Zbigniew brzezinski

percent in favor, with 27 percent strongly in favor; and only 29 percent against, with 14 percent strongly 
against). 
Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion 
a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct 
external threat. Such a consensus generally existed throughout World War II and even during the Cold War. It 
was rooted, however, not only in deeply shared democratic values, which the public sensed were being 
threatened, but also in a cultural and ethnic affinity for the predominantly European victims of hostile 
totalitarianisms. 
In the absence of a comparable external challenge, American society may find it much more difficult to reach 
agreement regarding foreign policies that cannot be directly related to central beliefs and widely shared 
cultural-ethnic sympathies and that still require an enduring and sometimes costly imperial engagement. If 
anything, two extremely varying views on the implications of America's historic victory in the Cold War are 
likely to be politically more appealing: on the one hand, the view that the end of the Cold War justifies a 
significant reduction in America's global engagement, irrespective of the consequences for America's global 
standing; and on the other, the perception that the time has come for genuine international multilateralism, to 
which America should even yield some of its sovereignty. Both extremes command the loyalty of committed 
constituencies. 
More generally, cultural change in America may also be uncongenial to the sustained exercise abroad of 
genuinely imperial power. That exercise requires a high degree of doctrinal motivation, intellectual 
commitment, and patriotic gratification. Yet the dominant culture of the country has become increasingly 
fixated on mass entertainment that has been heavily dominated by personally hedonistic and socially escapist 
themes. The cumulative effect has made it increasingly difficult to mobilize the needed political consensus on 
behalf of sustained, and also occasionally costly, American leadership abroad. Mass communications have been 
playing a particularly important role in that regard, generating a strong revulsion against any selective use of 
force that entails even low levels of casualties. 
In addition, both America and Western Europe have been finding it difficult to cope with the cultural 
consequences of social hedonism and the dramatic decline in the centrality of religious-based values in society. 
(The parallels with the decline of the imperial systems summarized in chapter 1 are striking in that respect.) The 
resulting cultural crisis has been compounded by the spread of drugs and, especially in America, by its linkage 
to the racial issue. Lastly, the rate of economic growth is no longer able to keep up with growing material 
expectations, with the latter stimulated by a culture that places a premium on consumption. It is no exaggeration 
to state that a sense of historical anxiety, perhaps even of pessimism, is becoming palpable in the more 
articulate sectors of Western society. 
Almost half a century ago, a noted historian, Hans Kohn, having observed the tragic experience of the two 
world wars and the debilitating consequences of the totalitarian challenge, worried that the West may have 
become "fatigued and exhausted." Indeed, he feared that 

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[t]wentieth century man has become less confident than his nineteenth century ancestor was. He has 
witnessed the dark powers of history in his own experience. Things which seemed to belong to the past 
have reappeared: fanatical faith, infallible leaders, slavery and massacres, the uprooting of whole 
populations, ruthlessness and barbarism.4