Seize the Moment

by Richard Nixon

  Gorbachev positioned himself in the middle and as a result lost both the right and the left. In attempting to please all, he ended up pleasing none. Reformers could not trust him, and reactionaries dropped him when they could no longer use him. Was he then one of those tragic failures brought down by good intentions? No. History will judge that he met the test of greatness: he made a difference. He opened the eyes of the Soviet people to the fatal flaws of the Communist system. While he erred in believing that it could be reformed, his reforms took on a momentum of their own and revolutionized his country and changed the world. Regardless of what happens to him now, he has earned his place in history as one of the great leaders of the twentieth century.

  As a dedicated Marxist, Gorbachev would have been wiser if he had studied one of Marx’s ironically prescient observations: “Russia has only one opponent: the explosive power of democratic ideas, that inborn urge of the human race in the direction of freedom.” Marx could never have suspected that an idea he captured in one sentence would bring down a Soviet state erected upon the ideology he expounded in multiple volumes. Yet we have witnessed the full flowering of that basic inborn human urge for freedom in the former Soviet Union.

  Without radical reform, this opportunity will quickly fade away. What was once known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a union, not Soviet, and not socialist. If the new leaders in Moscow and the former Soviet republics hesitate, their people will be doomed to the sidelines of history. They would be forced to live in the past, barred from receiving the rewards of the great revolution in human freedom now sweeping the world.

  The conflict between the center and the republics—one seeking to rule from the top down and the other from the bottom up—is irreconcilable. After the failed coup, the center ultimately could not hold. The centralized command structure will give way to a decentralized commonwealth based on democratic self-determination and free-market economics. As the world’s only superpower, America must take the lead in adjusting to these new realities. As the center grows weaker and the republics grow stronger, we should focus on advancing peace and freedom at both levels and through all channels.

  By encouraging institutions pressing for political pluralism and market economics, we can help accelerate the demise of communism and the advent of liberty. Each of the nations of the former Soviet Union has rediscovered its identity, its heritage, and its freedom. These nations have spoken out for the first time since they were silenced by the armies of empire. After the long winter of Communist tyranny, it is now a springtime of nations.

  The ideals of communism fed a spiritual hunger for creating a perfect society. In the wake of their demise are a broken ideology, a broken dream, and millions of broken lives. The new revolution of freedom does not promise a new utopia. Instead of a perfect society, the democratic revolution promises only a government as good as its people. The nations of the former Soviet Union have earned their freedom. Now they must learn how to reap the boundless rewards of freedom. The promise is within reach. It is up to the Soviet people to realize that promise.

  The peaceful revolution in the Soviet Union has dramatically changed the world. It has a special meaning for the people of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the world. For the peoples of the Soviet Union, seventy-five years of bondage have ended. They are now free and can join the family of free nations.

  For the United States, the great ideological and geopolitical rivalry with the Soviet Union has ended. The only power able to destroy the United States is now in the midst of a sweeping democratic revolution. We can now work with our former rival to eliminate the fear of war and reduce the burden of arms.

  For the world, the superpower that has been the principal source of aggression for most of this century can now become a force for peace. The awesome power to destroy the world is in the hands not of Stalin or Andropov but of the Soviet people. It is now in good hands.

  As a result of the new Soviet revolution, the world stands on the eve of an era of unprecedented opportunities for peace and progress. We must remember, however, that democracy is like a fragile plant. If it is not nurtured and cared for, it will wither and die. But once it sinks its roots, people will care for it. They will not fight to extend it, but they will fight to defend it.

  In my meeting with Mao Zedong in 1976, the last time I would see him, he asked a profound question: “Is peace America’s only goal?” I responded that our goal was peace but a peace that was more than the absence of war—“a peace with justice.” Today, we need to ask ourselves a similarly profound question: Is stability our only goal? Our goal should be more than a new world order. Order can keep the peace, but peace is not the ultimate end, only the necessary beginning. Peace should be the means to a higher end—a new world in which all people can enjoy the blessings of freedom, justice, and progress.

  With the collapse of the Communist Soviet empire, we should no longer view Moscow or the former Soviet republics as permanent adversaries. Bitter competition during the cold war can be transformed into allied cooperation in a warm peace. Over a century and a half ago, Tocqueville made a remarkably prescient observation about America and Russia: “There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend toward the same end . . . . The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.” History has advanced beyond even Tocqueville’s prescience. Today, a democratic Russia working with a democratic America can sway the destinies of not just half but all the globe.

  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.

  3

  THE COMMON TRANSATLANTIC HOME

  SIX YEARS AGO, Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his vision of the future of Europe: a “common European home” from the Atlantic to the Urals. Founded in a “common cultural and historical heritage,” this new Europe would integrate its economies and cooperate to guarantee peace and security and would unite a continent divided by fifty years of cold war tensions. Yet as attractive as many observers found his proposal, it was significant less for what it included than for what it omitted: a major role for the United States. By drawing the boundaries of the common European home at the eastern shores of the Atlantic, Gorbachev implicitly excluded America from the continent’s future.

  In reality, the idea of a common European home was simply an updated version of Moscow’s traditional policy of seeking to divide the United States from its European allies. Though he claimed to have no such ulterior motive, Gorbachev clearly sought to achieve through diplomacy and propaganda what his predecessors since Stalin had failed to achieve through missile flexing and intimidation. In doing so, he casually overlooked the fact that the real bonds of culture and history extend from Europe to America, not from Sverdlovsk to Brittany. The values of the Western tradition, the steadfast adherence to democratic principles, and the belief in the fundamental dignity of the individual create philosophical ties that bind more strongly than the happenstance of the continent’s geography.

  The West, however, cannot afford to dismiss Moscow’s gambit as empty rhetoric. This concept appealed to many because new realities in Europe demand new approaches to the problems of Europe. A liberated Eastern Europe and a vastly diminished threat from the former Soviet Union doom to failure policies based on the cold war status quo. This does not mean the United States should declare victory and disengage from Europe. It does mean that U.S. policymakers must articulate a new vision for Europe and recast America’s role to meet today’s problems.

  The Soviet Union lost the c
old war in Europe. But this does not yet mean that the West has won it. We must still consolidate the victory. The countries of Eastern Europe lack a security structure. Massive economic problems threaten their fragile new democratic systems. Germany, uncertain of its proper role, has drifted from its geopolitical moorings. With new noncommunist governments in Moscow and in many former Soviet republics, the rationale for a strong NATO with a major U.S. military presence has eroded. To cope with these new conditions, we need policies that renew existing transatlantic institutions such as NATO and that build bridges to integrate Eastern Europe into the West. While Gorbachev spoke of a common European home, we should dedicate ourselves to building a common transatlantic home.

  • • •

  Since World War II, U.S. policy in Europe has been based on four fundamental geopolitical facts:

  Soviet military presence in the heart of Europe. World War II brought Soviet troops to the banks of the Elbe. On June 4, 1945, Winston Churchill sent an urgent message to Harry Truman, the new President of the United States. He warned, “An iron curtain is coming down on their front. We do not know what lies behind it. It is vital that we have an understanding with the Russians now, before our armies are mortally weakened, and before we withdraw to our zones of occupation.” Unfortunately, his advice was ignored. When the United States reduced its armed forces from 12 million to 1.6 million troops by 1947, the West accepted Soviet conventional superiority and thereby lost its leverage to force a Soviet pullback. After Moscow neutralized the U.S. nuclear advantage by developing its own atomic weapons in 1949, the East-West standoff in Central Europe was frozen into place. With 380,000 crack Soviet troops in East Germany alone, deterring further Soviet aggression or intimidation became the central U.S. preoccupation in Europe for half a century.

  Soviet imperial domination over Eastern Europe. Within three years of the end of World War II, Stalin had installed puppet regimes in every East European country. Moscow exercised ironclad control over their Communist leaders. When the Kremlin told them to jump, they only asked how high. These countries were dominated militarily and geopolitically by the Moscow-controlled Warsaw Pact, which sanctioned the presence of as many as 800,000 Soviet troops on East European soil, and economically by the so-called Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. When Hungary and Czechoslovakia stepped out of line in 1956 and 1968, the Kremlin brought the full weight of the Red Army upon them, providing an object lesson of the consequences of the expansion of Soviet domination westward.

  Soviet-imposed division of Germany. In the immediate postwar years, Germany lay in ruins, its territory divided between Western and Soviet occupation forces, its industrial infrastructure in shambles, and its population decimated by the wartime loss of 6 million people. But free-market economics and democratic politics—both made possible by NATO’s protective shield and by the Marshall Plan’s economic aid—produced the “German miracle.” After forty-six years apart, the 62 million people in West Germany enjoyed a per capita income of $20,440, while the 16 million in East Germany languished with one of less than $5,000. Yet a profound tension remained. The unnatural division of Germany highlighted the unnatural division of Europe. Bonn’s dependence on NATO for security pulled it toward the West. But Moscow continually exploited its control over East Germany to try to pull West Germany to the East.

  Fragmented and vulnerable Western Europe. The end of World War II left Western Europe politically and militarily vulnerable. The nations of Western Europe had common interests and values, but no common political structures. Divided by traditional rivalries and preoccupied with rebuilding their economies, these countries needed the United States to forge a common Western strategy to cope with the Soviet threat. Only the United States had the economic and military power to advance Western security through NATO and to push Western Europe to take the first timid steps toward unity through the European Economic Community. Europe’s great powers had become medium powers, relegated to the second tier of states by their size, their dependence on the U.S. nuclear guarantee, and their inability to coordinate their defense and foreign policies.

  • • •

  None of those conditions is valid today. Yet U.S. policies are to a great extent still premised on them. The deployment of over 300,000 U.S. troops in Western Europe, the expenditure of $180 billion per year on European defense, the reluctance to provoke Moscow by developing security ties with Eastern Europe, and the advocacy of European economic integration even at the price of accepting protectionism all were policies well suited to coping with the challenges of the past. But today they are as obsolete as a Model T Ford.

  As we revise our policy toward Europe, we must address five new realities:

  Security vacuum in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The termination of the Warsaw Pact in March 1991 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in August 1991 have left half of Europe without even a shadow of a security structure. These changes, though overwhelmingly positive, have created two new challenges. The first is the vacuum of power created in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The fact that during the postwar period virtually all European states were members of NATO or the Warsaw Pact created a certain geopolitical stability. While acute tensions divided the two sides, the lines between the blocs were clearly drawn, thereby decreasing the risks of adventurism and reducing the chances of a miscalculation leading to war. Today, however, Eastern Europe faces a period of unprecedented instability without any functioning security organization.

  This would not matter if the East European states and the western former republics of the Soviet Union were strategically insignificant or had strong, stable governments. But neither is the case. Eastern Central Europe has been the focal point of the continent’s political struggles for two hundred years. Both world wars were triggered in the region, and the four partitions of Poland between Germany and Russia attest to its geopolitical importance. The new East European democracies are weakened by ethnic divisions, hobbled by economic chaos, and unpracticed in the art of self-government. Moreover, compared to the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe is a pillar of geopolitical stability.

  The second challenge strikes at the heart of NATO and the U.S. presence in Europe. Many believe that with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union, no compelling reason exists for the deployment of U.S. troops in Europe. Even though informal agreements will reduce U.S. forces to approximately 150,000, pressure will grow from West Europeans to phase out our forces totally and particularly our nuclear weapons. Among Americans across the political spectrum, budgetary pressures will focus increasing attention on slashing the amount spent annually on European defense, especially as our NATO allies trim back their own military expenditures. Without a renewed mission, the most successful alliance in history will become a footnote in history.

  Fragile new democracies in Eastern Europe. Since their liberation from Soviet domination, the people of Eastern Europe have learned a chastening lesson: tearing down a corrupt old regime has always been easier than building a just new order. As Tocqueville observed, democratic government does not ensure good government. While no one would suggest turning back the clock, the central issue in Europe today is whether the new East European democracies will have enough time to implement reform before their economic problems overwhelm them.

  The euphoria of revolution has been dampened by the hard realities of government. The economic and political transformation these countries must attempt is unprecedented. Handicapped with suffocating bureaucracies, worthless currencies, obsolete technology, globally uncompetitive goods, inefficient state-owned industries, and unproductive workers, even radical reforms will not remake their economies with the wave of a wand. Moreover, despite already low standards of living, conditions will inevitably get worse before they get better. Politically, the lack of tested leaders, established parties, and democratic traditions combined with potential ethnic rivalries and deepening economic ch
aos create fertile ground for demagogues. No democratic regime in history has ever weathered a storm of such overwhelming magnitude.

  Unified but drifting Germany. Unification has put Germany at the pinnacle of its potential political and economic power in Europe. With 78 million people, it is the most populous country in Europe. If workers in east Germany were to match the productivity of those in the west—which is inevitable over time—the united country’s GNP would today total at least $1.5 trillion, almost double its closest European rival. Though their size will be reduced, the current unified German armed forces number 590,000 troops, twice the size of Britain’s and the largest military establishment in Central Europe except Moscow’s. With its geopolitical weight, Germany potentially can dominate not only European economic institutions but also its political and security structures.

  None of these facts has been lost on Germany’s neighbors. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not sound the death knell of traditional anxieties about Germany. France and Britain were profoundly ambivalent about unification. Other members of the European Community voiced concerns about Germany’s inevitable preeminence in the region. Poland, embroiled by Bonn in an unnecessary dispute over ratification of their common postwar border, feared German revanchism. East European governments implored U.S. firms to invest on their territory in order to avoid German economic domination. For many Europeans, the unification of Germany harkens back to a time fifty years ago when Germans rode through European capitals not in Mercedes limousines but in Tiger tanks, expanding influence not through economic cooperation but through military domination and terror.