The Doves’ Height of Stubbornness – Folha de S. Paulo, Folha de S. Paulo, October 21, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Two layers of reality must be distinguished in the Arab-Israeli conflict. One is the clash between the descendants of Israel and those of Ishmael, with powerful religious, ethnic, historical, and economic roots. The other is the Russian-American confrontation, which plays out through the clash between US-supported Israelis and Russia-supported Ishmaelites.
However important the various aspects of the first layer of reality may be, they are less significant for humanity than those of the second, because, on a global level, the outcome of the confrontation between the two superpowers could result in peace or war, and consequently in the crushing of communism or its worldwide victory.
Let us therefore dwell on this aspect of the war.
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Anyone who closely follows international or domestic politics cannot overlook the significant lesson from the Russian-American clash in the Middle East.
Nixon and Kissinger’s entire conduct toward Podgorny and Brezhnev is based on a “dovish” view of the communist mindset.
Having already addressed this subject in a previous article, I will simply remind you that American public opinion is divided between doves and hawks. For the latter, communists are radicals who revolt against God, the natural order He created, and the entire hierarchy inherent in that order. To a high degree, communists share the rebel’s defining psychological trait: hatred. Hatred of everything that conflicts with their negative conceptions, and therefore of all individuals, organizations, and peoples who reject their dark “gospel.”
According to circumstances, communists, in the service of hatred, use deceit, sophistry, or violence.
Thus, the way to combat them is to fight them head-on on all fronts where they attack.
The doves imagine communists in a very different way: poor wretches embittered by hunger and inadvertently turned into rebels by the rich’s exclusivity and incomprehension. The doves believe that, to solve the communist problem, all that is needed is generosity and common sense on the part of the rich. Give communists money by the bucketful. Cease all diplomatic pressure and military threats against them. Make political concessions to them. The communists’ wounded souls will begin to heal, and peace will reign in the world.
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Of course, there are doves and hawks everywhere, including in Brazil.
For some time now, the West has been shifting from the influence of hawks to that of doves. In Europe, Willy Brandt is the symbol of dovish politics, while Nixon and Kissinger are its symbols on this continent.
Well, nothing could be more radical and daring in terms of dove politics than the joint peace offensive by Willy Brandt and Nixon. The policy’s most recent result is there for all to see: the Russian attack by Syrian and Egyptian forces against the US ally Israel.
I am not discussing here whether the attack was fair or unfair in the direct relations between Arabs and Israelis. What is certain is that, in the relations between the West and the East, we see Russia emerging behind the Arabs, fattened by American wheat, buoyed by all kinds of investments already made or promised by the West’s biggest financial powerhouses… and encouraging a war whose effect may well be the outbreak of a universal conflict.
There are degrees of evidence. At the highest level of evidence is the following conclusion: the mentality of communists is not that of bona fide but unfortunate citizens the doves imagine, but that of relentless aggressors whom the hawks denounce. This means that the doves worked for war even as they proclaimed they were working for peace. They demobilized Western public opinion regarding communism and helped keep the Kremlin oligarchs, the supreme causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in power.
Will this tragic realization, with the clarity of the most direct and palpable experience, change the doves’ mindset?
I don’t think so. In everyday life, the symbol of obstinacy is the donkey. In politics, it’s the dove.
