ABSTRACT
The interesting point about the exercise is not its impact, nor its deeply flawed findings, nor what it says about Bush and post-Watergate gloom of loyal Republicans but what it reveals about the assumptions surrounding the state of communism in the USSR and about continued saliency of Cold War ideology. The Soviet Union persisted in offering both rhetorical support and arms for “national liberation” movements in the Third World, but in practice Soviet influence was ordinarily exercised on behalf of moderation and compromise. The ideological antagonisms of the early Cold War therefore long outlasted the occasion for their generation and the time when they might plausibly have led to military confrontation. China’s economic revolution has benefited as well from the consistency with which it has been pursued by the political leadership. The attempt to recreate the conditions for democracy in Eastern Europe has encouraged a heightened sensitivity to the importance of civil society as its essential prerequisite.
