ABSTRACT
The governments of the Western alliance have been for some time engaged in miseducating and misleading their own public opinion on the possibilities of arms control, encouraging all sorts of wishful thinking about Soviet intentions. The Europeans, most Americans do see themselves as engaged in an ideological war with the Soviet Union, one that will determine the nature of the future world order. The old liberal establishment that ran US foreign policy and that basically agreed with the European view of the world has lost, to a large degree, its credibility, its authority, and its political influence. The new national mood in the United States could wreck the Atlantic alliance unless certain basic changes are made—though it is the reconstruction of the Western alliance that most Americans would certainly prefer. Nationalism in Western Europe is up for grabs, and unless it is seized by political parties that believe in our values and traditions.
