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PARTISAN REVIEW
weary cliches, and anger about the state of affairs in their own
countries-if they are lucky enough to inhabit such countries
that allow them the freedom to speak out on these matters. Hence
I am reluctant to join a debate with Peter Brooks and Morris
Dickstein, whose opinions, it seems to me, barely reach the pitch
of discourse at which coherent argument can take place. I will not,
therefore, dispute them point by point but merely offer a few ob–
servations of the simplest kind.
The cold war is not something cooked up by American ad–
ministrative manipulations. It is one way of describing the state
of relations that has existed now for almost forty years between
the United States and its Western allies and the Soviet Union and
its satellite powers. It is not going to go away . Its degrees of inten–
sity vary from time to time, but it is the principal circumstance of
foreign relations on the earth today, and it constitutes the sub–
stance of international life of much of the civilized world.
There is no such thing, outside of wishful thinking, as a
"crusade" against communism as far as the United States and the
West is concerned. There never has been such a concerted aggres–
sive movement since the end of World War II. Such movements as
have existed have been largely defensive, and they have failed, es–
pecially in the Third World, about as often as they have succeed–
ed. There is, however, on the part of sections of the left in the West
a clear but slow, unconscious intention to commit suicide. The
latest version of this impulse is to be found in those parts of the
peace movement which support unilateral disarmament-which
means surrender-, neutralism, and any other strategy or interna–
tional tactic which will serve to weaken the Western democracies
in their long-sustained confrontation with the communist
powers. Another version of this impulse is to
be
found in the re–
surgence of anti-Americanism and anti-anticommunism in some
quarters of the left, especially in America, England, and West Ger–
many today. It is no deep secret that both major parts of this con–
frontational world are in different states of crisis today, and that
the crisis is not going to vanish tomorrow. In the West there is
political freedom to one degree or another, and in most places a
precariously sustained stability of democratic life; in the com–
munist countries there is political stability sustained largely
through terror, violence, the police, and prisons. In the Third
World there are various forms of instability, unsavory authoritar–
ian governments, potentially totalitarian guerilla movements,
