MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, thennovelist, and historian John Lukacs arenthe recipients of the 1991 IngersollnPrizes. Llosa will receive the T.S. EliotnAward for Creative Writing; andnLukacs, the Richard M. Weaver Awardnfor Scholarly Letters. The awards, eachnof which carries a cash prize ofn$20,000, acknowledge writers of abidingnimportance whose works affirm thenfundamental principles of Western civilization.nVargas Llosa was born in 1936 innArequipa, Peru. He received a Ph.D.nfrom the University of Madrid (1959)nand that same year saw the publicationnof his first book, Los jefes {The Leaders),na widely acclaimed collection ofnshort stories. His first novel. La ciudadny los perms {The Time of the Hero),nappeared in 1963 and derived from hisnpersonal experiences as a student at anPeruvian military academy. Othernworks include: La casa verde {ThenGreen House), 1966; Conversacion ennla catedral {Conversation in the Cathedral),n1969; La tia Julia y elnescribidor {Aunt Julia and the ScriptnWriter), 1977; La guerra del fin delnPrincipalities & Powersnby Samuel FrancisnN o slogan is more conducive to annoutbreak of pimples on the cheeks ofnthe establishment than the phrasen”America First,” and if it contained nonother merit or meaning, that alonenmight constitute sufficient reason tonemblazon it on your bumper stickers.nYet, in the last decade of the 20thncentury, as One Worlders, NewnWorlders, and Pax Americanos proudlynplot how the United States and itsndistinctive peoples and culture shallnevaporate, “America First” is more thannan irritant. It is the central concept of annew nationalism that prescribes not onlyna new foreign policy that reflects theninterests of the United States but also anvision and an understanding of whatnAmerica is and what it should be.nFor most of the 50 years since thenattack on Pearl Harbor, the idea ofndefining and pursuing an Americanninterest apart from the common interestsnof U.S. allies in the Cold War wasnmundo {The War of the End of thenWorld), 1981; Elogio de la madrastran{In Praise of the Stepmother), 1988. Innaddition to writing a variety of nonfictionnworks and plays, Mr. Llosa ran fornthe presidency of Peru in 1989. Hisnmost recent work. La verdad de lasnmentiras (A Writer’s Reality, SyracusenUniversity Press, 1991), combines essaysnon writing and literature withnsharp cultural and social criticisms.nJohn Lukacs, born in 1924 in Hungary,ncame to America in 1946. Henearned a diploma from Cambridge andna degree from Budapest University. Henhas been a professor of history atnChestnut Hill College in Philadelphiansince 1947. Professor Lukacs has heldnvisiting professorships at numerousnuniversities, including the University ofnPennsylvania, Columbia University,nand Princeton University. He is thenauthor of more than 300 articles andn15 books, including The Great Powersnand Eastern Europe (1953), A Historynof the Cold War (1961), The Passing ofnthe Modern Age (1970), Philadelphia:nPatricians & Philistines, 1900-1950n(1981), and Budapest 1900: A Histori­nnot practicable. Facing a commonnthreat to their interests and existence innthe form of Soviet communism, thenUnited States and its partners in WesternnEurope, Latin America, Asia, Africa,nand the Middle East had everynreason to subordinate their particularnand immediate national interests to thenparamount goal of resisting the threat.nGranted the reality of the communistnmenace — through military conquest,nnuclear extortion, subversion, and thenmanipulation of surrogates and satellitesn— and granted also that a strategy ofn”liberation” or “rollback” would not benadopted, the general way in which then”West” (a nearly meaningless term thatntoday includes Japan, Taiwan, andnSouth Korea as well as other non-nWestern states) responded to Sovietncommunism through a policy of “containment”nmade sense.nBut containment as it developed involvednnot only surrounding the SovietnUnion with a periphery of regionalnsecurity pacts but also building an embryonicnworid government in the formnnncal Portrait of a City and Its Culturen(1989). His most recent book is ThenDuel, 10 May-31 July 1940: ThenEighty-Day Struggle Between Churchillnand Hitler), 1991. Writing as muchnas a man of letters as an analyst ofnevents, as a philosopher of history asnmuch as a historian, he has revived thengrand old tradition of historiography.nThe Ingersoll Foundation is thenphilanthropic division of IngersollnMilling Machine Company of Rockford,nIllinois. The Rockford Institutenadministers the prizes. Past recipientsnof the Richard M. Weaver Awardninclude Forrest McDonald (1990),nEdward O. Wilson (1989), EdwardnShils (1988), Josef Pieper (1987), AndrewnLytle (1986), Robert Nisbetn(1985), Russell Kirk (1984), and JamesnBurnham (1983). Previous recipientsnof the T.S. Eliot Award are ChariesnCausley (1990), George Garrettn(1989), Walker Percy (1988), OctavionPaz (1987), V.S. Naipaul (1986),nEugene lonesco (1985), AnthonynPowell (1984), and Jorge Luis Borgesn(1983).nof the United Nations, the WorldnCourt, the IMF and Worid Bank, entirenvolumes of “treaty regimes” and executivenagreements (some of which remainnsecret), and the vast labyrinth of thennational security bureaucracy joined tona foreign policy establishment in universities,nfoundations, corporations, banks,nlaw firms, and Congress. Long beforenSoviet communism began to turn bellynup, this whole complex had become anself-sustaining and self-interested elite,nclosely linked to and part of the largernmanagerial class that has come to prevailnin American and European governments,neconomies,, and cultures.nIf there was some purpose to thenexistence and functions of this elitenduring the Cold War, today, with thendemise of Soviet communism and thenwithering of its satellites, there is verynlittle. Nevertheless, like any elite, thenone that presided over the Cold War isnunwilling to renounce its power andnposition, and for some years it has beennbusily inventing new rationales for itselfnThe creation of “global democracy”nDECEMBER 1991/9n