Leaders

by Richard Nixon

  The alert worked. Brezhnev sent no military personnel to the region, and it became possible to start working toward a peaceful solution to the conflict. The alert had succeeded for two reasons. First, Brezhnev knew that we still had a slight edge over the Soviet Union in nuclear weaponry. Second, he knew that we were determined to defend our vital interests and to stand by our allies, as we had shown through the decisive actions we had taken in Vietnam the year before. My cold words on the Moscow-Washington hot line during the crisis were reinforced by my steadfast refusal to cave in to his demands on the Middle East during our late-night meeting in San Clemente. Thus, during the October crisis, Brezhnev realized that he was up against an adversary who had credible military power and the will to use it, and he backed down.

  When Brezhnev and I met again in Moscow in 1974, he expressed bitterness toward the Israelis, blaming them for all the tensions in the Middle East. He also heatedly denied that the Soviets had directly urged the Arabs to launch the 1973 war. Through the tone of his protestations, I sensed that he was pained that our exchanges during the October crisis had been so tough. But he also made it clear that he did not want to venture that close to the brink of war again.

  Brezhnev was always a realist in his diplomacy. But as Dobrynin once told Kissinger, Brezhnev and the entire Soviet leadership had one “neuralgic point”: China. It seemed that no summit meeting was complete until Brezhnev had made an appeal in one form or another for us to join with him in an alliance against what he called the “yellow peril.”

  During our second summit I told him that I thought his concern about the Chinese was exaggerated. They would not acquire a sufficient nuclear capability to risk aggression against the Soviet Union for at least twenty years. Brezhnev shook his head in disagreement, so I asked him how long he thought it would take China to become a major nuclear power.

  He held up his two hands with fingers outspread and said, “Ten, in ten years, they will have weapons equal to what we have now. We will be further advanced by then, but we must bring home to them that this cannot go on. In 1963, during our party congress, I remember how Mao said, ‘Let four hundred million Chinese die; three hundred million will be left.’ Such is the psychology of this man.” Brezhnev then implied that the entire Chinese leadership was instinctively aggressive and would remain so even after Mao’s death.

  Our three summits produced a number of important agreements, including the first treaty limiting the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and the first strategic arms limitation agreement, SALT I. But both Brezhnev and I considered the personal relationship we developed to be as important as any of the specific pacts. By getting to know each other, we substantially reduced the most dangerous and least recognized danger to peace: miscalculation.

  In the nuclear age no sane leader will deliberately step over the brink of war between the superpowers. But leaders who do not meet, who do not talk out their differences, who do not understand each other, run the risk of inadvertently pushing each other over the brink—not because they want war, but because they miscalculate what actions will provoke war. In our meetings Brezhnev and I found that each was the other’s equal in resolution. Each, therefore, would think twice before testing the other. It became clear that if we were to go forward in our areas of dispute, we would have to do so together and with mutual respect. That is the major reason why both then and now I believe that annual summit meetings between the leaders of the two superpowers are essential if we are to limit the miscalculation that can lead to war.

  • • •

  In the past thirty-six years I have had an unusual opportunity both to examine firsthand the strategy of the international Communist movement and to take the measure of the Communist leaders.

  In 1947 I witnessed the Communist effort to exploit the agonies of war-ravaged Western Europe.

  In that same year I helped conduct a congressional investigation that exposed Communist espionage reaching into the highest levels of the United States government.

  In the 1950s I saw hundreds of thousands of refugees who had risked their lives to flee the oppression of Communist rule in East Germany, Hungary, North Vietnam, North Korea, and Communist China.

  In 1958 Mrs. Nixon and I were attacked and almost killed by a Communist-led mob in Caracas, Venezuela.

  In the early 1970s I developed with Brezhnev a closer personal relationship than any other pair of Soviet and American leaders has had since Stalin and Roosevelt.

  On visits to the Soviet Union, China, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, I have seen the effects of Communist rule. Also, some of the shrewdest insights into Soviet behavior that I have been given have come from the leaders of other Communist countries.

  While this experience is substantial, I would not presume to know with certainty what every aspect of our policy toward the Soviet Union should be. At best such policies contain a large measure of guesswork. In The Real War I have written at length about the approaches I believe we should take.

  If experience does not make clear all that we should do, however, it does give clear guidance about some of the things we should not do.

  In dealing with the Soviet Union, we are dealing not just with a great power, but very specifically with that relatively small handful of men who control that great power. By understanding Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and their likely successors, we can better understand how the Soviet Union is likely to react to various policy alternatives.

  Debate in the United States often seems to oscillate between two extremes, both well-meaning, both patriotic, and both misguided.

  On the one hand there are the superhawks. They contend that because the Soviets lie, cheat, grab anything they can get away with, and are so implacably determined to defeat the West, we should have nothing to do with them. They argue that we should increase our nuclear capability until we have unquestioned superiority. They assert that because the Russians threaten us, we should have no cultural exchanges, no trade, no negotiations. They believe that if we follow this course, the jerry-built economies of the eastern bloc will inevitably collapse, taking the Communist regimes down with them.

  At the other extreme there are the superdoves. They argue that the leaders of the Kremlin are old, conservative, cautious men who will pose no threat to us if we do not threaten them. They suggest that if we set an example by unilaterally reducing our nuclear capabilities, the Soviets will follow suit and use those resources instead to build a better life for their people.

  Both of these views miss the mark. The Soviets will not allow the United States to regain nuclear superiority; as leaders of a totalitarian state, they can pour into armaments whatever portion of their resources they choose. To refuse to negotiate to reduce the danger of nuclear war is reckless. To suggest that isolating the Soviet Union will bring about its collapse is unrealistic, and can even be counterproductive. External conflict can sometimes strengthen a dictatorship, and relaxation of tensions can sometimes weaken it. Without the détente of the 1970s, the conditions that allowed Solidarity to emerge in Poland might never have developed.

  On the other hand, to apply the Golden Rule to our dealings with the Soviets is dangerously naive. President Carter, with the best of intentions, tried unilateral restraint in the hopes that the Soviets would follow suit. The result was disastrous. As he cut back on American arms programs, the Soviets stepped up theirs. Consequently, President Reagan has had to institute an arms buildup to restore the nuclear balance of power.

  There are two kinds of détente: hard-headed and soft-headed. Hard-headed détente is based on effective deterrence. This kind of détente encourages the Soviets to negotiate, because it makes the cost of Soviet aggression too high. Soft-headed détente, by contrast, discourages negotiation, because it makes the cost of Soviet expansion so low that the Soviets find the rewards of aggression too tempting.

  Hard-headed détente, backed by the force to make deterrence credible, preserves peace. Soft-headed détente invites either
war or surrender without war. We need détente, but it must be the right kind of détente.

  If there are things we cannot do, however, there also are things we can do. It would be folly to give up in despair and say that because we cannot do everything, we should do nothing.

  The Soviet leaders are hard, cold, tough realists who understand the arithmetic of international power.

  For us the first essential must be to preserve the freedom of the West and to make clear to the Soviet leaders that we are determined to take whatever measures are necessary to do so. The more luminously clear we make this determination, the less likely it is that they will put it to the ultimate test.

  This means restoring the military balance of power so that we can deter war and prevent defeat without war. When the United States enjoyed superiority in nuclear weapons, these forces were on the side of peace. If the Soviets threatened aggressive action, we could put our nuclear forces on alert, as we did in October 1973, and our adversary would back down. But today the threat would not be credible because superiority has shifted to the Soviets in both theater and strategic land-based missiles. In the hands of an aggressive power like the Soviet Union, this superiority becomes an ominous threat. Thus, in the interest of peace, we must spend the dollars that are needed to restore the balance of power.

  The Soviet leaders want military superiority and want to use it to rule the world, but if we convince them that we are going to deny them that superiority, then there is a real chance that they will negotiate seriously about mutual arms limitation and even reduction.

  Today, there are many who propose that both sides agree to freeze the current levels of nuclear weapons, arguing that this would reduce the risk of war and promote arms control. Ironically, just the opposite is true. Under a freeze, the Soviets would maintain their current advantages, which would increase the possibility of war and of nuclear blackmail. A freeze would also eliminate any chance for an arms control agreement that would reduce the number of nuclear weapons because it would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate. The men in the Kremlin may be old and sick, but they are not fools. We cannot get something from them unless we have something to give.

  As a panacea for the nuclear dilemma, the freeze proposal is as empty as it is facile. It rests on two fallacious premises. The first is that somehow we can escape the dangers of the nuclear age. But as long as these weapons exist, the peril will remain great. Even if both sides agreed to reduce their arsenals by half, each would still have enough firepower to destroy the other and the world many times over.

  The second fallacy is that armaments and arms races cause wars. If we want to save the world from destruction, runs the argument, we must stop the arms race. But historically it is not the existence of arms that brings war, but rather it is the failure to resolve the political differences that might lead to the use of arms. Arms are the result, not the cause, of political tensions. And no well-worded resolution about disarmament can solve these profound political disagreements.

  We cannot escape the nuclear dilemma, but must learn to live with it. We must leapfrog the sterile question of arms control and focus on the heart of the problem: the fundamental differences between the United States and the Soviet Union. We must develop a process for resolving those differences at the conference table instead of on the battlefield. But before we can do this, we must induce the Soviets to negotiate, and they will do this only if our strength makes them fear our enmity. Brezhnev understands this, even though he resists it. We have to continue to make clear to him and his successors that we understand it too.

  We must also resist the aggressive adventurism of the Soviets in other parts of the world vital to our interests. We cannot be the policeman of the world, but we also cannot afford to stand idly by as the Soviets and their proxies subvert and attack our allies and friends. We must be prepared to project our power to blunt Soviet thrusts in distant regions of the world, for that is where the fate of the world is being decided.

  Additionally, it is time for us to use our massive economic power to affect the international behavior of the Soviet Union. We may be behind in some areas militarily, but we have a huge advantage economically. They desperately need their trade with us, and this gives us leverage, provided that we structure our trade to maximize their vulnerability to economic pressures and minimize our own.

  Brezhnev and his colleagues in the Kremlin will scoff at the suggestion that they need a deal, but they do. We should give them one—but for a price. They must be made to understand that if they continue to engage in direct and indirect aggression in areas affecting our interests, the deal is off. Lenin said that capitalists would line up to sell Soviet Russia the rope it would later use to hang them with. We should sell them rope, but in ways that it will bind their hands if they attempt to reach out to enlarge their conquests.

  While containing Soviet force, we also can and must press for change within the Soviet world. The way to achieve this is not by a lot of pious talk about it—Brezhnev and company dismiss such talk with contempt—but by giving added impetus to the forces already at work to bring about change.

  The Communist world is not going to collapse in some sudden cataclysm. But it has changed, it will continue to change, and we can accelerate that change. It is in this process that the West’s hope lies.

  Some dismiss the idea of reform in the Communist world through peaceful change as hopeless, throwing up their hands and saying it will take forever. They forget how much has changed already.

  Britain’s former Prime Minister Macmillan once reminded me that a hundred years elapsed between the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who beheaded her counselors when they fell out of favor, and that of Queen Anne, who, because of public opinion, could only send hers into exile. He made that comment in 1958, five years after the death of Stalin, who had executed his real and imagined enemies by the millions. When Khrushchev purged his rivals, he could only banish them to the provinces. And Brezhnev could only send Khrushchev to the outskirts of Moscow.

  The pace of change is desperately slow and seems even more so to a people as impatient as Americans. We have to muster enough patience to recognize that slow change is better than no change, and to stick with the long-term policies that are sometimes needed to keep slow change going.

  People-to-people contacts and cultural and informational exchanges may not accomplish as much as some of the dewy-eyed advocates claim, but they do help; they are an important incremental part of the process. So, too, is trade in nonstrategic goods, provided that it, like arms control, is linked to Soviet behavior in other areas. Trade can be structured so that it gives us leverage—so that the interdependencies it builds can work to our advantage. Ideas have a force of their own, and we can force these through the barriers. A Polish Pope dramatically represents the power that religious faith can marshal. Our biggest asset is the plain fact, patently obvious on both sides of the Iron Curtain, that communism does not work. Even its most abject apologists increasingly fall back on justifications other than its miserable results.

  The Russian people are strong, and so are those of the countries of Eastern Europe. Ultimately, in the contest between East and West, their strength will be among the West’s strengths, because the West’s adversaries are their oppressors.

  Leaders during the decades ahead will have to adapt to a situation in which the superpowers face one another in a sort of uneasy standoff. Whatever one thinks of the term détente, the condition is a fact of life—and a fact distinctly preferable to its alternatives. Détente is not a love feast. It is an effort to find ways of living with differences rather than fighting over them. As long as the Soviet Union persists in its expansionist aims, there can be no détente without deterrence. But deterrence is both easier and more effective with détente than without it.

  The United States will have to be strong militarily, strong economically, firm in its will, and it will need the cooperation of strong allies—with strong leaders. The Soviet Union is
a very real threat; meeting that threat is the first responsibility of western leaders. But precisely because it is so great a threat, we must continue to be creative in finding ways to reduce our differences, to resolve them by negotiation where that is possible and to talk across them where resolution is not possible.

  The Russian leaders will respect us if we stand firm and if we are strong enough to back up our words with force, should that become necessary. They will treat us with contempt if we act weakly. But if they see that they must negotiate with us, and if they see that we will negotiate, then they, too, will negotiate.

  The Kremlin leaders have a compulsive drive to protect and expand their power. But they are not madmen. They will take what they think they can get away with, but only what they think they can get away with. If they think they have to retreat on one flank in order to protect their position on another, they will.

  Our task is to increase the pressures that lead to change and to hold out the hope of reward when such change occurs.

  In my Guildhall speech that Khrushchev praised when I first met him nearly twenty-five years ago, I issued a call for peaceful competition all across the board, in the spiritual as well as the material realm. This is a competition in which the West holds all the cards. We should remember that and continue to play out these cards.

  ZHOU

  ENLAI

  The Mandarin Revolutionary

  THE STORY OF China during the past half century is, to an extraordinary degree, the story of three men: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Chiang Kai-shek. As Mao consolidated his rule on the mainland after defeating Chiang’s forces, the Chinese Communists portrayed the conflict between Mao and Chiang as, in effect, a war between God and the Devil. Mao saw himself as the modern-day equivalent of the first Emperor of Ch’in, the ruler who first unified China over two thousand years ago. He wove a cult of personality that gave him the status of a deity. Zhou stayed largely in the shadows, the loyal functionary who made the machinery run. On Taiwan, Chiang ruled with an authoritarian hand but without Mao’s extravagant self-glorification, preserving his dignity, working an economic miracle, and nurturing his people’s hopes for a return to the mainland.