PARTISAN REVIEW
399
icans, is another symptom of a politics of gesture. The mood
is
easy
to understand, but its political meaning is something
else.
It
is
almost as if the United States were excluded from the traditional
sense of roots and of belonging to a specific community. Or that it is
outside the range of radical politics, despite the fact that youth
movements in many other countries take their cue from the Amer–
icans. So far as I know, the United States is the only country
where national concerns and loyalties are assumed to
be
incompati–
ble with radical objectives. No one is anti-Russian, or anti-British or
anti-French, inside or outside those countries. What we have in
this
country is a kind of nationalism turned inside out, which would
explain why patriotism here has become the property of demagogues.
And I suspect that a radical movement totally alienated from its
country would be doomed to a fringe existence, like that of an
avant-garde movement in the
arts.
But this reversal has also had a
peculiar effect on radical thinking: it has created false political
categories by confusing national perspectives with international ones.
Thus both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are sometimes criticized
for their pursuit of national interests, at other times for their opposi–
tion to socialist forces. (Incidentally, much of the talk about "na–
tional interest," even by sophisticated students of international affairs
like Hans Morgenthau, strikes me as a mishmash of politics and
morality. Most of the liberal guardians of the so-called national
interest are not so dedicated to the "national interest" as their
patriotic opponents: they are moral and political critics of Ameri–
can policies who try to justify their criticism by arguing that these
policies do not serve American interests. Actually the defense of the
"national interest" involves hard and ruthless considerations and
indifference to the effect on other peoples or the cost to humanity as
a whole - all of which are not characteristic of liberal thinking.
Playing ball with the Arabs or with the Greek government, for ex–
ample, might serve the "national interest." And it
is
conceivable
that it might
be
to Russia's or China's or America's interest under
some circumstances to use the bomb.)
And, to extend the confusion, the Arab countries are supported
or condemned mostly on nationalist grounds, though they are vaguely
connected by their supporters with progressive forces. The Viet–
namese are occasionally identified with socialist causes, but usually
