I read Richard Nixon's 1999: Victory Without War. The book is entitled 1999,
but it was actually published in 1988. Come to think of it, I remember
Dan Quayle referring to it as the 1988 Republican Vice-Presidential
candidate in his debate with Senator Lloyd Bentsen (the "You're no Jack
Kennedy" debate).
I have four items.
1. Nixon discusses the
end of detente, his system of negotiations and easing of tensions with
the Soviet Union. Nixon is against a number of arguments from
hardliners and doves, and he apparently regards detente as a middle
ground between those two extremes. Because detente entails the U.S.
talking with the Soviets, it allows the U.S. to have influence over what
the U.S.S.R. does, whether that concerns Soviet expansionism or arms
control. When the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. have a fairly easygoing
relationship, Nixon argues, the U.S.S.R. is more likely to treat its own
citizens well rather than abusing them, whereas isolating the U.S.S.R.
is counterproductive. Nixon also notes that, during his practice of
detente as President, the Soviets did not make significant gains in
terms of taking over other countries.
Nixon traces the end of
detente to America's loss of the Vietnam War. Essentially, he argues
that this loss demoralized the U.S. from taking a tough stand in
protecting its own interests, and thus the U.S. accepted any agreement
the Kremlin wanted. There wasn't any more tough negotiation, in which
the U.S. does what the Soviets want in one area, if the Soviets do what
the U.S. wants in another area. Meanwhile, the U.S. was cutting its
defense budget and hindering U.S. assistance to South Vietnam, even as
the U.S.S.R. "increased its military aid to North Vietnam" (page 58).
But Nixon also notes an example of a hardline stance shattering the
effectiveness of detente. Because the U.S. Congress deprived the
U.S.S.R. of Most Favored Nation Trade status, until the U.S.S.R.
permitted more Soviet Jews to leave, the U.S. could no longer use trade
as a "carrot" to encourage the U.S.S.R. to do what it wanted. Nixon summarizes the demise of detente on page 58:
"When
Congress refused to grant the Soviet Union most-favored nation status,
it took away the carrot. When it cut the defense budget and hamstrung
the President's ability to react to Soviet aggression, it left the
United States with a weak stick. Those actions sent the wrong message
to the Kremlin. They in effect telegraphed Moscow that it could pursue
its aggressive policies at little or no cost."
Joan Hoff in Nixon Reconsidered
narrates the end of detente a bit differently, for she depicts it as a
matter of increased hostility between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
rather than the U.S. letting the U.S.S.R. walk all over it. Like Nixon,
however, she acknowledges the significance of the undermining of MFN
with the Soviet Union in the end of detente. See here.
Nixon
argued that America's loss of the Vietnam War contributed to the end of
detente, and I should note that Nixon more than once discusses what he
considers to be the negative consequences of the U.S. losing the Vietnam
War. According to Nixon on page 106, for example, American loss of the
Vietnam War allowed the Soviets to "threaten sea lanes vital to Japan"
from harbors of Vietnam.
2. What does Nixon in the book 1999 think about President Ronald Reagan's policies regarding the Soviet Union? He's mixed.
He likes Reagan's policy of assisting anti-communist forces in other
countries, yet he laments that Reagan's bellicose rhetoric has
encouraged many Western Europeans to fear nuclear weapons rather than
Communism. Nixon supports the Strategic Defense Initiative,
yet he thinks that Reagan is over-optimistic about its effectiveness,
and that it should protect American weapons sites rather than the entire
country (since the weapons sites give the U.S. strike capability).
Nixon does not support trying to surpass the Soviet Union in nuclear
capability, since that leads to an arms race, and yet he is critical of
nuclear disarmament, as he sees nuclear weapons as a way to safeguard
the peace and to discourage the Soviets from getting out of hand. Nixon
is critical of Reagan's agreement to remove a number of warheads from
Western Europe, as the Soviets remove even more warheads, for he
contends that this leaves Western Europe vulnerable to Soviet
conventional forces.
3. Did Nixon envision the end of the Cold War? Again, he's rather mixed.
He doesn't appear to envision it ending, and he argues that Mikhail
Gorbachev is still a Communist dedicated to Soviet expansionism, so he
contends that the U.S. should be on-guard. At the same time, he seems
to acknowledge that the Cold War takes an economic toll on the Soviet
Union, and he also argues that the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe is not
particularly strong. He says that, even in times when the
U.S.S.R. sent in forces to squash anti-Communist revolts in Eastern
Europe (in the 1950's and late 1960's), it had to send a large number of forces to accomplish its goal.
4.
A lot of these issues are not directly relevant today, since there is
no longer a Soviet Union. At the same time, I wonder if some of Nixon's
insights can still be pertinent to today's world: how the U.S.
interacts with Russia or China, for example. I really don't know.
Putin does not seem to have imperial ambitions (as far as I can see, and
I'm open to correction on this), at least not as the Communist Soviet
Union did, yet he does like to flex his muscle on the world stage.
Missile defense is still a discussed issue, since Putin does not like
for Eastern Europe to have a missile defense system, feeling that this
make Russia vulnerable (or so I have read). I would have to know more
about the world before I could discuss the possible relevance of Nixon's
insights to today!