WRITERS IN EXILE
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another country where they speak of the end of ideology. At the
meeting in PrinceLOn, where the most sophisticated American
scholars participated, there were certain signs of a society that
has accepted the end of ideology. I remember Mr. Kennan, who
saw in America only an endless number of mortal dangers.
There was no belief in values, no belief in democracy. Professor
Bell was attacked in the most Stalinist, Bolshevik way by Mr.
Podhoretz. Now Mr. Podhoretz is, I think, on the right of Profes–
sor Bell-one of the neoconservatives. But the main impression I
had, and I also spoke about it, was not that there were multiple
views, which is very healthy, but that there was no common
basis. There were no different views based on something com–
mon, on something with common values. Ethics and politics
were divorced. And the next step of the end of ideology was that
Mr. Kissinger, who also attended this conference, for one afternoon
only, introduced a foreign policy based on detente, a foreign pol–
icy that assumed that there are two great powers that have some–
how to come to some kind of agreement through negotiations
instead of confrontation. They did not realize, these philoso–
phers of the end of ideology, that there are not just two great
countries, but there are two worlds. And no detente is possible
between a LOtalitarian world and a world of at least relative
freedom.
And we see LOday-I just came from Europe-that the lack
of any binding ideology with regard to foreign policy creates a
situation of neutralism, anti-Americanism in Europe, of loss of
will not to surrender LO the Soviet Union, and a most primitive
view-better Red than dead. And the American answer is a
strengthened defense, which is as primitive, as dangerous, as
mortal for our civilization as the Western European foreign
policies.
I think that Western foreign policies, LO create first of all a
unity of the West, must be based on those values out of which
our civilization emerged. And this is freedom and peace. We
must be able LO project these values into a concrete, real, realistic
foreign policy. As a matter of fact, I don't think that America as a
world power has any foreign policy at all. There are no long-term
strategic goals; there are just pragmatic practical answers LO ac–
tions initiated by the Soviets. And there is even a danger that, if
we permit things to continue in this direction, there won't be
