WALTER LAQUEUR
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persists in applying the useless and misleading labels. For while the term
"neoconservatism" may be applicable in the context of domestic politics,
what does it indicate in world affairs? (Nor does the epithet apply to
Raymond Aron and Daniel Bell, the two people most central to setting
the agenda of the Congress's conferences and seminars.) Were Brezhnev
and Andropov liberals or conservatives? Were the Chinese more progres–
sive or more reactionary than the Soviet leaders? Was Solidarity a
conservative or a liberal movement? Did one have to be a neoconserva–
tive to oppose Honecker? If the critics of the Soviet system were
neoconservatives, then the Soviet leaders, according to this line of rea–
soning, must have been radicals or at least liberals. In truth, if anything,
they were conservatives.
To ask these questions is to demonstrate the absurdity of the labels.
Yet they are used and probably will be used in the future, often out of
laziness, ignorance, and want of another label, but sometimes simply to
obfuscate matters . This was true forty years ago, and it is especially true
today. The fact that the Congress was right when many others were
wrong did not add it its popularity. As they used to say in Paris at the
time, it was better to be wrong with Sartre than to be right with Ray–
mond Aron. To this day, many have not forgiven the Congress, just as
Fascist fellow travellers could not forgive Ignazio Silone.
In the summer of 1991, a few dozen cold warriors who had been in–
volved in the activities of the Congress gathered in East Berlin. As is the
custom on such occasions, there were a great many speeches.
It
was
striking to see to what extent old colleagues had moved in different di–
rections. Some had become fully-fledged conservatives stressing the
importance of religion and other traditional values, while others felt more
in tune with the heritage of the Enlightenment. Some were vaguely in
sympathy with social democracy, yet others had moved towards some
form of neo-isolationism or had lost interest in foreign affairs altogether.
We were all aware that we were now divided in many ways, but we had
a past in common. The leading historian of the Cold War, John Gaddis,
wrote afterwards that "many of us had become too sophisticated to see
that the Cold War was about the imposition of autocracy and the demise
of freedom." The Congress for Cultural Freedom had not committed this
mistake.
The story of the Congress will be told again in greater detail and with
different emphasis.
It
was a fascinating historical episode and offers a vari–
ety of lessons which will almost certainly be ignored. Simply put, its
initiative was possible and the money allocated only because it was done
behind the back of the United States Congress. A coalition of Democratic
and Republican populists and isolationists have always opposed cultural
