ABSTRACT
A common attitude in western countries has been to represent le tiers monde as a battleground of ideas in which the western countries are engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the eastern countries for the souls of the emerging and reawakening peoples. The repeated error of western policy, and most of all of the policy of the United States, has been to misconceive the nature of the problem of communism in Asia, tropical Latin America, and Africa, and overrate its importance. In the Middle East one hears communist arguments cautioning against hasty attempts at unification of Arab states without consultation with the peoples. Doubtless the motive was the familiar Russian antipathy to the unification of small states into large and potentially more powerful ones near its borders—an antipathy that long preceded communism.
