[In the following review of Towards the New Cold War, Laqueur finds serious flaws in Chomsky's factual distortions and political idealism, despite crediting Chomsky as an interesting and impassioned intellectual.]

There are, roughly speaking, two ways to review Mr. Chomsky's book [Towards the New Cold War]. One is to look for a particularly absurd statement or factual mistake (not necessarily of great relevance) early on in the book—for instance, the bomb explosion at the Munich Octoberfest in 1980, to which the author refers more than once. According to him, this was the second largest terrorist incident in Europe, killing fifty-three people. However, the number killed was in fact thirteen (even on the rare occasions when Mr. Chomsky is dealing with facts and not with fantasies, he exaggerates by a factor of, plus or minus, four or five). A few more minutes could then be spent in search of some glaring distortions—say on the origins of the cold war, or the militarism of the Kennedy Administration, or again on any number of factual points. Such an undertaking is not very arduous, for Chomsky transforms a well known Israeli writer into a general (Aluf Hareven), confuses a real general with a noted Russian novelist (Laskov), and mixes up a third general with Mussolini (Peled). A review of this kind would go on to point out that not much can be expected from a writer incapable of even spelling correctly the name of a well-known Harvard professor (Stanley Hoffmann), a writer for whom Jack Anderson and Israel Shahak are reliable witnesses for affairs of state, a writer who has tried to whitewash the mass murders in Cambodia, and collaborated with notorious French anti-Semites and neo-fascists in the denial of the Holocaust. Such a review would end with some suitable reflections about the kind of society in which such a squalid tract, such a clumsy piece of propaganda, such a ludicrous fabrication, intellectually worthless and morally grotesque, a parody of scholarship that reminds me of the worst excesses of Hitlerism and Stalinism, can be put out by a distinguished publishing house.

Le style c'est l'homme même, a distinguished Frenchman once said, but I am not sure whether he was altogether right. Even if he was, there are of course other ways to review books. But the problem of style apart, there still remains the question of whether one should take Mr. Chomsky seriously. Einstein played the violin, Freud played cards, Marx used to take walks in Hampstead Heath, but we do not look to them for guidance on these activities. Should Mr. Chomsky command respect as a writer on politics because he has made a name for himself in linguistics? I think he should; he has had a wide audience, even though the number of his admirers has shrunk as world events have lately failed to bear out his predictions. But he still manages to provoke and anger quite a few people.

My own feelings have been different. While I cannot honestly describe myself as an admirer of Mr. Chomsky's writings, I have found them of interest. And I believe that he has fulfilled a useful function for a variety of reasons, some positive, others negative, and yet others neutral. In an age of academic insipidity and pussyfooting, shrillness has a certain entertainment value. Chomsky presents a fascinating psychological case and an invaluable educational example. He genuinely believes that he has never been wrong. And since there is a bit of a Chomsky in most of us, we ought to be grateful, from time to time, to be reminded that there, but for the grace of God. …

In defense of Chomsky, it must be said that his bark is sometimes worse than his bite. His new book starts with a long and acrimonious attack on Mrs. Claire Sterling and her book, The Terror Network; “absurd” is one of the least offensive epithets he applies to the work. In the end the reader is bound to reach the conclusion that Mrs. Sterling has invented all her stories, that there are no international links between terrorist groups and are no big powers supporting them. But whoever bothers to read Mr. Chomsky's fine print will find to his surprise that “it would be remarkable indeed if the Soviet Union were not engaged in international terrorism.” Far from rejecting Mrs. Sterling's main argument, Chomsky actually accepts it. It should be noted in passing that although Mrs. Sterling was not able to substantiate some of her allegations in her book, a fact that was pointed out at the time by various reviewers (including the present writer), more evidence for linking the Red Brigades and other terrorists with Eastern Europe via Qaddafi and the PLO has since come to light, and not from American sources. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, no apologies have been extended to Mrs. Sterling by her critics.

If Mr. Chomsky is not always right, he is not always wrong. He may mix up the Israeli generals and his comments are curiously restrained when he deals with the Arab Begins. But this does not invalidate his criticisms of the disturbing developments in Israel. Coming from him, spiced with exaggerations, derived partly from doubtful sources, and altogether one-sided, these criticisms will have no impact whatever on those they should reach. They will be read with sympathetic interest in the offices of the oil companies and the international banks, in the Secretariat of the United Nations and the foreign ministries of many countries which, quite independently of Mr. Chomsky and for different reasons, have reached the conclusion that Israel is a nuisance and should be abolished. Once upon a time it was perhaps a little unpopular to criticize Israel's domestic and foreign policies in the American media. Now there is a global consensus against Israel, extending from the far right to the extreme left, and including the CIA and the Pentagon. Chomsky, the erstwhile outsider, has become a mainstream spokesman; if he feels a little uncomfortable in this company, he certainly does not show it.

But these are relatively minor issues. What makes the Chomsky phenomenon so interesting is rooted in a deeper level: time for him stood still in 1947 or thereabouts. True, the action may have moved to different countries since the early postwar years; but the basic issues have remained the same and so have his instincts, those of an eighteen-year-old product of the radical Zionist-socialist youth movement who has read Marx and, being a little precocious, has already proceeded to Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek, whose visions of unconditional internationalism he fully shares. He is possessed by a surfeit of idealism, a burning wish to change the world, to search for total freedom and absolute social justice; an abhorrence of war and chauvinism; a contempt for those willing to compromise with the world as it is and who end up as traitors to the cause. From the perspective of an eighteen-year-old, the history of mankind is just beginning and everything is possible—provided only that there is the unconditional will to fight for the great revolution which will solve all problems, which will make Palestine a binational state and transform the Arab countries, Iran, and the third world in general, into genuine democratic societies, free from nationalist and racist prejudices and imbued with the spirit of humanism, tolerance, and nonviolence. This is the revolution that will destroy American imperialism, while the Soviet bureaucratic distortion of real socialism will wither away, no longer menaced by external enemies, or simply be swept away by the people. From afar a mighty chorus is already heard, “C'est la lutte finale, groupons-nous, et demain / l'Internationale sera le genre humain.”

This, then, is the vision, and I restate it here not in a spirit of ridicule. For it is in many ways a very attractive vision in its idealism, its refusal to be discouraged by the bitter experience of the past, when revolutions failed and brought worse tyranny. Without idealism and optimism there is not much hope for mankind, and Martin Buber was of course right when he wrote about adolescence as the eternal chance (Glückschance) of mankind. (I, however, am no longer certain that Buber had politics in mind when he wrote those lines, except perhaps in the vaguest way.)

But how is the vision to be realized? College freshmen reading the classics of political science will learn that politics as a vocation means compromise with realities; means giving a finger (and, on occasion, the whole hand) to the devil; means that there is no freedom, equality, and democracy even in revolutionary movements; means that the ethics of politics are not those of the prophet Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount; means that post-revolutionary regimes are not markedly less oppressive and intolerant than their predecessors. The young Chomskys, needless to say, will reject such defeatist talk. But in the long run they cannot fail to notice that most of their contemporaries do not share their values and visions, be they of libertarian socialism or a binational state in Palestine; and that this rejection is not just limited to a few monopoly capitalists, their servants, and the fools brainwashed by the media into a false consciousness. Perhaps they need a little coercion for their own good?

The case of the binational state is a perfect illustration of Chomskyan politics. There is no denying that in a sensible world this would have been the ideal solution for both Jews and Arabs. Unfortunately, binationalism has not worked in India any better than in Cyprus or Lebanon. It does not function well even in such highly civilized countries as Canada or Belgium. It never had a chance in Palestine. Quoting a friendly witness, Mr. Chomsky puts the blame on the “Europe-oriented Israeli leadership afraid of the Levantinization of their society.” But in fact almost all advocates of Arab-Jewish rapprochement came from these European-oriented circles, whereas Jews of Middle Eastern background (from whom Mr. Begin derives the majority of his votes) were always far more suspicious and hostile toward the Arabs. As for the Arabs, they regarded binationalism as a joke and not a very good one at that.

Mr. Chomsky presents essays “on the current crisis and how we got there.” Let us assume for argument's sake that his descriptions and analyses are correct. Let us then imagine him a senior decision maker in Washington or Jerusalem and ask how would he lead us out of the crisis. The concerned reader will look in vain for answers—except perhaps such obvious advice as to engage in unilateral disarmament, to dismantle the industrial-military complex, to refrain from interventionism, to share our wealth with the third world, and to read Marx, Bakunin, and Pannekoek. Mr. Chomsky must know that if all these demands were fulfilled, even if America disappeared from the map altogether, the world would still not be a more peaceful place, nor would there be less oppression and injustice. He would probably argue that it is not the task of the intellectual to provide alternative strategies but to be critical, to negate. The only strategies he develops are for the use of sectarian groups, and they have the immense advantage that they need not bear any relation to realities: any statement, any promise can be made and any problem can be solved on the level of abstraction. For there is not the slightest danger that the ideological platform will ever be put to a test, that it will have any effect on the course of events, except perhaps in a negative way.

Thus we are back to the politics of adolescence and the youth movement of ideological purity, of unlimited idealism and of irresponsibility as a way of life. The idealism has meanwhile turned into almost pathological aggression; Saint-Just is now in his fifties. The growing divorce from reality makes it impossible to refute Mr. Chomsky, but it also makes rational discourse well-nigh impossible. Mr. Marcus Raskin in a blurb on the cover of the book says that Mr. Chomsky's essays are a strong blend of reason and passion. He forgot to add that the ratio of passion to reason is about ten to one, and that it is the kind of passion about which the poet wrote that “it left the ground to lose itself in the sky.”