Letter from the Continent

Once I mentioned—tongue in cheek — to a white archbishop in Africa the possibility that democracy might work on the Dark Continent, whereupon he laughed loudly and said, shaking a menacing finger at me: “You should have left your Cartesian baggage at home!” Being a Frenchman, he implied that cold logic, rationality, common sense, abstractions, inductive and deductive methods were out of place in that part of the world. And not only there. Worse still is the American trait of imputing to others a Cartesian attiture—to Hanoi, for example. The idea that “East is East” rarely enters the American mind because the U.S. has been a successful melting pot.

America’s policy in the Far East, especially, is influenced by the assumption that the other side will be “reasonable” and “see the light,” that with a bit of clever handling the antagonist can be gently and cleverly induced to arrive at a “commonsense” attitude, to realize what is in his own best interest —in other words, to agree to a sporting fifty-fifty solution. To the Asian, losing face is far more serious than inner sentiments are. This was evident when Japan had to be literally broken by saturation bombing. To accept a draw is not in the Asian tradition even if it seems eminently sensible.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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Once I mentioned—tongue in cheek — to a white archbishop in Africa the possibility that democracy might work on the Dark Continent, whereupon he laughed loudly and said, shaking a menacing finger at me: “You should have left your Cartesian baggage at home!” Being a Frenchman, he implied that cold logic, rationality, common sense, abstractions, inductive and deductive methods were out of place in that part of the world. And not only there. Worse still is the American trait of imputing to others a Cartesian attiture—to Hanoi, for example. The idea that “East is East” rarely enters the American mind because the U.S. has been a successful melting pot.

America’s policy in the Far East, especially, is influenced by the assumption that the other side will be “reasonable” and “see the light,” that with a bit of clever handling the antagonist can be gently and cleverly induced to arrive at a “commonsense” attitude, to realize what is in his own best interest —in other words, to agree to a sporting fifty-fifty solution. To the Asian, losing face is far more serious than inner sentiments are. This was evident when Japan had to be literally broken by saturation bombing. To accept a draw is not in the Asian tradition even if it seems eminently sensible.