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he would disapprove of the international stands of his political ally,
Giscard , while approving of his political foe, Mitterrand, in his
strong stand vis
a
vis the Euromissile issue.
America was thus vital to Aron's world view. Yet characteris–
tically his analysis of the United States was ultimately detached.
Vietnam had been a colossal blunder, detente an immense
contresens:
the magic equilibrium act between conflict and coexistence could be
carried out only at Europe's expense. America's choices and constant
hesitations were not up to par with her international role . The giant
had feet of clay.
What about France? Aron spent a good portion of his life com–
menting on French domestic affairs , in an increasingly conservative
tone. He played an instrumental role in
L 'Express's
shift to the center
right from what had been earlier modernist-centrist positions. His
increasingly militant stands after 1977 might have been his most in–
fluential political writings, but they were his less impressive intellec–
tual output. Aron himself would sense this, as he prided himself for
his major scholarly opus,
Clausewitz.
Behind Aron's day to day ap–
praisals of French events, lay a great nationalist pride and a diffi–
culty in accepting France's loss of prestige, begun in the prewar
years , and accentuated during the Fourth Republic with its "regime
de partis" which Aron condemned for the same reasons he disliked
lobby democracy . More than anyone else, Aron was deeply aware of
France's second rank status, her very real economic and sociallimi–
tations, the gap between her reality and her pretensions of grandeur.
He distrusted charismatic leaders, and this may explain his distance
from Mendes and de Gaulle, yet he tenaciously argued for a political
leadership with a clear sense of mission. He strove to point French
elites in the direction of rational choices that would maximize France's
international standing and opportunities, out of a high sense of his
country's potential power.
Beyond France, Aron was a strong apologist for Western val–
ues , not out of any chauvinism, but from a characteristically rea–
soned stance:
L'occidental l'emporte sur Ie fidele de Lenine ou de l'imam
Khomeny parce qu'il sait la difference entre les verites scienti–
fiques, si provisoires soient-elles, et les croyances religieuses,
parce qu'il se conteste lui-meme, conscient que notre culture est,
a
certains egards , une d'entre autres.
