Book & Author
Richard Nixon: Seize the Moment — America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Chicago, IL
“Thirty-two years ago in Moscow, Khrushchev arrogantly predicted to me, 'Your grandchildren will live under communism.' I responded, 'Your grandchildren will live in freedom.' At the time, I was sure he was wrong, but I was not sure I was right. As a result of the new Soviet revolution, I proved to be right. Khrushchev's grandchildren now live in freedom."
— President Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president (1969-1974) of the United States. A prominent leader of the Republican Party, he served as a representative, and senator from California. He also served as the 36th vice president (1953-1961).
President Nixon was a statesman and had a sound grasp of international affairs. He was a prolific writer, his popular works include: Six Crises (1962), RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978), The Real War (1980), Leaders (1982), Real Peace: A Strategy For The West (1983), No More Vietnams (1985), 1999: Victory Without War (1988), In the Arena (1990), and Seize the Moment — America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World (1992).
In his last book “Seize the Moment — America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World” President Nixon, the visionary and pragmatic leader, defines the historic challenges and opportunities facing America after the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War. President Nixon strongly dismisses the three prevailing post-Cold War "myths" about American foreign policy that: (1) "history has ended" with the defeat of communism, (2) military power has become irrelevant, and (3) America is a declining power. President Nixon outlines the course America must follow in the future to ensure that the extraordinary opportunities of this unique moment in history are not wasted. He states that now is not the time for contentment but instead for mustering the West to win the final battle for democratic and free-market principles in the East.
Using his historical knowledge, political insight and statesman’s vision, President Nixon examines the challenges confronting the United States in Europe, the Pacific Rim, the Muslim world, and the underdeveloped world in seven chapters: The Real World, The Former Evil Empire, The Common Transatlantic Home, The Pacific Triangle, The Muslim World, The Southern Hemisphere, and The Renewal of America. He concludes the book with a convincing analysis of what needs to be done for a renewal of America, based on the three ideals—freedom, opportunity, and individual responsibility.
Commenting on the post-Communism world, President Nixon observes: ‘While communism has suffered several devastating defeats, Communist regimes continue to rule twelve countries with 1.3 billion people. Communism is a discredited ideology, but Communists are still effective in using force to gain and retain power. Moreover, the waning of the Cold War does not mean an end to international conflict. Age-old struggles based on tribal, ethnic, national, or religious hatreds continue to fuel dozens of civil and regional wars. Nuclear powers have never fought each other, but the clash between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India over the disputed Kashmir territory could erupt into the world's first war between nuclear powers…”
Reflecting on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and its impact on Pakistan, President Nixon notes: “The case of Afghanistan is particularly galling. For thirteen years, the Kremlin has propped up the cruelest tin-pot totalitarians in the Third World. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he authorized an escalation of the brutality of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan and gave the go-ahead for a terrorist campaign in Pakistan, which eventually killed 5,000 civilians in 4,500 bombings. In addition, strong circumstantial evidence implicated Moscow in the August 1988 assassination of Pakistani president Zia ul-Haq. In a desperate effort to find a winning formula, Moscow had traded one Afghan ruler for another until choosing President Najibullah, who earned his stripes as head of the KhAD, the Afghan KGB, where he personally oversaw torture and mass execution of suspected opponents.”
Remembering the Soviet leader Gorbachev, President Nixon, observes: “A proud Russian nationalist, he viewed the Soviet state as a great historical achievement and could not comprehend the nationalists in the republics who borrowed from Lenin in dubbing it ‘a jailhouse of nations.’ As President Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan observed shortly after meeting the new Soviet leader in 1985, ‘Gorbachev is a product of the system. He will try to improve it, but he will not abandon it.’”
Commenting on the stereotyping of the Muslim World, President Nixon, states: “Many Americans tend to stereotype Muslims as uncivilized, unwashed, barbaric, and irrational people who command our attention only because some of their leaders have the good fortune to rule territory containing over two-thirds of the world’s proven oil reserves.”
Expounding on the size and diversity of the Islamic world, President Nixon, notes: “ Muslim world is too large and too diverse to march to the beat of a single drummer. Many mistakenly assume that the Muslim world is equivalent to the Middle East. But more than 850 million people—one-sixth of humanity—live in the thirty-seven countries of the Muslim world. These nations have 190 ethnic groups who speak hundreds of distinct languages and dialects and who belong to three main religious sects—the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Sufis—and dozens of minor ones. They cover a 10,000-mile-long swath of territory extending from Morocco to Yugoslavia, from Turkey to Pakistan, from the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union to the tropics of Indonesia. More Muslims live in China than on the Arabian peninsula, and more live in Indonesia than in the entire Middle East. The former Soviet Union, with over 50 million Muslims, has more than any Middle Eastern country except Turkey.”
Reflecting on the nature of democracy in the Islamic world, President Nixon observes: “Tolerance marks the key thrust of modernist Islam, with the nations of the West not condemned as "unbelievers" but embraced as other peoples "of the book." Some modernist states, such as Turkey and Pakistan, are democracies. Others, such as Egypt and Indonesia, are relatively open societies but fall short of Western democratic standards.”
Advising the European Union to accept Turkey in its domain, President Nixon states: “We should prod our European allies to admit Turkey into the European Community and the Western European Union. At the same time, we should encourage Turkey to take advantage of its historical and cultural ties to become more involved economically and politically in the Middle East.”
Expounding on the close cooperation between the United States and Pakistan, and to resolve Kashmir conflict, President Nixon notes: “ —Pakistan—the only major US strategic partner situated between Turkey and Japan—has cooperated with the United States in recent decades to support the Afghan resistance, as well as to facilitate the rapprochement with China in 1972. Though Islamabad's policies sometimes clash with ours—especially regarding nuclear proliferation—no other country has shown comparable courage in serving as a frontline state against Soviet aggression. In order to avoid a potential nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, we should urge New Delhi to end the massive violations of human rights by its security forces in the province…”
Discussing the state and status of the Southern Hemisphere, President Nixon observes: “I traveled through noncommunist Asia as vice president in 1953…With the grinding poverty I saw—children with distended stomachs, jobless men milling in coffee shops, and open sewers befouling the air—I could understand why these slums were a fertile breeding grounds for communism…The defeat of communism in the underdeveloped world does not mean the victory of freedom. I visited more than a dozen nations and colonies on that 1953 trip, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Singapore, Burma, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Some, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, took the fatal detour of communism…Only a few, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, drove down the road to prosperity by adopting free-market economies.”
Commenting on India’s economy and military spending, President Nixon notes: “India's economy should have experienced booming growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, real per capita growth bumped along at a 1.8 percent annual rate over the past twenty-five years…From 1970 to 1990, the Indian government spent ten times more on the military than on education and eleven times more than on health care. Even the rivalry with Pakistan—over which India easily prevailed in battle in 1948, 1965, and 1971—does not represent an external threat sufficient to justify astronomic military spending levels. With a population of 850 million and a GNP of $333 billion, India dwarfs Pakistan's 107 million people and $43 billion economy. Moreover, New Delhi's military—the fourth largest in the world—fields twice as many combat aircraft and tanks and seven times more artillery than Islamabad's…Since India's leadership has yet to fully accept the legitimacy of Pakistan's existence—and since New Delhi dismembered East and West Pakistan in the 1971 war—Islamabad concluded that it had no choice but to try to acquire its nuclear deterrent.”
Reflecting on the Renewal of America, President Nixon observes: “...The United States will lose its economic and technological edge if we fail to do a better job of educating young Americans for the tasks they must perform as we move from an industrial to a high-tech economy. Over 25 percent of Americans do not graduate from high school, and many who do graduate lack the basic skills needed in a modern society. In the crucial disciplines of math and science, our teenagers trail those of virtually every other industrialized country. While some of our public schools perform well, many are less effective than schools in many countries of the underdeveloped world. Most school standards have become so lax that students no longer feel a need to work hard, with two-thirds of today's high school seniors spending an hour or less on homework, reading ten or fewer pages of text, and watching over three hours of mind-numbing television each day.”
Expounding on the behavior of the young generation, President Nixon states: “America is on a downward spiral toward scientific and technological illiteracy not because Americans have lost their aptitude for science but because the kind of discipline it requires has gone out of style. We are raising a new generation, both in inner-city slums and in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods, that might be characterized as the ‘MTV generation.’ The appalling ignorance of so many members of this generation is due not to their being less intelligent but because their intelligence is not used. They inhabit a world of hard-rock rhythms pounded at earsplitting volume, MTV images that flash across the screen in barely the time it takes the eye to follow, and sensual stimuli that appear in rapid succession. There is no room for ideas beyond the most banal. There is even less room for the information on which any sensible ideas have to be based. The once-ubiquitous bumper-sticker slogan has given way to the T-shirt slogan, but the content level has not improved.”
To rectify the decline in education, Present Nixon makes the following recommendations: “To arrest this decline, we must move in six areas. We must reform the profession of teaching...We must raise the standards in schools…We should focus more actively on motivation…We must break the monopoly of the education establishment over public schools and introduce competitive market forces into the system to improve its performance…We must dispel the patronizing and destructive myth that all young people need to go to college and develop alternate career tracks based more on modern-day apprenticeship than on classroom learning…We must demand more of our universities.”
Discussing the main reason for decline in academic standards and its impact on the quality of human capital, President Nixon notes: “In recent decades, a silent conspiracy has developed between professors uninterested in teaching and students too lazy to study. Faculty, particularly at our best universities, often put first priority on their own research. Tenure and advancement are awarded on the basis of how many papers and books they publish rather than on what teachers do for their students. To reduce the burden of teaching, professors relax standards, often giving exams that demand little mastery of the material. Students, to a great extent, happily play along. The result is the paradox of declining competence of graduates amidst widespread grade inflation…The decline of our human capital is matched by a potential decline in our industrial capital.”
Reflecting on the leadership role of the United States, President Nixon observes: “Is the United States worthy to play a leadership role in the world? In a word, yes—and the world needs our example. Western civilization is not just a condition but also a process. It is a process of striving toward the heights of freedom, creativity, and fulfillment…To be both strong and rich is not enough. We must also be an example for others to follow…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.”
Commenting further on America’s role, challenge of spreading democracy, and using technology for global progress, President Nixon states: “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.”
In the author's note, to conclude the book, President Nixon observes: “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…—RN, Park Ridge, New Jersey, September 11, 1991.”
In Seize the Moment — America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World, President Nixon outlines a course not only for America to succeed but also hopes that other countries could follow America’s example for securing peace and stability. In their last meeting, Mao Zedong asked President Nixon a profound question: "Is peace America's only goal?" Nixon replied that our goal was peace but a peace that was more than the absence of war—"a peace with justice." It is that kind of peace which President Nixon expounds on in his ninth and last book. It is a must read for all students of history and international relations.
(Dr Ahmed S. Khan - dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org - is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar - 2017-2022)
