The Present Danger (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 233 staff member Peter Rodman —whose recent articles in The American Spectator allege that British journalist William Shawcross deliberately misrepresented the historical record in his best-selling Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979)—Herz's work adds to the growing body of literature that is challenging the performance of the press during this country's long, painful, and controversial experience in Southeast Asia. —MICHAELJ. GAFFNEY The Present Danger. By Norman Podhoretz. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980, 109 pp. $7.95. In The Present Danger, Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, addresses issues of vital importance today. He cogently describes how the continuous shifting of our basic objectives in Vietnam led first to the loss of any clarity of purpose and finally to defeat. Still more compelling is his discussion of the effects of the Vietnam experience on American society. Here he focuses on the well-known "mood of self-doubt and self-disgust" that followed the war, and on what he calls our tendency to Vietnamize our past, present, and future. He links these psychological phenomena to the deterioration of the United States' ability to wield power and exercise leadership, drawing some incisive parallels between post-Vietnam America and interwar England. Podhoretz also effectively sketches the evolution of American foreign policy from the Nixon-Kissinger period to the Carter years. Here he identifies each administration's view of the Soviet threat, and traces the changing conceptions of U.S. power and the nature of international politics from 1969 to 1980. He contends that the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the invasion of Afghanistan changed the Carter administration's basic assumptions regarding the importance and efficacy of military power. These two events, he argues, signaled a new period in American history. The diagnostic side of the book is convincing. However, the prescriptive side of the work is seriously flawed. In Podhoretz's view, American policy for the 1980s should be the containment of communism, pure and simple, as in the days of Truman. He paints a picture of the golden years of the Truman administration with no reference to either the "loss" of China or McCarthyism. Similarly, he depicts the Korean war as the perfect example of containment, since the United States chose to forgo any "rollback" efforts, and acted only to repel the North Korean invasion. No mention is made of the fact that U.N. troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel five times, with MacArthur peering across the YaIu. Podhoretz claims that more recently all Soviet embassies remain "inviolate" while those of the United States are sacked. He chooses to ignore the attacks on Soviet diplomatic posts and personnel that have occurred in the past decade, such as those in New York City or Tokyo in 1974; in Beirut, Beijing, and Vientiane in 1976; Washington and, again, New York City in 1977; or Tehran and Istanbul in 1980. The author also asserts that at the 1979 Havana Conference , the nonaligned nations came close to allying with the Soviet bloc. In fact, the Cuban attempt to arrange this was thwarted by a large group including the "Communist "—by Podhoretz's definition—states such as Yugoslavia and Tanzania. Other such "truths" abound. 234 SAIS REVIEW Podhoretz glosses over complexities that might weaken his argument. For instance , he asserts that due to a single factor— the Soviet challenge after World War II — the American people "experienced a surge of self-confident energy," avoided a depression, and led the West to prosperity. Similarly, he dismisses the issue of whether the pre-Kennedy situation in South Vietnam was one of overt Communist aggression, North Vietnamese subversion, or internal strife. One need not quibble over such "legalistic definition." He also contends that the Soviet advance into Afghanistan is the first step toward seizure of the Persian Gulf—no other motive is worthy of discussion. Finally, he includes an unimaginative chapter on the Findlandization of America. Podhoretz's basic problem is that he spells communism with a capital "C." Not only does he disregard the distinctions between Marxism and Maoism or Eurocommunism and African socialism, he also ignores the different roles these...