Leaders

by Richard Nixon

  Democracy would not necessarily be good for Saudi Arabia, just as monarchy has not necessarily been bad. King Fahd, who succeeded to the throne in June 1982, has said bluntly that his country is not ready for republican government. “We want to use the elite of our country,” he said, “and we are convinced that elections would not put the elite into power until education is more widespread.” As Faisal said, “The important thing about a regime is not what it is called, but how it acts. There are corrupt republican regimes and sound monarchies, and vice versa. . . . The quality of a regime should be judged by its deeds and the integrity of its rulers, not by its name.”

  • • •

  Nasser and Sadat were revolutionaries; the Shah and Faisal were revolutionizing monarchs. As such the two Egyptians had a psychological edge over the other two men. The successful revolutionary leader has an innate attraction that cannot be matched by the monarch. The revolutionist is meteoric; he is the force in motion. The monarch is the force at rest. One is perceived as dynamic, the other as static. Even if the monarch has better ideas than the revolutionist, he must overcome terrific inertia to accomplish his goals.

  To the revolutionary the traditions and practices of the past are no more than fuel for the engine of revolution. He may discard them or revise them at will. The monarch, however, depends on tradition for his power and authority. When tradition interferes with his plans for the future, he must either change his plans or integrate them with tradition in a way that will keep his culture and his authority intact. It is a difficult task, among the most difficult for a statesman.

  Nasser came to power with a clean slate. When he deposed and exiled King Farouk in 1952, he was also expelling all of the bad memories of Egypt’s recent and not-so-recent past: domination by the British, the Turks, the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians. For the first time in centuries he gave his people government by Egyptians, for Egyptians. At the same time he sought to unite Egypt with its Arab brothers. It was the perfect revolutionary idea—at once captivating and impractical.

  Nasser’s political power was absolute, but he ruled within the framework of an illusory republican government. He was known as “President” Nasser, not “the Egyptian strongman” or “Egypt’s dictator.” His regime was harshly authoritarian, but the harshness was eased because Nasser was a beloved revolutionary leader.

  Nasser’s goals were supranational; part of his appeal was that he gave his people a sense of a mission beyond their borders: Arab nationalism. The Shah’s goals were primarily national but also geopolitical, as a bastion of the West against Communist aggression. He wanted Iran to be a major economic and military power and focused most of his attention on those functions that Nasser neglected. As a result the Shah’s work lacked drama. He did not have a Suez Canal to nationalize; he did not hurl his armies against the Zionist hordes; he did not come to power riding a wave of anticolonial, revolutionary acclaim. He was, in fact, another in a series of Shahs—one of the few, in fact, to have died a natural death. Once, when he was asked why many did not trust him, he smiled and then answered frankly, “How many Shahs have deserved to be trusted?”

  The Shah was talented and hardworking. His regime was no more authoritarian than Nasser’s, and his domestic accomplishments were vastly greater. He produced progress with stability. Nasser produced instability without progress. But the Shah did not strike the emotional chord in his people that Nasser did.

  The Shah, because he hesitated once his opponents began to challenge him, was overtaken and engulfed by the past. King Faisal, another absolute monarch, mastered the past.

  He succeeded for both personal and institutional reasons. The Saudis have had five Kings. One, Ibn-Saud, created Saudi Arabia. The other four were his sons. Of the five, only King Sa’ud was corrupt, and even his corruption was benign rather than oppressive. King Sa’ud, in fact, began some of the reforms that Faisal brought to fruition.

  Faisal was better equipped to be a modernizing monarch. His authority was both spiritual and temporal; it seemed to flow organically from the people. The King of Saudi Arabia is one of the few heads of state in the world who can be approached and engaged in conversation by any citizen. His nation is more homogeneous than the Shah’s Iran was; also, it has not begun to experience the wrenching tensions produced by rapid industrialization and urbanization that helped bring down the Shah.

  Faisal accomplished in Saudi Arabia much of what the Shah hoped to accomplish in Iran. He did not have to contend with an obstreperous clergy; Saudi Arabia has no separation of church and state. At the same time he was reforming, he was monitoring the impact the reforms were having on his country. He allowed only those influences that could be accommodated without tearing the cultural fabric of Saudi Arabia.

  Saudi Arabia’s vast oil riches alone will not buy it security or prosperity, as Iran has tragically demonstrated. Faisal’s task was to set Saudi Arabia on the path toward modernization without destroying the essence of the God-fearing nation that he and his father had raised from the Arabian sands. In his eleven years in power he did precisely that.

  BIG MEN ON SMALL STAGES: LEE, MENZIES

  Of all the leaders I have met, two of the ablest have been Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of the tiny city-state of Singapore, and the late Robert Menzies, Prime Minister of Australia. They shared the distinction of being big men on small stages, leaders who, in other times and other places, might have attained the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli, or a Gladstone.

  Vastly different in character, the men were curiously alike in background and outlook. Both were leaders of former British colonies. Both were excellent lawyers who could have made a fortune at legal careers but who found the law to be both spiritually and intellectually confining. Both were vigorous, articulate, and talented men who, though restricted by accidents of history to the leadership of smaller countries, refused to view the world from a parochial or strictly regional perspective. Because of their sweeping and comprehensive views of the world, my conversations with them were among the most interesting I have ever had.

  Also, though each had an essentially prowestern outlook, each realized, as MacArthur did, that the balance of power in the world was gradually but steadily shifting in favor of their part of the world. Both strived to ensure that their countries would be among the most prosperous, the most secure, and the most influential in the western Pacific area.

  In more personal terms Lee and Menzies were quite different. Menzies seemed as big as all Australia in body as well as spirit and outlook. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed 250 pounds; he had an open, distinguished face; thick, curly hair; heavy John L. Lewis-type eyebrows; and amused eyes. His air of bemused superiority, though useful for dealing with annoying MPs and reporters, offended many of his colleagues in government and guaranteed that, like Churchill, though he was admired by his people, he would be little loved.

  Lee is compact and muscular, like a champion prizefighter; he has a hard-edged glint in his eye that never softens. I found Menzies gregarious and witty; Lee is shrewd, opportunistic, calculating, and devious. Menzies enjoyed good conversation—enjoyed it, in fact, much more than parliamentary maneuvering, at which he excelled but which he never relished—and was a connoisseur of fine wine, good food, and well-mixed martinis. Lee considers most recreation a waste of time.

  In my meetings with Menzies he usually spent the time smoking a fine cigar and regaling me with political advice, astute observations on foreign affairs, and sardonic comments about Australian politics. Our conversations were intense but buoyantly good-humored. In contrast, when I first met Lee in 1967, he paced the floor like a caged lion and talked in rapid bursts about matters far and wide. He acted as if he felt both physically and mentally confined to his modest office and wanted to break free and find more spacious surroundings. He did not engage in small talk.

  Their greater similarity is in the goals they pursued. Neither was an ideologue. Menzies was a British-style parliamentary democrat who
se deepest commitment was to the crown and the unity of the commonwealth in times of emergency. His economic conservatism found real expression only after his first term, when he viewed himself as an ally in the middle-class man’s quest for comfort and security. Lee was above all a practical man, indifferent toward political theory and contemptuous of anything that did not contribute directly to his goal of strengthening and enriching Singapore. To both men nothing was more important than ensuring security and prosperity for their people.

  Because of their nonideological outlooks, Lee and Menzies have been derided as materialists who were so interested in their people’s physical needs that they ignored their spiritual ones. Each man’s domestic accomplishments were principally economic; Menzies presided over the biggest burst of industrialization and economic growth in Australia’s history, while Lee turned Singapore into a trading powerhouse. The people of both countries have become some of the richest in that part of the world.

  The pursuit of affluence is much ridiculed by those who have never known the absence of it. Dozens of postwar leaders gave their people revolution, national pride, and independence, but left them poor and often hungry. We live in a time when leaders are often judged more by the stridency of their rhetoric and the coloration of their politics than by the success of their policies. Especially in the developing world, too many people have gone to bed at night with their ears full but their stomachs empty.

  • • •

  Lee was a revolutionist, but of a different kind. He never confused rhetoric with substance, and he never allowed ideology to overcome good sense. In 1959, when he came to power, Singapore was a tiny nation with no natural resources and a potentially volatile mix of Indians, Chinese, and Malayans. Anticolonial resentment against the British ran dangerously high. He realized that he could only forestall a Communist revolution by appearing to be much more radical than he really was, so he devised a political game plan that could best be described as talking left and walking right.

  Before the election Lee’s People’s Action party was no more than a Communist front whose rhetoric mimicked Mao’s. He played to the hilt the role of the anticolonial, antiwestern firebrand, campaigning in his shirt-sleeves and railing against the evils of the white man. But after he was elected, he jailed over one hundred of his former Communist colleagues and immediately set to work at placating Singapore’s wealthy Chinese elite and assuring foreigners that any investments they might make in Singapore, and any business executives and workers they might send, would be safe. Today he presides in pinstripe suits over a prosperous nation some have called Singapore, Inc., whose livelihood is a healthy mix of Japanese, Western European, and U.S. investment.

  Singapore’s prosperity did not come easily. The city’s only resource, besides its people, is a strategically important position as an international crossroads. Lee spoke contemptuously of those Third World nations that survived on the royalties paid for their mineral riches. “This place will survive only if it has got the will to make the grade,” he said. “It’s got nothing else but will and work.” Since Lee took office, Singapore has increasingly had to fend for itself. The British military, for years a primary source of jobs for Singapore’s workers, began to withdraw in the mid-1960s. A two-year-old federation between Malaysia and Singapore failed about the same time—the result, many said, of Lee’s attempt to dominate it. Lee was so disappointed by the failure that he wept openly during his televised announcement of Singapore’s withdrawal. But he was only momentarily daunted. “To sit on a stool is more comfortable than sitting on a shooting stick,” he said, with his characteristic knack for colorful metaphor. “Now we have to sit on that shooting stick. It’s all we’ve got. And don’t forget this. The people of Singapore have a shooting stick made of steel.”

  Often it seemed that Lee expected his people themselves to be made of steel. He regulated the length of young men’s hair and spoke out against drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. He cautioned against ostentatious displays of affluence, such as sports cars and marble floors. He has been criticized for being a harsh disciplinarian with a streak of Victorian moralism. But he believed that discipline and firm guidance were necessary to diminish the hostility among Singapore’s three racial groups and to encourage them to work cooperatively. He urged his people to think of themselves as Singaporeans rather than as Chinese, Malays, and Indians. To a large extent he has succeeded, making Singapore the envy of many other multiracial societies.

  Like Nehru, Lee was educated in England and returned home with strong Socialist impulses. Unlike Nehru, Lee was not dogmatic about socialism. He realized that a society must have a vigorous economy before it can afford rent subsidies, schools, housing, and clinics. Lee looked after the needs of his people, but first he looked after the needs of the economy that would pay the bill. He summed up his attitude about economics with the simple comment “We do not expect something for nothing.”

  Many of Lee’s social reforms served a practical purpose. “It’s the only hope,” he said in the late 1950s. “If we don’t try, Singapore will become Communist. If we try and fail, it will become Communist. The important thing is for us to try.” Often he expected government agencies to pay their own way, which produced the unusual result of a national post office that turned a profit and a government printing office that accepted commercial work. Sloth and waste in government, so rampant in other developing nations, are cardinal sins in Singapore.

  In spite of his intense concern for the welfare of his people, Lee rarely discussed domestic issues with me during our meetings. In some leaders a reluctance to address local problems indicates that they are either overwhelmed by them or, like Sukarno, unwilling to confront them at all. With Lee it was different. He did not have to discuss Singaporean issues because he had Singapore well under control. Early in my presidency I sent John Connally, my Secretary of the Treasury, on an around-the-world fact-finding trip. When he came to the White House to make his report, his opening comment about his stop in Singapore was brief and unequivocal. “Singapore,” he told me, “is the best run country in the world.”

  • • •

  Before I left on my Asia trip in 1953, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had visited the Far East after losing the presidential election of 1948, told me that the most impressive man he had met on his tour was Robert Menzies. When I met Menzies, I saw at once why Dewey had such a high opinion of him. He displayed an extraordinary grasp of issues affecting not only the Pacific region but the entire world.

  The successful Australian Prime Minister must master a vast, sparsely populated nation that ranges in character from the English urbanity of Adelaide to the frontier primitiveness of the Great Victoria desert. Menzies, who served more consecutive years than any of his predecessors, had what it took to do so. Though he had all the reserve and dignity of a member of the British upper class, he also had a rough-and-ready willingness to tangle with opponents and the press and a knack for sharp, stinging repartee. The first time I met him he told me, “I am British to my boot heels, but I love America,” and it always seemed to me that he combined the best qualities of British and American politicians.

  There were actually two Robert Menzieses. I knew the second one, the confident, sophisticated politician who had mastered his time and who was overseeing the greatest economic boom in Australian history. I never met the first Menzies. He was Australia’s young, intellectually arrogant leader during the first years of World War II, a man of good intentions who was finally overcome by events.

  Menzies was Prime Minister of Australia twice: between 1939 and 1941 and again between 1949 and 1966. It was not until his second tour that he found a cause to champion: the forgotten man of the middle class who was being trammeled by the Socialist policies of the Labor party, which took over from him in 1941. As Prime Minister, he guarded the welfare of his people without hindering private enterprise, and, like Lee, encouraged new foreign investment. The result was a massive increase in productivity and prosperity. Betw
een 1949 and 1961 Australia’s GNP nearly tripled. At the same time Menzies developed a sensible, comprehensive outlook on foreign affairs that centered on Australia’s growing role as a Far Eastern power.

  During Menzies’s out-of-power years it was clear that he would face enormous obstacles in any effort to regain power. After his resignation in 1941 and the victory of the Labor party, he was so thoroughly discredited that he was not even chosen to lead the Opposition in Parliament. In 1944 he formed the Liberal party. The experience of consolidating and retaining control over it—and then selling it to Australian voters—significantly honed his political skills.

  Like so many other great leaders, Menzies was toughened by his years in the wilderness. When he took power again, he was much more confident of his abilities and sure of his goals. He was considered an excellent parliamentarian, a strong campaigner, and a dazzling speaker. He was accused of treating his Cabinet with contempt, but was in fact confident enough of his strength that he let his ministers talk all they wanted.

  There was no question of who was in charge, however, and therefore no chance that Menzies’s political house would be knocked down from inside as it had been during the war. In 1941, faced with dissension in his Cabinet, he meekly asked his ministers for suggestions about what he should do differently. After 1949 he handled his cabinet differently. One of Menzies’s pet projects was sprucing up the capital city of Canberra, and one year he saw to it that a million pounds were included in the budget for the construction of an artificial lake for the capital. He then left for England. In his absence the Treasury Minister had the item deleted from the budget.

  Upon his return Menzies said jovially to the cabinet, “Am I rightly informed that when I was away the Treasury struck out this item of one million for the initial work on the lake?” His ministers told him that he was. He responded, “Well, can I take it that by unanimous consent of ministers the item is now struck in?” The next morning, work on the lake was under way.