RADICAL QUESTIONS
313
be
expected to do what more powerful and numerous segments of the
society have neither cared nor been able to.
The alignment of forces within the United States which makes
possible a moderate if insufficient progress in domestic affairs simply
breaks down when it has to confront foreign policy. For here the issues
are ambiguous, complex and charged with emotion, certainly more so
than in regard to, say, an education bill; here the psychic smog of the
Cold War still hangs across the national horizon. The loose coalition of
labor, liberal, Negro, church and minority groups which usually supports
welfare measures has no consensus within itself regarding foreign policy–
or, perhaps more accurately, a large part of this coalition tends un–
reflectively
to
go along with the Johnson administration. Except for a
tiny fringe emotionally caught up with charismatic figures abroad, the
Negro movement has little to say about Vietnam and the Dominican
Republic, and its constituency cares even less. In regard to foreign
policy the trade unions are quiescent, ritualistically liberal in one or
two instances, and sometimes merely reactionary. Sustained dissent on
foreign policy comes only from minority segments of the academic
world, small groups of pacifists and some liberals. The result is more
impressive for articulateness than mass support.
Yet if one remembers how narrowly based this dissent actually
is within the academic and intellectual worlds, one is struck by the
moderating effect it has had upon the formation of foreign policy.
Certain academics, hand-wringers of alienation, complain that no one
listens; I, aware of how few people are complaining, am astonished
that anyone does listen. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in a mass
society, which may necessarily mean a society in which large portions
of the population are politically indifferent and passive, there is always
the possibility for aggressive minority groups
to
exert a disproportionate
influence: a fact, if it is one, that should not lead to dancing in the
streets, since the results could be quite as disturbing as they are
momentarily pleasing. Still another reason may be that the intellectuals
occupy a more important place in American politics than they did
thirty or forty years ago; they shape opinion in the universities; and
the universities, in turn, serve as the training school for the American
political elite. From a persistent and thoughtful criticism in the uni–
versities there may follow a crisis in morale among sections of this
political elite, especially if the country stumbles deeper and deeper into
the Vietnam disaster while preparing for itself still greater disasters in
Latin America tomorrow.
But let us not delude ourselves. On the issue of foreign policy even
