Volume 29, Number 1 · February 4, 1982
Reagan Abroad
By Stanley Hoffmann
If an ideology is a set of beliefs about the state of the world, about how it got to be that way, and about what should be done to change it, the Reagan administration came to power with an ideology of foreign affairs. The lesson most observers have derived from the first year of Reagan's foreign policy is simple: an ideology is not a strategy, a set of attitudes is not a policy. Moreover, in so far as the view of the world was plain wrong, the divorce between convictions and realities puts policy makers in a dilemma. Either they act on their beliefs, with potentially disastrous effects; or else they merely express and trumpet their beliefs, which may be enough to scare or antagonize others; or else they try to close the gap and to adapt to reality, always a slow and painful, and often an incomplete, process for true believers.
Feature, 6909 words
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