Professor Lukacs has made a career of being a brilliant contrarian, and whether or not one accepts his conclusions--in this case, that the U.S. and NATO should do nothing about martial law in Poland: it is simply part of the working out of the balance of power in Europe--the intellectual fencing match is exhilarating. WFB: "Why do we simply accept as axiomatic that the Soviet Union would go to war rather than lose Poland? ..." JL: "Well, it would be a dangerous thing to pretend that they won't." WFB: "Well, it would be a very dangerous thing to go to war, too." ... JL: "This entire Cold War grew out of a mutual misunderstanding which has very little to do with Communism; it involved Russia and the United States. The United States, gradually after 1945, seeing the Russians' brutal imposition of regimes in Eastern Europe, believed that this had something to do with Communism. And it had nothing to do with Communism; it had to do with the presence of the Russian army in those countries."