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his Atlanticism, condemned by a portion of the Right (which com–
prised his
Le Figaro
readership) for his modernism and resolute
democratic and egalitarian spirit, Aron always saw the United States
as the positive pole in international affairs. But in an almost Hegel–
ian manner, the country on whose shoulders the free world rested
appeared to him to lack the consciousness of its responsibilities:
J'ai toujours redoute moins
l'
exces de puissance des Etats-Unis
que
l'
instabilite d'un pays - continent, projete par les hasards
des guerres dans la politique planetaire, et dont les gouvernants,
la plupart peu conscients du dessin historique de la Republique,
sont ballottes par les courants changeants de I'opinion publique.
Aron was, by his philosophical training, first turned toward
Germany . France's defeat in 1940 led him to Great Britain and to a
greater acquaintance with Anglo-Saxon culture. The United States
was a postwar revelation. Aron would never (like most members of
his generation) fully seize America's culture. He saw postwar Amer–
ica, imperial America, as the heir of the British empire, as one more
incarnation of mankind's move toward modernity, but one whose
apogee would inexorably end. Henry Kissinger, for Aron, was the
actor whose vibrant and all -powerful international diplomacy in
ef–
fect hid the very real decline of American world hegemony.
This decline, common to the entire West, of the "capacite d'ac–
tion collective" was characterized for Aron by:
la puissance excessive des lobbies, des groupes de pression, des
syndicats; affaiblissement des idees ou prejuges qui cimentent les
collectivites de I'ethique du travail qui passait pour I'ame de la
reussite americaine; exces du legalisme qui se degrade en
demesure proceduriere; preference des universites et des savants
pour les recherches fondamentales, relatif desinteret de la con–
version des decouvertes en atout commercial.
Aron's view of Washington betrayed his intense dislike for lobby
democracy and for politics as a daily activity as opposed to a Weber–
ian "vocation":
. . . cette ville etrange absorbee de maniere quasi obsessionelle
par la politique, qui bourdonne
a
chaque instant de rumeurs,
dans laquelle des dizaines de milliers de personnes depuis Ie
president jusqu'au plus simple journaliste - apres tout Nixon a
