Nixon in Winter 1

I started Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter.  In April, I blogged through Monica's Nixon Off the Record, which is about Monica's time working for Richard Nixon in the 1990's.  Nixon in Winter is about that, too, only it has a far greater focus on foreign policy; plus, it gets into Nixon's reflections on Watergate and other political scandals, philosophy and religion, family, and mortality.

Nixon's points about foreign policy in my latest reading were not all that new to me, for many of them are the same points that he makes in his book, Seize the Moment, which I read and blogged through.  This is not surprising, for Nixon in this part of Nixon in Winter is working on Seize the Moment, as Monica assists him in researching for the book.  I'll have plenty of opportunities to get into foreign policy in my blog posts about Nixon in Winter.  What I want to highlight here is the more personal dimension of Monica's narration.

Monica asks in her introduction why Nixon was so open with her----how he could trust her after being burned in the past.  Her answer is that it was because she was young and did not have an agenda, and also because Nixon knew that he was sharing his thoughts with posterity when he was sharing them with her.  As Monica says, Nixon was telling his story one last time!

There is a tender part of the book in which Monica comes to Nixon's home to work with him on his book Beyond Peace, and they have dinner together.  Nixon wanted her to come because he was afraid that he would slip on the ice and seriously harm himself if he went outside.  When Monica arrived, he looked out the window to tell her to take hold of the railing so she wouldn't fall.  After talking about the book, they had chili (which Nixon said was the only thing he knew how to make) with grapefruit juice.  He also made Monica a non-alcoholic version of a beverage that he liked in Asia.  And, when he tried to open a bag of sesame-seed breadsticks, he had difficulty, and a bunch of sesame seeds scattered on the floor!

Nixon said that he was lonely on account of his celebrity.  His wife Pat had died, and he mostly stayed in his study, while rarely (if ever) going into the other rooms.  While Pat was still alive, he adopted a dog who was wandering around on his property.  Monica tells a funny story about how Nixon was talking to her about foreign policy, and the dog bit off and swallowed the tip of her pin, without Nixon even noticing!

In my reading so far, this book looks like it will be like Nixon: Off the Record:  a lot of technical discussion, yet also some light-hearted moments.  At the same time, my impression thus far is that Nixon's humanity----particularly his loneliness----is more apparent in Nixon in Winter.

Beyond Peace 3

In a blog post that I wrote on Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, I speculated about what Richard Nixon would have thought about President Bill Clinton's policies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  In a post that I wrote on Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment, I wondered what Nixon's stance would have been on President George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

In reading Nixon's 1994 book, Beyond Peace, I see that Nixon was actually alive when Clinton was pursuing strategies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  On Somalia, Nixon pretty much thought what I speculated that he thought: he believed that U.S. intervention into Somalia was a mistake, but that America's withdrawal from the country conveyed weakness.

On Bosnia and Serbia, I was right that Nixon believed that the region was important to U.S. interests, presumably enough to justify American intervention.  But what I learned in Beyond Peace was that Nixon considered Clinton's policies in that region to be a mistake.  Nixon says on pages 153-154:

"From the beginning of the war [in the former Yugoslavia] there have been excesses on both sides, but the cycle of violence began as a result of Serbian aggression against other former Yugoslavian republics----aggression for which the United States and its allies have consistently and repeatedly failed to exact a price.  As early as 1991, along with a number of other observers, I called upon the United Nations to lift the embargo against the victims of Serbian aggression.  The United States, the United Nations, and the European Community vacillated, equivocated, orated, condemned, and ultimately did nothing to counter effectively the Serbian onslaught...It is unfortunate that the United States did not take action in this protracted struggle until it was forced to do so by a public reaction to bloody images on television."

Essentially, Nixon says that Clinton, the UN, and the European Community were dithering in response to the Serbian aggression against the former Yugoslavian republics.  Nixon's criticisms remind me of former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's critique of U.S. policies on the region in her 2007 book, Making War to Keep Peace.  And they also call to my mind the movie The Special Relationship, which is about President Bill Clinton's relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  In this movie, Blair publicly challenges Clinton to take more action on Kosovo, in a time when President Clinton is hesitant.

Nixon says on page 154 that the West would have intervened sooner to help Sarajevo had the people of Sarajevo been primarily Christian or Jewish, and his implication appears to be that the West was slow to act because of Sarajevo's large Muslim population.  In a time when elements of the right-wing have become frighteningly Islamophobic, in terms of condemning moderate Muslims and lumping them together with radical ones, this 1994 statement by Nixon makes me proud of him (whether or not it is entirely fair).

What puzzles me, though, is Nixon's statement on pages 154-155: "The siege of Sarajevo can have a redeeming character only if the West learns two things as a result.  The first is that enlightened peoples cannot be selective about condemning aggression and genocide...The other lesson is that because we are the last remaining superpower, no crisis is irrelevant to our interests.  If the United States had been willing to lead, a number of steps short of the commitment of ground forces----for instance, revoking the arms embargo----could have been taken early in the Bosnian crisis to blunt Serbian aggression.  Our failure to do so tarnished our reputation as an evenhanded player on the international stage and contributed to an image promoted by extreme Muslim fundamentalists that the West is callous to the fate of Muslim nations but protective of Christian and Jewish nations."

It's not that Nixon's sentiment by itself puzzles me: of course the United States should be concerned about genocide.  But it puzzles me in light of what Nixon wrote in Seize the Moment, and even in Beyond Peace.  Nixon appears to maintain that the U.S. should be selective about when it will intervene militarily----that it should do so only when its own interests are involved.  Saying that the U.S. should intervene to stop genocide (if that is what Nixon is suggesting on page 154) strikes me as a departure from that.  And, when he says that "no crisis is irrelevant to our interests", that makes me wonder if that's a blank check for us to interfere militarily anywhere there is a crisis.

Now onto the issue of the Iraq War under George W. Bush.  What would Nixon have thought about that?  On page 121 of Seize the Moment, Nixon criticizes German firms for being "the principal contractors for Saddam Hussein's network of hardened command bunkers."  That makes me think that, had Nixon been alive when Germany was refusing to back up the U.S. on the Iraq War, Nixon would have joined the conservative voices who argued that Germany was doing this on account of the business that it was doing with Iraq.  But would Nixon have supported the U.S. overthrowing Saddam Hussein and undertaking the task of nation-building?  I don't know.  Nixon in Beyond Peace seems to support regime change in Iraq, but here's the strategy that he advocates: "We should actively support the main opposition to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress, as it seeks to force Baghdad to open up its political system.  We should offer Jordan increased economic incentives and a major role in the Arab-Israeli peace process as encouragement to turn off the spigot of trade until Saddam Hussein falls from power."  That's different from the U.S. directly overthrowing Saddam.  But, as I said in my last post on Beyond Peace, Nixon was open to changing his mind when he felt that situations changed.

Beyond Peace 2

For my write-up today on Richard Nixon's 1994 book Beyond Peace, I'll use as my starting-point something that Nixon says on page 136.

"By the time of my initial visit to Beijing in 1972, China was still repressive domestically, but except for its brief invasion of Vietnam, it was no longer a direct military threat to its neighbors.  Of the three remaining communist states, North Korea clearly remains a serious, active threat, not only to South Korea but to the peace and security of the entire Pacific Rim.  It has not yet crossed the threshold that I set more than twenty-five years ago for China.  Until it ceases to be a threat, we should treat it as a pariah nation that its leaders still persist in making it.  Vietnam and Cuba are like North Korea in that both are still run by repressive communist regimes...But neither presents an active threat to the peace internationally."

In his 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World, Nixon said that "The United States must insist that [Cuba and Vietnam] each meet specific political and human rights conditions before establishing diplomatic or trade relations" (page 259).  In my third blog post on Seize the Moment, I expressed confusion: Nixon, when talking about China and the Soviet Union, supports trade with those countries as one way to encourage their liberalization on human rights.  Why, then, does Nixon not advocate the same sort of policy for Cuba and Vietnam?

I still have this question.  And yet, the passage on page 136 of Beyond Peace does demonstrate at least some consistent thread that runs through Nixon's proposals on how the U.S. should interrelate with Communist countries, be they China, Vietnam, or Cuba.  That thread is this: if the Communist countries are aggressive against other countries, then the U.S. should be hesitant to establish diplomatic or trading relations with them.

On pages 164-165 of Seize the Moment, Nixon details the considerations that led him to support normalization of U.S. relations with Communist China.  From 1959-1963, Nixon narrates, alienation was increasing between Red China and the Soviet Union, as both disputed with each other about whose "brand of Communism was purest", and as China wanted to be more than merely a junior partner in its alliance with the U.S.S.R.  As a result of the rift, China "found itself isolated and surrounded by hostile powers by the late 1960s": Japan was a challenge due to its economic strength; India had a large population, had Soviet support, was developing nuclear weapons, and had border clashes with China in the past; and the Soviet Union had first-strike capability against China, maintained military divisions on China's border, and in the past had clashes with China over territory that was disputed.  The Chinese had to rely on themselves rather than foreign aid to develop economically, and they also decided to scale back "their adventurist policies abroad" (page 165).  Nixon thought it was time to reach out to Communist China.

Regarding Cuba and Vietnam, Nixon's views on whether or not the U.S. should trade with these countries changed between Seize the Moment and Beyond Peace, and the reason is that these countries' situations changed during that time.  In Seize the Moment, on pages 260-261, Nixon notes examples of these countries' foreign policy that (in his opinion) do not serve the interests of the United States: Cuba was providing military supplies to the rebels in El Salvador, obstructing the peace talks there and perpetuating a war that was resulting in an immense loss of lives and was causing economic damage; Vietnam was economically and militarily supporting its client dictatorship in Cambodia; and the Vietnamese in Laos were using chemical weapons against the Hmong in the south.  According to Nixon in Seize the Moment, Vietnam was seeking to maintain its own empire in Indochina.

In Beyond Peace, which was published two years after Seize the Moment, Nixon presents a different picture of Cuba and Vietnam.  According to Nixon, the "global network of communist aggressors" of which Castro was a part "vanished", presumably with the fall of the Soviet Union, and so it was unlikely that Cuba would be aggressive (page 138).  Vietnam was becoming open to economic liberalization and was focusing less on aggression against foreign countries.  Nixon, therefore, was for greater economic openness on the part of the U.S. towards these countries, even though their human rights record remained horrible.  For Nixon, this policy could promote liberalization in these countries in the direction of greater respect for human rights.

I still have a question, though.  Was it Nixon's consistent policy to link American willingness to trade with Communist countries with the countries scaling back their aggression?  In Nixon's memoirs, Nixon talks about how he supported MFN with the Soviet Union and normalization of relations with China, and yet he acknowledges here-and-there in the memoirs that both countries were playing a role in other nations: Red China was supporting Pakistan and North Vietnam, and the Soviets were backing India, Arab nations, and North Vietnam.  If aggression entails providing economic and military supplies to forces in other countries, which is what Nixon criticizes Cuba and Vietnam for in Seize the Moment, then was not Nixon supporting a policy of trade and diplomatic relations with aggressors in his approach to Red China and the Soviet Union?

Nixon would probably say that this was different: he couldn't just ignore or effectively isolate Red China and the Soviet Union, due to their vast size, their huge populations, and their significant influence on the rest of the world.  He had to deal with them, as bad as they were.  But he could pressure Cuba and Vietnam by withholding privileges (i.e., trade, diplomacy), since they were smaller.

Beyond Peace 1

I started Richard Nixon's 1994 book, Beyond Peace.

So why is this book entitled Beyond Peace?  I'm still in the process of figuring that out.  At first, I thought that Nixon was saying that we need spirituality to fill our inner void after we have arrived at a state of geo-political peace.  In short, my impression was that he was addressing the question of "After peace, then what?"  Nixon says that the political activism of the left and the right cannot fulfill people's deepest needs, even were either side to accomplish its goals for society.  And yet, so far at least, the book does not really concentrate on spirituality.  Rather, like Seize the Moment, the book contains Nixon's thoughts about what the U.S. should do about Russia, Asia, and the Middle East.  It goes more deeply into domestic policy, however.  In light of that, "Beyond Peace" seems to mean what the U.S. should do now that we feel that we have peace, with the Cold War being over.  Nixon's point is that we cannot be complacent, but we must take steps to preserve the peace, for there are still problems in the world, and new problems can re-emerge.

Seize the Moment 4

I finished Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World.  In this post, I'll comment on three quotes from the book.

1.  On page 290, Nixon says the following about entitlements:

"Today, we are witnessing the rise of that new despotism under the cover of 'entitlements.'  We hear claims that by virtue of living in the United States, a person is 'entitled' not only to subsistence amounts of food, clothing, and health care, but to more and more of the amenities of life as well.  It is not just the poor who seek these entitlements.  Farmers who demand a guaranteed price for their crops, steelmakers who demand tariffs to protect their market share, retirees who demand Social Security payments far exceeding their contributions into the system, students who claim a right to subsidized loans, and dozens of other special interests all seek a guaranteed place at the federal trough.  Today, if entitlements continue to proliferate, we risk the demise of the virtues of self-reliance and individual responsibility and the triumph of the new despotism about which Tocqueville warned."

I'm all for individual responsibility, but self-reliance?  How can people rely on themselves when they cannot afford a college education or health care simply because they don't make enough money, even after working long hours?  (I agree with Nixon that not everyone needs to go to college and that apprenticeships are good for the non-college bound, but I think that more people than the rich should be able to attend college.)  What about the elderly, particularly those who are no longer able to work? 

2.  In a similar vein, Nixon says on pages 296-297:

"The threat of having to do without is central to a productive economy.  Some people work because they want to, but most people work because they have to.  If you eliminate the necessity, you remove the motivation.  Even worse, you introduce a spiritual rot that eats at the foundation of society itself.  Those who do work resent those who do not, and they also resent the system that rewards the lazy with leisure.  Seeing the lazy rip off the system and get away with it, they are tempted to rip it off in their own ways.  Society as a whole goes on a downward spiral of alienation and irresponsibility, which in turn fosters hostility, resentment, and even revenge."

Although I have issues with a system that makes people's very survival so insecure, I agree with Nixon that people should work.  Politicians on the left and the right have suggested that there be training programs for people with disabilities.  That, in my opinion, is not only a good idea, but it's an important idea.

But I also think that some welfare programs should be universal, such as Medicare.  That way, one group of people is not resenting another group because it gets health care benefits, for everyone is a beneficiary.  On the other hand, come to think of it, one group could resent another if the one group is contributing a lot to the system, while the other group is merely receiving.  Countries that pay for their health care with a Value-Added Tax (a tax that Nixon supports) may not have this problem as much, for everyone who buys something is contributing to the system.  The problem, though, is that the VAT is arguably regressive. 

3.  On page 294, Nixon touches on health care reform:

"...we have made a mistake in addressing issues such as the exploding costs of health care in ways that removed market forces from the equation.  We have erred by separating health care consumers from any concern about the costs of the care being provided.  We need to work out a system that includes a greater emphasis on preventive care, sufficient public funding for health insurance for those who cannot afford it in the private sector, competition among both health care providers and health insurance providers to keep down the costs of both, and decoupling the cost of health care from the cost of adding workers to the payroll."

I agree with a lot of what Nixon says here: preventive care, a public health care program for the needy (though I'm open to this public program being open to everyone), and detaching the cost of health care from the cost of employing people.  In my opinion, the third goal is a good reason to accept a national health care system or a public option: companies can then hire people and employ them full-time without worrying about the cost of health insurance, for the government would be taking care of that.

On competition, that's something both political parties claim to support.  Even defenders of Obamacare have maintained that competition will bring the cost of health care and health insurance down!  I hope that it would.  Personally, I think that certain monopolies should be broken up----for example, insurance companies should not have virtual monopolies in states.  But I have a hard time seeing competition as the end-all-be-all.  For one, people in emergency medical situations don't always know enough to weigh their options----plus they have to make a decision really fast.  Second, I read one critique of the pro-competition argument that said that it's not as if you can market some of this medical equipment on e-bay, allowing people to search for the equipment at a low price!  Something that does bring down costs in other countries is for the government to negotiate prices with the health-care providers.  

Seize the Moment 3

For my write-up today on Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World, I will again quote passages from the book, following each quote with my comments.

1.  On pages 176-177, Nixon discusses what the U.S. should do in response to China's unfair trading practices (i.e., barriers to imports and failure to "protect intellectual property rights"):

"Our response, however, should not be across-the-board tariff increases but rather more discriminating tactics such as blocking China's entry into GATT or cutting back China's export quota under the International Multifibre Agreement of 1974, which regulates all textile imports into the United States.  If we want to have an impact on the changes occurring in China, we should not pull the plug on trade.  Increasing economic progress will bring progress on human rights and civil liberties."

Nixon is a big proponent of free trade in this book, for he believes that this can encourage countries to become more self-sufficient.  He is not naive about free trade, mind you, for, like Pat Buchanan in The Great Betrayal, Nixon argues against the idea that free trade can contribute to peace by making countries economic beneficiaries of each other.  Nixon notes historical examples of countries with mutual economic relationships that went to war with each other, and Nixon thus contends that free trade should not be seen as a substitute for an effective military.  Still, Nixon likes free trade.

Nixon does well to address head-on a question that protectionists have asked: What do we do if other countries are not playing fair?  I don't know enough to evaluate his solutions. I wonder if blocking the entrance of China into GATT would be a short-term solution, since what if China were to behave itself to get accepted into GATT, only to return to its unfair trading practices after being accepted?  Could China then be kicked out of GATT?  Would the World Trade Organization effectively police China's unfair trading practices?  (I'm sure there are answers to these questions, but, as I said, I don't know much about this issue.)

It's interesting that Nixon says that trade with China can encourage its progress on human rights, for Nixon on page 259 argues that the U.S. should not establish diplomatic or trading relationships with Cuba and Vietnam until they "meet specific political and human rights conditions..."  Nixon in his memoirs and in this book often argues that we can encourage progress in Communist dictatorships through cultivating diplomatic and economic relationships with them, rather than leaving them in isolation.  Why does he deem Cuba and Vietnam to be exceptions to this rule?  Incidentally, the next book that I will read by Nixon, Beyond Peace (1994), appears (at least from the back cover) to advocate trade with Cuba.  

2.  On page 265, Nixon responds to the charge that liberal trade policies will result in the outsourcing of jobs to countries where workers are paid less:

"If U.S. corporations located their facilities simply on the basis of lower wages, they would all have moved to Mexico already.  In addition to wage levels, other variables such as output per worker, transportation capabilities, and the quality of human resources are all part of the economic equation."
Nixon probably has a point here.  There are still manufacturing companies that remain in the U.S.  If outsourcing were too lucrative, how would there be any manufacturing companies here?  Perhaps they stay because our infrastructure is better, or for other reasons.  And yet, it seems to me that outsourcing is still a problem.  My understanding is that manufacturing jobs are on the decline in the U.S., and that outsourcing is probably one reason for this.

I wish that Nixon had addressed more extensively in this book the question of what we would do if we had a hard time competing.  Nixon criticizes U.S. agricultural subsidies because he thinks that they give U.S. farmers an advantage over foreign farmers, who are looking for a market for their goods (and need that market for their country to advance economically).  But what would happen to us if loads of cheap foreign crops are coming into our market, in direct competition with the American farmer?

3.  On page 256, Nixon criticizes the way that foreign aid to Africa has been wasted, hinting that free-market capitalism can set Africa onto the road to prosperity:

"Over the past decade, the United States and other Western industrialized countries have injected over $100 billion in aid and credits into sub-Saharan Africa.  Most was wasted because inefficient and corrupt governments refused to put into place policies to provide average farmers and workers with incentives to produce."

Ironically, John Bircher Gary Allen made a similar argument in his right-wing critique of Richard Nixon, entitled Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask.  Gary Allen essentially argued that foreign aid props up socialism and ends up being wasted, and that the best way for impoverished foreign countries to advance economically is for them to embrace the free market.

What stood out to me in what Nixon said on page 256 was that he saw a place for the average farmer in Africa: the average farmer should have incentives to become more productive.  This, in my opinion, conflicts with what I've heard often takes place in the Third World, in the name of capitalism: multinational corporations come into the country, take people's land, use that land for cash crops or mass production, and reap handsome profits, while paying their Third World workers dittly-squat.  Nixon actually argues that it can economically help a Third World country to allow multinational corporations to come in.  Indeed, multinational corporations provide Third World countries with capital and produce a lot of goods.  But I wonder if there is a way for small farmers to be able to keep their land, and to produce enough to be competitive on the global market.  Or should they be competitive in the global market?  What would be so wrong with small farmers producing enough to feed their own country?  Is there a way to make private ownership work for people in the Third World, as opposed to making it work for multinationals?

And yet, I'd like to mention an example that Nixon cites of foreign investment contributing to improved conditions for the poor.  On pages 257-258, Nixon lambastes Apartheid in South Africa, contending that its discriminatory policies are "economically stupid" because they deny blacks "equal economic opportunities" and thus end up squandering their productivity and talents.  But Nixon does not think that American disinvestment from South Africa is the answer.  Nixon states on page 258 that "Many American companies, such as Ford motor company, had financed black housing, schooling, recreation, and health facilities."

4.  On pages 219-220, Nixon appears to take a rather anti-Israel tone, as he defends a "land for peace" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"While we are right to support Israel's survival and security, we would be wrong to back the current Israeli government's extreme demands.  [W]e should understand how the occupied territories came into Israel's possession through the 1967 war.  Aggressive military moves by Arabs created the crisis----perhaps even made the war inevitable----but Israel launched the first attacks.  Former prime minister Menachem Begin said in August 1982, 'In June 1967, we again had a choice.  The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us.  We must be honest with ourselves.  We decided to attack him'.  [T]he Arab-Israeli conflict poisons our relations with the Muslim world and undercuts our ability to cooperate with countries with modernist, pro-Western leaders.  Israel's occupation of Arab lands----and particularly its increasingly harsh treatment of the Palestinians----polarizes and radicalizes the Muslim world."

Nixon is for Israel going back to its pre-1967 borders, while Jordan would possibly administer the West Bank, and Syria the Golan Heights.  Nixon addresses the question of whether this would compromise the security of Israel.  Under Nixon's proposal in this book, conventional offensive weapons would be banned from the territories that are returned to the Palestinians, the returned territories would be a "buffer zone", checkpoints would ensure that weapons are not smuggled into the West Bank for an attack on Israel, and the U.S. would consider an attack on Israel to be an attack on the U.S., and would respond accordingly.  I wonder to what extent this overlaps with and differs from current proposals for a Palestinian state.

I was talking with my brother about Nixon's claim that Israel started the 1967 war.  My brother agreed that Israel attacked first, but he said that it was a pre-emptive strike----that Egypt was planning to attack Israel, for Egypt had been anti-Israel since the 1940's.  This wikipedia article quotes Nasser as saying on May 27, 1967: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."

5.  On page 226, Nixon argues that Palestinians in the occupied territories should elect representatives to the peace talks, without Israelis exercising a veto power over their choice:

"...elections should be held in the occupied territories to select Palestinian representatives for the peace talks.  Israeli leaders have insisted on advance approval of those who might serve in that role and on blackballing anyone with any association----no matter how distant----with the PLO.  That is unreasonable.  We did not like negotiating with Stalin or his successors, but since they held power, we had to deal with them.  Unless Israel comes to terms with its enemies, no peace agreement will enhance its security."

The reason that this passage stood out to me was that it reminded me of a question that Katie Couric asked of Sarah Palin in 2008.  Palin was saying that we should support democracy in the middle-east, and Couric then asked about Hamas' victory in a Palestinian election.  What happens when democracy leads to an outcome that the U.S. considers undesirable?  I've wondered how I would answer that question, for it is indeed a difficult question.  I'd probably give an answer similar to what Nixon said about Palestinian elections for representatives at the peace talks: that we should accept the Palestinians' choice, and try to deal with that choice if we can.  That doesn't mean that we should be okay with everything Hamas does----threatening Israel, after all, is wrong.  But part of democracy is accepting people's choice (though whether Nixon consistently did that as President has been debated).

Seize the Moment 2

I'm still reading Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World.  I have five items for today.  Like yesterday's post, my post today will comment on quotations from Nixon's book.  I'll be using those quotations as starting-points to discuss Nixon's broader arguments.

1.  On page 52, Nixon contrasts Mikhail Gorbachev with Boris Yeltsin, who were prominent political figures in Russia:

"Yeltsin's views had grown, evolving to deal with the deepening Soviet crisis while Gorbachev's remained in the quagmire of Marxism-Leninism.  Before the failed coup, Yeltsin had totally repudiated communism, while Gorbachev had not.  Yeltsin supported private ownership of enterprises and land, while Gorbachev had not.  Yeltsin supported immediate independence for the Baltic states, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin called for cutting off all aid to Cuba, Afghanistan, and other Soviet clients in the underdeveloped world, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin wanted to make major cuts in spending on the Soviet military, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin won office in a fully free election, while Gorbachev did not.  Immediately after the coup, Yeltsin spoke of a bold democratic revolution, while Gorbachev spoke timidly of reforming the Communist party."

I grew up when the Cold War was drawing to a close.  At the time, I was one of those right-wingers who thought that the Russians could still not be trusted.  I believed that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika were a ruse designed to lull the United States to sleep, so that the U.S. would disarm and the Russians would take us over.  In my mind, Communism had not truly collapsed, and it was still a threat to the free world.

What's surprising to me is that Nixon in this book actually overlaps with my views at the time.  No, Nixon didn't regard Glasnost and Perestroika as a ruse.  And yes, unlike me, Nixon believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was real.  But he still did not think that it was a time for America to be complacent.  As Nixon noted in this book, Gorbachev was still a dedicated Communist, who was providing assistance to other Communist countries; Gorbachev was still cultivating the powerful Soviet military; Gorbachev still did not want to let go of the Baltic states; and Gorbachev was increasing Russian influence in the Pacific, which included an attempt to heal the rift between Russia and Communist China.

At the time, I pointed to the sorts of things that Nixon mentions to argue that Russia was still a threat (only, in contrast to Nixon, the right-wing books, articles, and magazines that I read did not think that there was a real rift between the Soviet Union and Communist China).  But Nixon places these things in a different context than the right-wing literature that I read: for Nixon, Russia was doing these things in a state of desperation, while it was standing on its last leg.  Communism in Russia truly was collapsing.

I recently read Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, which is about Crowley's time working for Nixon during the 1990's.  What Nixon harps on continually in that book is the importance of the U.S. providing aid to post-Soviet Russia, so that her economy would get off the ground and she wouldn't be taken over by Communist hard-liners who would be all too happy to exploit the Russians' economic desperation.  That sort of scenario, for Nixon, could lead to another Cold War.  In Seize the Moment, Nixon expresses more nuance to his view on foreign aid to Russia.  Nixon does not think that a whole lot of foreign aid should go to Russia when Gorbachev is still in charge because that would only be supporting a failed Communist system.  Rather, Nixon wants aid to go to Russia when she is committed to democracy and free enterprise, something that he thought would occur under Yeltsin (even if Yeltsin banned Communist Party activity in Russia).  What happened after Nixon wrote this book, however, was that wealth under Yeltsin got concentrated into the hands of a few.

2.  On page 152, Nixon says that countries in the 1990's were afraid of the possibility of a strong Germany and Japan:

"A resurgent Japanese military would cause great regional apprehensions.  Historical memories from World War II have not vanished.  Despite forty-five years of peaceful policies, the fear in Asia of Japan as a major military power dwarfs European concerns about a united Germany."

I grew up in an offshoot of the Herbert W. Armstrong religious movement.  For years, Herbert Armstrong and his son Garner Ted predicted that Germany would reunite and become a revived Nazi dictatorship, which would be a significant part of the Beast power in Revelation 13, as well as the aggressive Assyrian in the Book of Isaiah.  When the Berlin wall came tumbling down and Europe was on the road to becoming a United States of Europe, Garner Ted Armstrong essentially said that he told us so!

Nowadays, at least as far as I can see, Germany does not look as if it will be a powerful Nazi dictatorship anytime soon----and this is more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall.  But, reading Nixon's 1992 book, I learned that there were more people than Armstrongites in the early 1990's who feared a united Germany and a United States of Europe.  As Nixon says, there were lingering memories about the times when Germany was a powerful and an aggressive nation, and countries in Europe did not know what a newly united Germany----with a sizable economy----would do.  Regarding a United States of Europe, there were apprehensions that this could be a formidable economic force.

What did Nixon propose that the U.S. should do about a united Germany?  On page 137, Nixon essentially says that the United States should provide the "political cover" that Germany needs for a "more active...foreign policy."  For Nixon, if the U.S. helps Germany to become more active in the world, other countries would not fear Germany as much, for they'd see that we're okay with Germany.  It sounds to me like "the friend of my friend is my friend."

3.  On page 129, Nixon talks about a possible role for Eastern European countries in NATO:

"As Europe's only time-tested security structure, NATO should seek to find ways to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe, particularly over the next decade when the uncertainty centering on instability within the former Soviet Union will run the highest.  This does not mean that NATO members should immediately extend its full Article 5 commitment----'an armed attack on one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack on all of them'----to the new democracies.  But it does mean that we should think in more subtle terms than an all-or-nothing guarantee.  NATO, after all, functions at various levels, including political consultation, military cooperation, and participation in its integrated military command.  Because they share our values and because the current vacuum creates an incentive for adventurism, the East European democracies must be brought into NATO's security sphere without granting them immediate full partnership."

The reason that this passage stood out to me was that it called to my mind Charlie Gibson's 2008 interview with Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  As I talk about here, Palin was saying that Georgia and the Ukraine should be in NATO.  This surprised me and a few other people I read.  At the time, Russia was going after Georgia.  If Georgia were in NATO, would NATO be obligated to fight Russia?  And would a war against Russia even be feasible, or desirable?
Palin should probably have read Nixon's discussion of NATO on page 129 of Seize the Moment.  Nixon was for cooperation between NATO and the Eastern European countries, but not for a "you attack one Eastern European country, and we consider that an attack on all of us" approach (my words).  Maybe he would have had the same ideas about Georgia and the Ukraine.

4.  On page 164, Nixon mentions the loss of Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong's son:
"While the United States provided aid and troops to prevent Communist victories in Korea and South Vietnam, the Communist Chinese sacrificed tens of thousands of solders----including Mao Zedong's only son----to support the aggression of North Korea and provided indispensable economic and military assistance to the aggressors in North Vietnam."

There are many things that I loathe about Mao----the Cultural Revolution, his killings of millions of people, etc.  But I do respect that his only son went out to fight for the advancement of Communism, knowing that he might die.  There are enough politicians who try to save their own skin or the skin of those they love: they may be military hawks, but they themselves dodged going to war, or they are okay with sending other people's kids to war but not their own.  It's a mark of principle when a leader is the opposite of this.
You can probably detect some respect on Nixon's part for Mao in this case.  Nixon in his books is quite critical of Communism and Communists, but he does at times note things that he finds admirable about them.
I'll probably talk more about China in tomorrow's post.

5. On pages 158-159, Nixon says that the U.S. partly has itself to blame for its trade deficit with Japan:
"...Japan's tremendous economic success represents an easy scapegoat for American politicians seeking to deflect attention from our own economic problems.  First, the combination of a high federal deficit and a low domestic savings rate requires capital imports, which, in turn, are reflected in a trade deficit in goods and services.  Second, many U.S. companies lack the long-term horizons needed to cultivate the Japanese markets.  Third, since 95 percent of Japan's young people but only 75 percent of America's graduate from high school, we have failed to invest sufficiently in our human capital.  Some studies have pointed out that even if Japan eliminated all its import barriers, the U.S. trade deficit would drop by only $5-8 billion.  They suggest that primarily the fault is ours, not theirs."

In the above passage, Nixon appears to overlap with the economic views of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.  Nixon, like many right-wingers, seems to portray a high deficit and low personal savings as bad for the economy.  Why?  I think that he regards a high deficit as bad because it sucks money out of the private sector: money that could be used for private investment and production is instead being used for an inefficient government program.  And Nixon may believe that people should save more because, once they have saved enough money, they can use that money to pay for capital that builds businesses.  Or people's savings would be in the bank, where it would be available to be loaned out to people who want to start businesses.  For Nixon, because we do not have enough capital ourselves, we rely on a country like Japan to provide us with capital, contributing to the trade deficit.

And yet, Nixon also overlaps with Barack Obama's view that the key to a strong economy is education.  Mitt Romney was all for education, too, but my impression during the 2012 campaign was that Romney emphasized tax cuts as the key to economic recovery----a trickle-down sort of approach----whereas Obama stressed government investment in education as a way to prepare people for the high-skilled jobs of the twenty-first century.  Nixon, at least in my reading thus far, does not say what the government should be doing about education, but he did highlight its importance in terms of helping the U.S. to become economically competitive.

Seize the Moment 1

I started Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World.  In today's post, I'll just comment on four passages that stood out to me.  Tomorrow, I'll write about Richard Nixon's views regarding post-Soviet Russia.

1.  On page 30, Nixon says the following about the war against Iraq in the 1990's:

"Had we not intervened, an international outlaw would today control more than 50 percent of the world's oil.  While the United States could survive if necessary without Persian Gulf oil, Western Europe and Japan could not.  What happens to the economies of the other industrial democracies directly affects the health of our own economy.  We therefore could not have afforded to allow Iraq to control access to Gulf oil and blackmail the world through its choke hold on our oil lifeline."

This reminded me of a conversation that I once had with a professor at my undergraduate institution.  He was telling a group of us that the U.S. did not get a whole lot of oil from the Persian Gulf, but Japan did.  I replied: "I don't remember the government telling us that when we were fighting the Gulf War!"  The professor replied: "Of course it didn't!  Can you imagine how Americans would have reacted had they learned that American troops were being used as mercenaries for the Japanese?"

Nixon essentially acknowledges my professor's point, but, unlike my professor, Nixon believes that what happened in the Persian Gulf was relevant to our national interests, even if we could survive without Persian Gulf oil.

2.  On pages 62-63, Nixon says the following about Soviet support for Saddam Hussein's Iraq:

"In the Persian Gulf War, Moscow had to choose between supporting its traditional ally, Iraq, and retaining its newly won respectability in the West.  Though the Soviet Union helped Saddam Hussein covertly with military advisers and spare parts and sought to save him from decisive defeat through last-minute diplomacy, Gorbachev ultimately endorsed the U.S.-led coalition's use of force to liberate Kuwait and to cut Iraq down to size.  Gorbachev is not a stupid man.  Faced with a choice of Iraq or the West, he chose the West."

The reason that this stood out to me was that it called to my mind a right-wing article that I read against George W. Bush's war against Iraq.  Essentially, this article praised Saddam for cracking down on the Communists in his country.  It was interesting to me how this right-wing article was looking at Iraq through the prism of the Cold War, about a decade after the Cold War had ended!  In any case, though, I wonder how the author of that article would have responded had he (I remember it was a he) learned that the Soviet Union had been a major backer of Iraq.  A parallel case is evident in what the right-wing thinks about Israel.  For a long time, there were right-wingers (not all, or even most, but some) who equated Zionism with Communism----as if there's a conspiracy that is both Communistic and also Zionistic.  And yet, the Soviet Union supported Arab states.

3.  On pages 29-30, Nixon says the following about President George H.W. Bush's handling of the Iraq War in the 1990's:

"After he achieved his fundamental military objectives and even after he shielded the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's wrath, he avoided the quagmire of playing kingmaker in Iraqi internal politics."

Nixon appears to think that it was a good thing that Bush I did not proceed to topple Saddam Hussein.
What would Nixon have thought about George W. Bush's Iraq War in the 2000's?  I don't know.  On the one hand, Nixon thought that Bush I was wise not to get involved in Iraqi internal politics, which Nixon called a "quagmire".  Had Nixon been alive in the 2000's, perhaps he would have believed that the U.S. would be unwise to take on the responsibility of nation-building in Iraq.  On the other hand, I can also picture Nixon thinking that U.S. intervention in Iraq would be justifiable, since Iraq affected U.S. interests: if he were alive in the 2000's, Nixon may have bought into the idea that Iraq had WMDs and thus was a dangerous presence in the region.  I doubt that Nixon would have accepted the neocon agenda of making the world safe for democracy, however, for he argues in this book that democracy is not necessarily the best government for everyone.

On the one hand, Nixon probably would have been proud of Bush II for going over the UN's head to attack Iraq, for Nixon is rather critical of the UN in this book.  On the other hand, perhaps Nixon would have thought that Bush II was unwise to go into Iraq without enough allies, for Nixon praises Bush I for forming an alliance in the first Gulf War.

I can only speculate, based on what I've read thus far.  Later in this book, there is a chapter on "The Muslim World".  It will be interesting to see what Nixon says there.

4.  On page 83, Nixon says the following about Gorbachev's spending on the military:

"He has pleaded for Western tolerance of excessive military production, citing the monumental difficulties----particularly massive unemployment----in converting facilities to civilian production.  That argument crumbles under scrutiny.  Like most government spending, military procurement is nonproductive spending.  Because it does not produce any goods that consumers can buy, it acts as a drag on, not a stimulus for, economic growth.  Moscow would be better off shutting down defense plants and paying workers not to produce tanks and other equipment.  Then, the steel, electronics, and other inputs could at least be put to better purposes----such as, for example, alleviating shortages of consumer goods."

This passage intrigued me because Jerry Voorhis makes a similar point in his 1972-1973 critique of Nixon as President: The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon----namely, that military spending does not stimulate the economy because it does not result in the production of goods that consumers can buy.
But didn't military production get the U.S. out of the Great Depression?  How, then, could it be a drag on the economy?  It may have gotten us out of the Depression, but American goods had to be rationed during the War.  And in the war's aftermath, there was a lot of inflation, for there was a limited supply of consumer goods, yet there was increased demand for them as people returned home from the war, and as Americans desired to get back to normalcy.

I am not entirely convinced that military spending cannot serve as stimulus, to tell you the truth.  It creates jobs, since people are producing stuff for the military.  People with those jobs can then go on to spend money on consumer goods, creating a demand for them, and (hopefully) a supply.  The thing is, I wish that there were other ways to stimulate the economy than for the government to spend money on weapons that we don't really need.  If only government spending on infrastructure could employ more people.