Editor’s Note Editor’s Note This issue begins with an article by Grace Ai-Ling Chou discussing the role of U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hong Kong in the 1950s. Hong Kong, a British crown colony until 1997, was strategically located near main- land China, which fell under Communist rule in 1949. Although the United States did not attempt to reverse the Communist seizure of China, it did seek to forestall any Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/12/2/1/697488/jcws.2010.12.2.1.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 further Communist encroachments in East Asia. Largely for that reason, the NGOs in Hong Kong often found themselves, consciously or not, caught up in the U.S. gov- ernment’s efforts to contain Communist expansion. Chou argues that the NGOs, in promoting the development of higher education institutions in Hong Kong, contrib- uted to the goal of containment but also changed what containment meant in practi- cal terms. The NGOs’ interests in some respects converged with, but in other respects diverged from, the interests of the U.S. government, and in that sense the NGOs be- came a complicating factor in U.S. Cold War foreign policy. The issue moves next to a forum dealing with the collapse of U.S.-Soviet détente in the late 1970s. The authors of the main article, James G. Blight and janet Lang, or- ganized a series of conferences in the 1990s that brought together former policymak- ers from both sides to discuss what went wrong in the bilateral relationship. In 1977 both the new U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, and the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, expressed hope of improving bilateral ties and overcoming tensions. Far from attaining an improvement, however, the two leaders presided over a deterioration and eventual breakdown of the détente that had been fashioned in the early 1970s. Blight and Lang believe that the oral history conferences helped former policymakers on both sides understand the importance of empathy. Empathy, as Blight and Lang repeatedly stress, is not the same as sympathy. Empathy merely requires that ofªcials on both sides try to understand how the other side per- ceives things and what its goals are. This understanding might not result in any change of one’s own policy, but, they argue, it does allow for a more informed policy and might even ensure that some points of contention can be avoided. Using ex- tended excerpts from one of the oral history conferences, Blight and Lang contend that a lack of empathy was the main source of the superpower conºict and that the sessions offered lessons for future policy. They believe that empathy can become an in- trinsic element of countries’ foreign policies. The emphasis given by Blight and Lang to empathy as the dominant source of conºict is not universally shared (I, for example, ªnd their argument and their “virtual history” unconvincing). The forum continues with responses from ªve former U.S. ofªcials—Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Mark Garrison, Robert A. Pas- tor, and Raymond L. Garthoff—all of whom were involved in U.S. foreign policy (in Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 12, No. 2, Spring 2010, pp. 1–2 © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1 Editor’s Note varying capacities) during the Carter administration. The commentators diverge signiªcantly in their responses, but most of them express doubt that U.S. foreign poli- cy can or should be altered to take account of the purported lessons of the Carter- Brezhnev period. Even though Blight and Lang might show that the lack of empathy in the late 1970s was one factor that contributed to the downward spiral of relations, this does not necessarily mean that U.S. policymakers in the future will be able to de- velop a meaningful sense of empathy for bilateral relationships or other policies abroad. At best, the oral history conferences showed that in retrospect some degree of Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/12/2/1/697488/jcws.2010.12.2.1.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 empathy might be feasible. The forum ends with a reply by Blight and Lang to the commentaries. The issue includes two review essays, the ªrst by Richard Drake focusing on the evolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Drawing on two new Italian books about the PCI and its connection to the rise of far-left terrorism in Italy in the 1970s, Drake discusses how internal rifts within the PCI gave rise to violent splinter groups in the late 1960s that in turn brought about the remarkably violent decade of the 1970s. In the period from 1975 to 1980 alone, more than 8,400 terrorist attacks oc- curred in Italy, mostly perpetrated by the Red Brigades and other far-left groups. The books probe the motivations of the far-left terrorists and compare them with extrem- ists of the far right. Even though the PCI eventually sought to disavow the Red Bri- gades and other violent terrorists, the party, through its constant rhetoric extolling revolution and its repeated denigration of Italy’s Christian Democratic political estab- lishment as the offspring of fascism, created a milieu in which violent extremists could take root. The second review essay, by Thomas A. Dine, explores two recent books that re- count U.S. peacemaking efforts in the Middle East during and after the Cold War. From the time Israel was founded in 1948, and especially after the June 1967 Six-Day Mideast War, the U.S. government repeatedly tried to promote a durable peace settle- ment between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Although a few important gains were achieved during the Cold War—above all, the 1978 Camp David Accords and 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty—the conºict between Israel and most of its neighbors did not prove amenable to even a partial settlement. The Cold War divide, which in- spired strong Soviet military and political backing for Arab governments that were ªercely hostile toward Israel, greatly complicated efforts at peacemaking and also posed the risk of a direct superpower confrontation whenever wars broke out in the Middle East. But even after the Cold War ended, efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conºict resulted in only one lasting gain—the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. Aside from that, the conºict has outlived the Cold War, and the prospects for a ªnal comprehensive settlement appear dim. The issue concludes with two book reviews. This issue is considerably shorter than usual because of page limits on each four- issue cycle. Although the page limits have been increased several times over the past decade, we will be seeking a further increase starting with the next issue. 2.