It’s November 4, 2008. I’m currently sitting in a history seminar on the Yalta Conference of 1945, discussing how the Allied leaders decided to divvy up the Balkans. It’s striking to read the statements of Stalin and Churchill, because they read like ancient history. Churchill was driven by a single animating desire: the preservation of the British Empire. All of his diplomatic effort was directed toward this aim. Stalin was driven by another: to protect and extend the power of the Soviet Union and, thus, his own power. These are the perennial reasons of leaders from Caesar to Putin.
However, it is quite different to read the correspondence and thoughts of the Americans. Roosevelt did have his more pragmatic reasons; his Poland policy was driven by a desire to hold on to the Polish vote (and thus Chicago and Illinois) for the Democratic Party. But he is mostly driven by a somewhat inchoate and unfocused mix of desires: for a peaceful, for a reasonable, for a better world. He dreams of a world in which governments everywhere existed for the benefit of their people, in which no one would have to die at the whim of a leader such as Hitler or Stalin. Roosevelt’s desires were always idealistic, and he never managed truly to fulfill them. His United Nations proved to be somewhat powerless, and democracy in Eastern Europe ended up being a cruel joke. As soon as the Allies laid down their arms against the Axis, they began loading them against each other. But for all the failures of Roosevelt’s vision, one cannot overstate the achievement of his central dream.
The “next war” never came.
It’s easy to point out how often American actions have been inconsistent with the idealistic approach that we espouse. We were hardly so righteous when it came to ensuring our postwar sphere of influence in East Asia, not to mention our ruthless fire-bombing of Japanese cities and the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians in order to “break the spirit” of the Japanese and German people. And we never may be able to absolve one of our greatest sins as a nation, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dark side of American ideals is the monstrosity we have often resorted to in order to protect them.
But only by having dreams can we fail to live up to them. America may not be perfect and may frequently be quite far from it. But what we (and often liberals especially) often lose sight of is that the strength of our dreams is almost a uniquely American quality. Throughout history, leaders act in their interests, and the best often act in the interests of their people as well. A government attempting to act, however fitfully, to make a better world for all everyone inside and outside its borders is a truly rare thing.
And despite all the disillusionments of the past eight years, people still hope for a better world. That is a fundamentally American impulse, but also a fundamentally liberal one. That’s why Obama’s campaign has been such a brilliantly targeted one; I think he’s managed to tap into the eternal American drive for optimism, often misplaced. John McCain’s fundamental electoral problem has not been his policies (misguided as I think they are) but the fact that it’s hard to be on the opposite side of what your opponent has cast as a referendum on hope.
In a choice between hope and fear, the American people are leaning towards hope. Too often we forget that that’s not true everywhere. Despite the many failings of our country in its history, this tendency toward hope is reason enough to be proud of it.
Alex Copulsky, Books & Arts Editor