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339
well as political intellectuals for underestimating the Soviet threat.
But, assuming that he is right in his indictment, all he has to offer–
as a spokesman for the neoconservatives-is an appeal to stiffen the
national backbone. He is pessimistic about America's ability to resist
what he sees as "Finlandization"-the analogy limps because Fin–
land's impotence is due to its being a tiny country on Russia 's
border-but he finds some hope in the recent surge of patriotism and
national pride. To
be
sure, national self-esteem is salutary under some
circumstances, such as the French resistance
to
German occupation or
that of the countries in Eastern Europe to Russian domination. But
the American problem is not a scarcity of patriotism but an excess of
greed, and an economy based on greed creates a morality and a
politics based on greed, which soon spreads to all sections of the
population where it takes the form of the relentless pursuit of
individual self-interest and immediate gratification. The profit princi–
ple is translated into the pleasure principle.
In
this social climate, I suspect that the neoconservative pep talks
to strengthen the nation will succeed only in spending sprees on
armaments. Perhaps in the absence of a foreign policy and the
political means of implementing it, that is all that can be done. But
things would be clearer if it were recognized that Podhoretz and his
fellow neoconservatives were accepting the very business mentality
that produces our political paralysis, and that they are relying almost
entirely on the threat of a nuclear war to halt Soviet expansion or the
spread of its political influence. And that depends on our willingness
to risk the consequences of a Soviet strike, or on the gamble that the
Russian leaders are too sensible to take the chance that we would
attack them.
I am not suggesting that liberals or the left have any better
solution.
In
fact, most liberals and radicals do not even admit the
existence of the problem, at least in the terms we have been discussing
it, in terms, that is, of the ability of America to cope with growing
Soviet power and its manipulation of nationalist movements in Asia
and Africa. Many people of good will still think that moral and
restrained behavior on our part wi ll act as a model for the rest of the
world, including the Russians. There are, of course, knowledgeable
liberals like Stanley Hoffman, who advocates a sophisticated use of
politics in the Persian Gulf and other critical areas. But he leaves
unanswered the question of how a country steeped in the ideology of
private enterprise, that atomizes us into competing units of self–
interest, can pursue a radical political policy abroad or can ally itself
