Leaders

by Richard Nixon

  What Nasser did was to give his people back their soul, their spirit, and their pride. The son of a postal clerk, he grew up with a bitter hatred of British colonialism. It was a mark of the times that as a young man he was thought vulgar because his first language was Arabic rather than French. When he took power, he was eager to end not only the monarchy but the vestiges of the colonial past. As Britain and France withdrew from the Middle East, Nasser rushed to fill the vacuum with his voice; his brand of insistent pan-Arabism was at once pro-Nasser and anticolonial and frequently anti-West. In a sense what mattered most to the people of the Arab countries was not so much what he did on the international stage as that he did it. He stuck his finger in the eye of the West, and the people loved it. The more flamboyantly, the more outrageously, he did so, the better they liked it. He showed that he was somebody and, by extension, that they were somebodies. To those who have the least materially, this sort of spiritual lift can often be even more important than it is to the comfortable.

  Though a fiery demagogue in public, Nasser could be both gracious and reasonable in private.

  In 1963 Mrs. Nixon, our two daughters, and I made a private vacation trip to Europe and the Middle East. Nasser invited us to his home. He still lived in the same modest bungalow on the outskirts of Cairo that he had used as an army officer. A lean, handsome six-footer with an erect military bearing, he cut a striking figure. He was the essence of hospitality. He introduced his family and showed us a collection of books about Lincoln that he had in his library. He expressed great respect for Eisenhower and gratitude for what Eisenhower had done to save Egypt in 1956. He spoke softly, carried himself with great dignity, and demonstrated both high intelligence and common sense. He talked with deep feeling about his desire to bring a better life to the people of Egypt. He asked my assessment of the current attitudes and intentions of the Soviet leaders and listened intently. Though Egypt was by then heavily dependent on the Soviet Union, he clearly did not relish the idea of Soviet domination and expressed a desire for better relations with the United States. He was anxious for us to see the Aswan High Dam; in an expansive gesture of hospitality he insisted that we visit it in his private plane. We did, and on the way his pilot flew us low over the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings.

  Our visit to the dam was an eerie experience. Because the daytime temperature was over 100 degrees, we went down into the dam excavation area at midnight. Nasser had told me that virtually all of the work on the dam was being done by Egyptians. But as we looked at the huge bulldozers digging away under floodlights, Mrs. Nixon astutely noted that none of the operators was an Egyptian. All of them were Russians.

  During the 1960s Nasser continued to meddle on the international scene. He fomented revolutions in other Arab states and sank deeper and deeper into the morass of the Yemen civil war. At home his neglect of Egypt’s economic problems and his political repressions continued. Despite his professed fear of Soviet domination his dependence on the Russians for economic and military aid increased rather than shrank.

  Nasser was a revolutionary who dismissed the fact that the time for revolution had ended and the time to consolidate his gains had arrived. His pan-Arabic movement was useful rhetorically, and with it he created a new sense of commonality and pride among Arabs. However, its central tenets—hatred of Israel and distrust of the West—were destructive rather than productive. As a result, Nasser’s policies led inevitably to an escalation of the hostilities between Israelis and Arabs and an unhealthy dependence on the enemy of the West, the Soviet Union.

  • • •

  In September 1970, I was on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, observing maneuvers of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, when we received word that Nasser had unexpectedly died of a heart attack. I considered traveling to Cairo for the funeral, but decided that it would be unwise. At the time the Egyptian government still had close ties with the Soviets and was intensely hostile toward the United States. If Nasser’s successors wished to improve Egyptian-American relations, I decided, the first step was up to them. I sent a delegation in my place.

  At the time of Nasser’s death Sadat had been waiting behind the scenes for almost two decades. He had been safe from Nasser’s obsessive jealousy because he seemed to have no personal ambition. He willingly undertook whatever missions Nasser assigned him. Some called him “Nasser’s poodle”; others said the mark on his forehead came not from touching his head to the floor five times a day in prayer, as all devout Muslims do, but from cabinet meetings in which Nasser smacked him in the face to make sure he was following the conversation.

  For eighteen years Anwar Sadat watched and listened. Before the revolution, when the British were still in charge in Egypt, he had served time in prison, and he had learned the practice and the value of patience. He knew Nasser was fiercely jealous, so Sadat was careful not to appear to be seeking power for himself. Besides, Sadat was a man who could be counted upon to honor his friendships and keep his promises. But on his trips abroad for Nasser, he made other friends, including Crown Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia. As President, he told Faisal privately that Nasser’s Arab socialism and his dependence on the Soviet Union were failures.

  When Sadat came to power in 1970 upon Nasser’s death, many observers were sure that he would last only a few weeks. They said he had none of Nasser’s charisma. They failed to recognize that there are different kinds of charisma and that only when one puts on the mantle of leadership is it possible to tell whether he has that elusive quality. Sadat did not attempt to fill Nasser’s shoes. He made his own footprints on history. He began by deftly blocking all attempts by others to seize power and jailing his opponents. Soon his authority was unquestioned.

  Sadat acted swiftly to break the fetters that bound Egypt to the Soviets. After Nasser’s death he had sent representatives around the world with greetings. In Peking his envoy met with Zhou Enlai. During the conversation the Chinese Premier asked, “Do you know who killed Nasser at the age of fifty-two?” When the surprised envoy did not answer, Zhou said, “The Russians.” Zhou was speaking figuratively, not literally. But Egypt’s dependence on the Soviet Union, and its chilly relations with most of its Arab neighbors and the United States, were burdensome legacies. Nasser was a fiercely proud and independent man, and near the end of his life Egypt’s isolation weighed heavily on him. Sadat believed that it caused both his spirits and his health to deteriorate.

  Soon after Sadat took office, we began to pick up signals that Sadat wanted a thaw in relations between the U.S. and Egypt. The first in the series of dramatic initiatives that characterized his eleven years in power came in 1972, when he abruptly expelled sixteen thousand Soviet military advisers. He was motivated in part by his judgment that the Russians were unreliable, but also in part by an instinctive dislike of the Russians. When I visited Cairo in 1974, I told him that I thought one cause of the Sino-Soviet split was the Chinese feeling that they were more civilized than the Russians. Sadat smiled and answered, “You know, that’s exactly the same way we feel: We Egyptians are more civilized than the Russians.”

  Nasser was a human dynamo. He involved himself in the details of government and often stayed in his office until the early hours of the morning to catch up on paperwork. Sadat was more withdrawn and contemplative. He often ignored his ministers, making his decisions by himself while walking along the Nile each afternoon after lunch. He rose comparatively late and did not work a long day. He abhorred detail. The day-to-day operation of his government was clumsy and inefficient, but the big decisions—those Sadat reserved for himself—were breathtaking and often transcendent. Some, such as the expulsion of the Soviets and his trip to Jerusalem in 1977, fundamentally changed the structure of Mideast politics. Seldom has one man rendered so much conventional wisdom about international relations suddenly obsolete.

  Both Nasser and Sadat will be remembered by the world for their roles in foreign affairs. Both sought to repair the Arabs’ injured pride; Sadat’s Yom Kippur War
in 1973 was undertaken in part to redress the psychological imbalance created by the Israeli victory in 1967. But Sadat went further. After Suez the hostility between Israelis and Arabs was as intense as ever. For Sadat the strong Arab showing in the Yom Kippur War was actually a step toward peace. He could make a grand gesture from a position of strength that he could not from a position of weakness.

  Sadat was as practical as Nasser was flighty, as careful as Nasser was impulsive. His initiatives were carefully planned means to an end, undertaken with an eye to the full range of possible consequences. Sadat wanted to end Egypt’s economic isolation. Peace with Israel meant new trade, new income from Suez oil, uninterrupted income from shipping through the Suez Canal. Nasser’s foreign policy had few domestic payoffs; in one sense it had been a way to distract people from their problems at home. Sadat’s was a step toward solving those problems.

  Sadat succeeded where Nasser failed because he saw as his first responsibility the welfare of the Egyptian nation rather than the “Arab nation.” He had a broader and better understanding than Nasser of the forces that move the world. But while he played an active role on the world scene, he carefully related what he did abroad to his goal of improving conditions at home.

  • • •

  The last time I saw Sadat was in August 1981, during his visit to the United States. He invited me to meet with him at the Egyptian mission in New York. Once again I was struck by his dark, distinguished features and the graceful way he carried himself. Sadat had suffered two heart attacks, and he carefully conserved his energy. But I also had the impression that he channeled physical energy into mental work. He made few unnecessary or flamboyant gestures and uttered few superfluous words. His sense of reserve and self-control was remarkable.

  During this last meeting I found him optimistic about the Reagan administration; he said he was certain that Reagan would be forthright in his Mideast dealings and firm in his opposition to Soviet adventurism. On U.S.-Soviet relations he said that the Americans had lost a great deal of ground in the preceding four years and added, “The West must not give another inch.” He said he expected a Soviet move in Poland, adding that the West should not respond directly but should use the Soviet intervention as a pretext for moving in some other area, such as Cuba, Angola, or Libya. “Fight them on the ground we choose rather than on the ground they choose,” he said.

  Two months earlier Israel had made a preemptive strike on a nuclear reactor in Iraq. I told Sadat that I felt Israeli Premier Menachem Begin had acted irresponsibly and erratically. He blurted out, “Yes, he is crazy.” But then he added, “He is also probably crazy like a fox.” I said that while I understood that Israel had to protect itself against its enemies, I thought it was unwise for Begin to embarrass his friends, such as Sadat and Reagan, in the process. Sadat agreed.

  But when I added that more progress could have been made in the Mideast had Begin not been kept in power, Sadat demurred. “I prefer to deal with him,” he said. “He is very tough and will be able to make a deal that others may not be able to make. Israel needs a deal, and I am confident that between Begin, Reagan, and myself, we will be able to make greater, more lasting progress than was made during the Carter administration.”

  At the end of our conversation Sadat invited me to visit him at his winter palace at Aswan sometime during the next few months. He said that he wanted to have a good, long talk then.

  • • •

  We never had that talk. I traveled to Egypt, but it was for his funeral. In October, while reviewing a military parade in Cairo, Sadat had been gunned down by a band of assassins. President Reagan asked the three former Presidents to serve as his representatives at the funeral. On the way to Cairo Presidents Ford and Carter and I exchanged reminiscences of Sadat. We agreed on his courage, his vision, his intelligence, and his shrewdness. But when we arrived in Egypt, the streets were almost empty, in stark contrast to the frenzy that erupted on Nasser’s death eleven years before. Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, told us that his people were probably still in a state of shock and not inclined to mourn in public.

  I believe the explanation for the Egyptians’ ambivalence toward Sadat runs deeper. Nasser had the common touch. Despite his absolute power, he never developed a taste for luxury. Compared to Nasser, Sadat lived elegantly. He maintained ten presidential residences. He had a sophisticated, articulate, impeccably groomed wife. He wore expensive suits and smoked imported pipe tobacco.

  Though he never forgot his peasant beginnings, Sadat did not try to persuade the people that he was “one of them.” In fact few really successful leaders are. Sadat had deep philosophical feeling for his people, but, like de Gaulle and his attitude toward the French, he did not have deep personal feeling for them. Still, they had much for which to thank Sadat. At the time of his death no Egyptian soldier was at war; though the economy was still shaky, Egyptians were more prosperous than they had been a decade before. Sadat had gone a long way toward dismantling Nasser’s police state by reducing censorship, enhancing civil liberties, and curbing the secret police.

  Nasser was an emotional leader. Sadat was a cerebral leader. Nasser had been able to see into the hearts of his people. Sadat was able to see over their heads. Because of his personal remoteness, he was more respected than loved. By the same token it was his solitary contemplations that helped him move the Mideast question to a new, higher plane, where problems seemed somehow less insuperable.

  The lack of an extravagant emotional outpouring at Sadat’s funeral should have been expected. There could be only one Nasser; the outpouring for him was because he was the first, the founder, the one and only. The people knew instinctively that someone like him would not come again. He could not be replaced. Though they identified these things with Nasser himself, what they loved was the spasm of history, the eruption of pride, the explosion of being that comes only once in a nation’s lifetime.

  Sadat was an antidote to Nasser. He built on his predecessor’s accomplishments and, where necessary, corrected his mistakes. President Mubarak now has the opportunity to do the same with regard to Sadat. After the funeral I traveled to several other Mideast and North African capitals for private meetings with their leaders. They were all critical of Sadat because of the Camp David accords and what they felt was Sadat’s inattention to the plight of the Palestinians. Many of them, subjected for so long to Nasser’s meddling ways, had at first viewed Sadat as an ally, and they were bitterly disappointed by what they considered his separate peace with Israel. They resented his calling them “monkeys and hissing vipers” when they refused to go along with his peace strategy. I could understand their feelings, but I also understood that in Sadat, Egypt finally had a leader who put his own people first. More blood had been shed by Egyptians on behalf of the Palestinians and the Arab cause than by any other Mideast nation. Now, Sadat reasoned, it was time to try a new approach.

  Sadat was a bold innovator. He took the greatest and bravest step toward peace in the Mideast; it is up to his successor to complete the process he began and at the same time mend Egypt’s ties with its conservative Arab allies. In a sense Egypt was ready in 1981 to move to the next phase, just as it had been in 1969. This may under the circumstances seem ghoulish, but I believe it is a concept Sadat himself, with his mystical streak and his belief in preordination, would accept. Often a leader’s greatest contribution comes after his death, when his successors build on the foundations he has laid.

  • • •

  Sadat was killed by forces of the old world that reached out into the new world to strike him down. Because he sought peace instead of holy war, his assassins said he had forsaken Islam. Egypt is in many ways a more modern, cosmopolitan country than many of its Mideast neighbors. Nasser, though a devout Muslim, was spreading his revolution through pop songs at a time when television was still banned in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless Islam has its militant adherents in Egypt as well as in Saudi Arabia and Iran. Each step Sadat took toward peace was a step
toward greater personal danger for himself, because many of his enemies had no interest in peace. Leaders in the Mideast run a great risk when they tread the frontier separating old ways from new; Sadat, like the Shah and Faisal, crossed that frontier and ultimately sacrificed his life in doing so.

  Fourteen months before Sadat’s death, I had walked with him in another funeral procession in Egypt, in honor of Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, the Shah of Iran. The Shah died of cancer, Sadat from assassins’ bullets. But both were victims of the explosive tensions of the Mideast. The Shah died alone, an exile from his country, permitted to live out his final days in some measure of dignity only because Sadat, alone among leaders, had the courage to give him refuge, while others who had fawned over him when he was in power turned from him now that he had fallen.

  When I arrived in Cairo and saw Sadat just before the funeral march began, he walked up to me with his hand outstretched and said, “How good of you to come.” I told him how courageous he had been to give the Shah sanctuary after he had been turned away by the United States. He replied incredulously, “Courageous, sir? It does not take courage to stand up for a friend. I only did what was right.” It was a measure of Sadat’s quality as a man and a leader that his loyalty extended to those friends who were powerless as well as those who were powerful. He demonstrated this same quality when I visited him in his palace in Alexandria the day of the funeral. We discussed the upcoming American elections. He knew that I supported Reagan and that Carter’s popularity was slipping away. But he never once made a disparaging remark about the man he affectionally referred to as “my friend, Jimmy Carter.”

  The Shah’s dreams for the future were just as grand as Nasser’s, his hopes for his people just as strong. Of the two the Shah was the better statesman, but Nasser was the better politician. I believe the Shah was one of the most able leaders in the Mideast. But because he underestimated the power of his enemies until it was too late, he was brought down by them. Because of the twentieth century’s romantic preoccupation with revolution—and because most of his friends in the world, including the United States, treated the Shah as a pariah after the revolution—he was almost universally vilified.