–
or even greater "understanding." For one thing, the West needs the
kind of political leaders it now totally lacks in
all
of its parties,
conservative, liberal and socialist: men who can grasp something
of the psychology of desperation and the dynamic of romanticism.
For another, if the West is to become a source of attraction for the
underdeveloped countries and regain some political charisma in the
world struggle, it needs a sharply radical tum in its own social life.
Meanwhile, the best we can hope for is larger quantities of economic
aid to those countries like India where there
is
a solid democratic
tradition, and a diplomacy clever enough to realize that in some
countries and at certain historical moments a "neutralism" short of
total dependence on Russia constitutes a piece of good fortune.
If
the aim of the West was to prevent Europe from succumbing
to Communist domination, then the Cold War has probably been
won. In the West European countries the Communist parties may
still get almost as many votes as they did ten years ago, but they have
lost in elan, youthfulness, militancy and the power to cripple national
