252
PARTISAN REVIEW
other galaxies?)
It
is on this very principle that Hannah Arendt had
pushed for the existence of the State of Israel - a state in which all Jews
could escape the status of refugees or exiles and finally enjoy the citizen's
privilege of "the right to have rights." Such is the nation: that singular
group through which one gains access to the universal, a contract be–
tween individuals within the context of a general spirit, itself inherited
from common traditions. Suddenly diluting the nation in a greater envi–
ronment will not lead to globalism, but will encourage local, regional,
and tribal regression. (This gives rise to the dialectic between the satellite
and the bell-tower that regulates our contact with the outside world, as
the thirst for access to a global dimension is inseparable from the fear of
disappearing into the immense.) And when nations decide to unite, as did
the European Community, it is as sovereigns that they decide to resign all
or part of their sovereignty. Until we find other forms of federal or con–
federate government, the best we can hope for in this realm - and this is
the miracle of Franco-Germanic reconciliation since 1945 - are laws
regulating the peaceful co-existence of states. We cannot expect different
peoples to love or to meld passionately with one another. We cannot
demand that communities actively participate in their own dissolution.
Europeans, exhausted by their divisions and secular resentments, no
longer detest one another, but they do not love one another either.
In the former Soviet Union, learning the Russian language was com–
pulsory for all children, whether Polish, Czech, Armenian, or
Turkistanian. This law was not considered an enriching one, but a viola–
tion of liberty. We must thus distinguish the
optional cosmopolitanism
of
free countries from the
forced cosmopolitanism
of countries subjugated to an
empire or a federation. Can we not agree that in certain cases, the separa–
tion of peoples through disputes is preferable to their forced unity and
that an internationalism founded upon fictional friendship can give rise to
the worst tension (thus accentuating the balkanization it was meant to
prevent)? No matter how well-intentioned, the slogan, "association or
barbarity" remains idealistic in principle and schematic in implementa–
tion. Beware of unions' fetishism for union's sake which has been the
alibi of all invaders starving for new territory. Union is superior to divi–
sion only in so far as its benefits outweigh the disadvantages of isolation.
Nonetheless, alliance presupposes a democratic and overwhelming
agreement of the parties in question, an equilibrium of force, prudent in–
tegration, and above all, the possibility of divorce, as in any adult
marriage. A forced nuptial is worse than celibacy: numerous solitudes are
better than imprisoned peoples. Europe does not lack the ability to
"associate," but the spiritual strength and the will to tear the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe away from their ethnical tropisms (reflex re-
