Seize the Moment (37 page)

This means help. It means example. The revolution for freedom currently sweeping the world began with a spark of hope—what Dostoyevsky called “the fire in the minds of men.” It is a testament to the human spirit that this fire continues to burn so brightly in so many places among so many people. As Americans, we carry part of the original flame. We must make sure it is never extinguished.

•  •  •

As I have traveled around the world during the past forty-five years, I have found that some hate us, some envy us, and some like us. But I have found that almost all respect us. All know that without the United States peace and freedom would not have survived in the world in the past and will not survive in the future. But the question that has arisen again and again has been whether the United States had the will to play a world role over the long haul.

We have demonstrated that will during the decades of the cold war, and we must sustain that will in the decades to come. We should commit ourselves to a world role not just to keep the world from becoming worse but to make it better.
We need to restore our faith in our ideas, in our destiny, and in ourselves. We exist for more than hedonistic self-satisfaction. We are here to make history, neither to ignore the past nor to turn back to the past, but to move forward in a way that opens up new vistas for the future.

In his writings, legal philosopher Lon Fuller contrasted what he called a morality of duty and a morality of aspiration. A morality of duty requires only doing what is right in the sense of avoiding what is wrong. A morality of aspiration requires the full realization of our potential in a manner worthy of a people at their best. It is not enough to be remembered just as a good people who took care of ourselves without doing harm to others. We want to be remembered as a great people whose conduct went beyond the call of duty as we seized the moment to meet the supreme challenge of this century: winning victory for freedom without war.

There has never been a more exciting time to be alive and a better place to live than America in 1992. For centuries, people have dreamed of enjoying peace, freedom, and progress around the world. Never in history have we been closer to making those dreams come true.

The twenty-first century can be a century of peace. Because of the destructive power of nuclear weapons, there will not be another world war. Those who have nuclear weapons know that in a nuclear war there will be no winners, only losers. Although the twentieth century has been the bloodiest in history, the world's aggressors have suffered devastating defeats. Hitler's fascism was defeated in World War II. Soviet communism was defeated without war in 1989 and 1991. Saddam Hussein's brazen aggression was defeated in 1991. Because the world united to liberate Kuwait, international outlaws—large or small—will be less likely to launch aggressive wars against their neighbors.

The twenty-first century can be the first in history in which
a majority of the world's people live in political freedom. Not only in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union but also across Latin America, Asia, and even Africa, freedom has become the wave of the future. A revolution of free ideas and free elections is sweeping the world. This freedom comes not from abroad or from above but from within the people themselves. Woodrow Wilson sought to make the world safe for democracy. Today, many urge in his name that we export our particular form of democracy to other nations. This is not necessary. Dictatorship of the left and of the right has been discredited. The people have spoken: they want freedom. America's challenge is not to export democracy but to provide an example of how freedom can be secured through democracy.

The twenty-first century can be the first in which the majority of the world's people enjoy economic freedom. The twentieth century has taught us four great economic lessons: communism does not work. Socialism does not work. State-dominated economies do not work. Only free markets can fully unleash the creative abilities of individuals and serve as the engine of progress.

The twenty-first century can be a century of unprecedented progress. The technological revolution can provide the means to win the war against poverty, misery, and disease all over the world. Twenty years ago, futurist Herman Kahn predicted that the annual per capita income of the world's 5 billion people—now less than $4,000—would rise to $20,000 in the next century. His predictions, which seemed so unrealistic at the time, will almost certainly come true in a century of peace.

Only 5 percent of the world's people live in the United States. But what we do can make the entire world a better place. We are not mere passengers on the voyage of history.
We are its navigators. We have the opportunity to forge a second American century.

In his Iron Curtain speech in 1947, Winston Churchill said, “The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future.” Those words are as true today as when he spoke them forty-five years ago. We hold the future in our hands.

This is not a burden to be grimly borne. It is a high enterprise worthy of a great people. We are privileged to live at a moment of history like none most people have ever experienced or will ever experience again. We must seize the moment not just for ourselves but for others. Only if this becomes a better world for others will it be a better world for us, and only when we participate in a cause greater than ourselves can we be fully true to ourselves.

I
N
1990,
WHEN I BEGAN
preliminary work on this book, I intended to address the U.S. role in the world after the historic collapse of Moscow's satellite regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989. I believed we faced an unprecedented opportunity
to win victory without war in the East-West conflict. Since then, the world has changed dramatically. The United States orchestrated a global coalition to liberate Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War in 1990. Most momentous, the death of Soviet communism and the disintegration of the Soviet empire in 1991 revolutionized the global political landscape.

I believe that it is imperative that the United States seize this moment to secure peace and to advance freedom around the world. The conventional wisdom has been that we no longer need to play a major world role, that our mission was completed. I strongly disagree. The end of the cold war has made the world not simpler but more complicated. It resolved some conflicts, but it gave rise to new and more difficult ones. In my view, a central U.S. role became not superfluous but more important now than ever before. The first six chapters are about how the United States should exercise this leadership. The seventh chapter is about what we must do at home not only to have the means to lead through our actions but also to be worthy to lead through our example.

In preparing this volume, I received help from members of my staff and from experts in various fields. Carmen Tirado provided outstanding stenographic and secretarial support. Kathy O'Connor, my administrative assistant, ably organized my office staff and other affairs.

I wish to thank Walter McDougall, Jed Snyder, Herbert Stein, William Van Cleave, Jennifer Widner, and David Wigg for preparing insightful background papers. I also benefited from the views of James Billington, Fritz Ermarth, William Hyland, James Lilley, and Michel Oksenberg. I want to express particular appreciation to three longtime associates. Robert Ellsworth and Dimitri Simes not only provided me with their perceptive analyses of the situation in Europe and
the Soviet Union but also gave me indispensable help and advice during my trip to the Soviet Union in March 1991. Ray Price, who served as chief of my White House speech-writing staff and who organized two of my previous book projects, contributed insight and wisdom about how we must confront our problems at home.

I am especially grateful to Monica Crowley and Joe Marx for their immensely helpful research and editorial assistance and to Marin Strmecki, who again served as my research and editorial director, for his wise counsel throughout the project.

—RN

Park Ridge, New Jersey

September 11, 1991

Also by Richard Nixon

Beyond Peace

In the Arena

1999: Victory Without War

Real Peace

No More Vietnams

Leaders

The Real War

RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Six Crises

Abalkin, Leonid,
46

Afghanistan,
17
,
19
,
23
,
24
,
28
,
52
,
62
,
91
–93,
155
,
170
,
188
,
190
,
197
,
198
,
200
,
206
,
233
,
277

Africa,
233
,
250
,
252
,
256
,
262
,
276
,
304

     political instability in,
245
–46

African National Congress,
258

Age of Faith, The
(Durant),
199

agricultural subsidies,
264
–65

Albania,
19
,
171

Algeria,
196
,
198
,
202

Andropov, Yuri V.,
61
,
82
,
110

Angola,
17
,
19
,
62
,
91
,
261

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty,
88
,
89

apartheid,
246
,
257
–59

Aquino, Corazon,
28
,
247
,
249
–50

Arab-Israeli conflict,
195
,
206
,
210
,
217
–19,
246

     inter-Arab strife and,
246

     Muslim world and,
217
–31

     nuclear weapons and,
221

     occupied territories and,
219
,
221
–22,
224

     peace settlement in,
219
,
222
–230

     secrecy and,
229

     terrorism and,
225

     U.N. and,
223

     U.S. and,
219
–20,
224
–25

Arab League,
29
,
207
,
225

Argentina,
249
,
250
,
251

Aristotle,
127

Armenia,
57

arms control,
83
–90,
212
–13,
279

Asia,
232
–33,
304

     
see also
Pacific rim

Assad, Hafiz,
201
,
205

Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
191

August coup,
42
–43,
49
,
50
,
56
,
59
,
69
,
81
,
98
,
101
,
109
,
120
,
122
–23,
140
,
182
,
273

     communism and,
30
–31,
70
–71

     Gorbachev and,
30
–31,
66
–67,
70
,
75
–76,
78
–79,
107