Brent Scowcroft came out in
the pages of The Washington
Post this morning in favor
of the multi-lateral arms
accord with Iran, observing
that even though his gener-
ation is on the "sidelines"
now in policy-making, it is
an agreement such as would
have been made under the ra-
tional Presidents he served,
Gerald Ford and the first
Bush (he dissented from the
second one's war on Iraq).
He is 90; but policy doesn't
turn on a dime, and the pact
he's discussing is congruent
with modus vivendi of every
rational American statesman
since George Marshall, the
last Secretary of State un-
til the present one, to mob-
ilise a consensus of compar-
able unanimity in support of
American national interest.
Only an unhinging of politics
from that policy, in the age
of the infantile enactments
of contemporary Republicans,
makes Scowcroft seem defunct.
But for that last character-
isation, we don't turn to
our streets, but to the wife
of the Polish Foreign Minis-
ter, a summa cum laude alum-
na of Yale and a widely ad-
mired historian of the Cold
War and Stalinist penology.
today, on the infantilism of
the American Right in its
grip on the Republican Party,
makes for especially sobering
reading, in view of her own
civilised conservatism and
vigorous resistances to ac-
commodating the Putin régime.
The day only restores hope
for policy, in two simul-
taneous columns decrying
the fog of the demagogues.
Between the two of them,
they expose false patri-
otic fury as simple envy,
outraged to lack honesty.
Scowcroft does not exagger-
ate in his comparison of
this arms accord with the
tectonic shifts we've wel-
comed with China, and then
with the USSR. Applebaum
does not exaggerate the
strangulation by the ig-
norant - not of progress
yet, but certainly of
courage. This is the el-
ement that gives their
perspective, structure,
because that is what it
is.
Anne Applebaum
Gulag: A History
Duff Cooper Prize
Pulitzer Prize
Random House, 2003©
Iron Curtain
The Crushing
of Eastern Europe
1944 - 1956
Random House/Doubleday, 2012©
