Authors: Richard Nixon
Real War
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To Our Grandchildren
The Real War
was the right book at the right time. To some readers it may seem like a relic of a forgotten time in this era of improved superpower relations, when editorial writers and TV commentators have proclaimed the end of the Cold War. Writing in 1978 and 1979, I described the Soviet Union as “the most powerfully armed expansionist nation the world has ever known,” one that could win a war against the West or, more likely, could win without war. Today the Soviet military is leaner but more powerful than it was a decade ago, and it still has an aggressive foreign policy that threatens our interests in Asia, the Mideast, Africa, and Latin America. But because of the wide international popularity of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms, rhetoric such as that in
The Real War
would be considered unfashionably harsh today.
And yet when it was published in 1979, it exceeded all my commercial expectations and the publisher's as well. It rose to number one on
Time
magazine's best-seller list and was also a
New York Times
best-seller. The secret of its success was that it was a book that cried out to be writtenâI called it a
cri de coeurâ
because of America's alarming isolationism and impotence at the time. As such, the book passed the test I always apply to any project I undertake to determine whether it was worth the time and effort. More than any other book I have written, it made a difference.
When I left office in 1974, I was associated with a policy toward the Soviet Union called détenteâa winding-down of tensions between two superpowers with diametrically opposed
ideological interests but a common interest in avoiding an apocalyptic nuclear war. Our policy was
hard-headed
détente. Better relations with the Soviets has not meant more territory for the Soviets. During my time in office not one square mile was lost to communism. In the mid- to late seventies, when hard-headed détente became soft-headed détente and President Carter warned against “the inordinate fear of communism,” one hundred million people came under Soviet domination or were otherwise lost to the West as pro-Western regimes fell in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Angola, Nicaragua, Mozambique, and, finally, Iran.
After the period of isolationism that followed our defeat in Vietnam, I felt the American people needed to be reminded that, to paraphrase Trotsky, while they might not be interested in geopolitics, geopolitics was interested in them. In the hope of preventing more losses to the Soviet juggernaut, I spelled out a new strategy combining the effective use of military power, economic power, Presidential power, and will power. What made the book especially timely was that the Red Army invaded Afghanistan just before its publication. Even President Carter said that the invasion had changed his views toward the Soviet Union, and
The Real War
âwhich, if it had not been for Afghanistan, my critics might well have called a minor conservative tract by a forgotten politicianâsuddenly became a rallying point for mainstream thinking.
Today, as commentators debate the merits, successes, and failures of Gorbachev's policies of
glasnost
and
perestroika,
some have even questioned whether the Soviet threat ever existed. This new edition of
The Real War
should serve to remind people how different the world looked just ten years agoâbefore a President like Ronald Reagan who was willing to rebuild America's defenses and a Soviet leader like Gorbachev who recognized that his country would become irrelevant in world affairs unless he tried to reform his stagnant economy.
Even in 1979, some critics pooh-poohed my aggressive chapter titles such as “No Substitute for Victory” and “The Sword and the Spirit.” They felt it was irresponsible to suggest
the Soviet Union might weaken in the face of aggressively promoted Western ideals. But judge this passage in the light of the events of 1989:
The peoples of Eastern Europe hate their Russian overlords . . . Eastern Europe will remain a perpetual problem for the Soviet Union. The peoples of Eastern Europe have tasted freedom, something the Russian people have never tasted, except for a few brief months in 1917. Eventually, unless the Soviet Union first succeeds in its goal of world domination, the nations of Eastern Europe will become free.
Or this one:
The Soviets need contact with the West. They need our technology and our trade. They cannot keep out our radio broadcasts. They cannot seal themselves off totally from the world. When they crack open the door to reach out for what they want, we should push through it as much truth as we can.
Was I a prophet? Of course not. I and many other American leaders had been saying the same thing throughout our careers. During the Eisenhower Administration, John Foster Dulles was unremittingly criticized by the Left for saying that communists could be driven out of power in Moscow and the capitals of Eastern Europe. His rhetoric of rollback and peaceful liberation, his critics maintained, was “destabilizing.” Today, as democratic ideals triumph in Eastern Europe and have even begun to make inroads in the Soviet Union, rollback is finally becoming a reality. It can safely be said that the communists have finally lost the Cold War. But the West has not yet won it.
âRN
February 26, 1990
Saddle River, New Jersey
No Time to Lose
The history of failure in war can be summed up in two words: Too Late. Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance; too late in standing with one's friends.
âGeneral Douglas MacArthur
As I write this book, a third of a century has passed since I first entered Congress; five years have passed since I resigned the presidency.
When I resigned that office, I left unfinished the work that meant more to me than any I have ever been engaged in: the establishment of a new “structure of peace” that might prevent a major war, and at the same time maintain the security of the Western world during the balance of this century. Since that time, the position of the United States relative to that of the Soviet Union has seriously worsened, and the peril to the West has greatly increased. That “structure of peace” can still be completed, but it will be more difficult now, and there is less time in which to build it.
Since resigning, I have reflected at great length on the ways in which the world has changed during my third of a century in public life, and on the ways in which it has not. I have also reflected at length on the challenges that my successors in the presidency have faced and will face. The President of the
United States wields enormous power. The fate of the West depends on how well and how shrewdly he uses it. He can wield it to far greater effect if the American people understand what he confronts, and why the use of American power is necessary; if, in effect, they become partners with him in preserving the security of the West and the peace of the world. He cannot do it alone, and he cannot do it at all if the obstructionists block his way.
During most of my presidency America was fighting a bitter war in Vietnam. During all of my presidency we were engaged in a “war” with the Soviet Union. That struggle with the Soviets will continue to dominate world events for the rest of this century.
This book is about that struggle, and about the ways in which American power can be used to win it. We cannot win it unless we understand the nature and uses of power. Our adversaries understand these all too well.
I have dealt directly and sometimes bluntly with the leaders of the Soviet Union, of China, of Europe, and of the developed and developing nations of all continents. I have used both force and diplomacy in world affairs, and have seen how they are used by others. I have encountered the steel will of the Kremlin leaders, and have had to match their determination with my own. I have seen that they know what they want and will resort to any means to get it.
â¢Â  â¢Â  â¢
This book is a
cri de coeur,
addressed not only to our political leaders but to leaders in all walks of lifeâto take hold before it is too late, and to marshal America's strengths so as to ensure its survival.
The Soviet Union today is the most powerfully armed expansionist nation the world has ever known, and its arms buildup continues at a pace nearly twice that of the United States. There is no mystery about Soviet intentions. The Kremlin leaders do not want war, but they do want the world. And they are rapidly moving into position to get what they want.
In the 1980s America for the first time in modern history will confront two cold realities. The first of these is that if war were to come, we might lose. The second is that we might be defeated without war. The second prospect is more likely than
the first, and almost as grim. The danger facing the West during the balance of this century is less that of a nuclear holocaust than it is of drifting into a situation in which we find ourselves confronted with a choice between surrender and suicideâred or dead. That danger can still be averted, but the time in which we can avert it is rapidly running out.
The next two decades represent a time of maximum crisis for America and for the West, during which the fate of the world for generations to come may well be determined.
Other nations have much longer experience than we have in the use of power to maintain the peace. But they no longer have the power. So, by default, the world looks to the United States. It looks today with nervous apprehension, as the bulwarks against Soviet expansion crumble in one nation after another, and as the United States appears so lost in uncertainty or paralyzed by propriety that it is either unable or unwilling to act.
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Soviet ambitions present the United States with a strategic challenge of global proportion, which requires a renewed strategic consciousness and response. It requires a coherent national strategy based upon informed public support. Piecemeal temporizing will not do. Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Mozambique, Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, all have been brought under communist domination since 1974; nearly 100 million people in the last five years. Iran has been plunged into bloody chaos and turned overnight from a bastion of Western strength to a cauldron of virulent anti-Westernism, its oil treasures lying provocatively exposed to lustful Russian eyes. Cuba acts increasingly as an agent of wide-ranging Soviet ambitions. These are examples of how the pieces will continue to fall if we take a piecemeal approach. We have to recover the geopolitical momentum, marshaling and using our resources in the tradition of a great power.
The old colonial empires are gone. The new Soviet imperialism requires a new counterforce to keep it in check. The United States cannot provide this alone, but without strong and effective leadership from the United States, it cannot be provided at all. We cannot afford to waffle and waver. Either we act like a great power or we will be reduced to a minor power, and
thus reduced we will not surviveânor will freedom or Western values survive.
