Seize the Moment

by Richard Nixon

  Even with the rise of a noncommunist government in Moscow, the prospects for a rapid improvement in Soviet relations with other members of the Pacific triangle are limited. Before August 1991, the Soviet Union and China were divided by ideological differences. Today, they still stand on opposite sides of an ideological chasm. Japan, wary of the uncertain political situation in Moscow and adamant about the return of the Northern Territories, wants to keep Moscow at arm’s length at this time. Both China and Japan have known the Kremlin as the seat of power of not only the Soviet Union but also the Russian Empire. They respect—and fear—the potential influence Russian nationalism can have on Moscow’s foreign policy. And they know that in the postcommunist Soviet Union, this traditional nationalism could eventually come to the fore.

  Zhou Enlai remarked to me in 1972 that Moscow seeks “to fish in troubled waters.” With its political turbulence, the Pacific has always been a rich fishing ground. After expanding its territorial control across Eurasia to the Pacific three centuries ago, Russia clashed with the other two principal regional powers. It participated in the European division of China into spheres of influence. It engaged in a fierce rivalry with Japan, which culminated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904, a conflict settled through the mediation of the United States under President Theodore Roosevelt. In the postwar period, not only did Moscow fail to sign a peace treaty with Japan to end World War II, but the Sino-Soviet bloc collapsed amid mutual recrimination, with Brezhnev at one point even toying with the idea of a first-strike attack on Beijing’s nuclear forces.

  When Gorbachev came to power, he cast his line into the politics of the Pacific. The partnership between Japan and the United States, united by a security treaty but divided by economic bickering, had an uncertain future. China and the United States, brought together by the Soviet threat and the Chinese need for modernization but driven apart by China’s human rights record, had clouded the prospects for their long-term relationship. In addition, Indochina and the Korean peninsula continued to be hotbeds of great-power rivalries, while the large-scale presence of U.S. and Soviet naval forces added an explosive element to the region.

  Until the revolutionary events that brought noncommunist governments to power in the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991, Gorbachev’s approach to the Pacific involved a mix of “old thinking” and “new thinking.” His principal goal—to increase Moscow’s presence in the short term in order to set the stage for regional preeminence in the long term—dovetailed with traditional Soviet policy. But he developed a three-tiered strategy far more subtle and effective than the heavy-handed saber rattling of his predecessors. A military buildup that earned the Kremlin a voice in Pacific affairs, a political “peace offensive” that opened doors long closed to its diplomats, and an economic opening that sought to capitalize on the region’s dynamism dealt Gorbachev a hand in a geopolitical game in which he had little to offer but much to gain.

  While he did not want increased tensions in the region, he did seek a decreased U.S. presence. He wanted to break out of the Soviet Union’s traditional political isolation and embark on an active engagement in the Pacific. He wanted to establish beachheads diplomatically and economically that would not only help Moscow solve its domestic crisis but would also enable him to expand the Soviet sphere of influence along the Pacific rim.

  Military power was Gorbachev’s most concrete lever of influence in the Pacific. Without it, the other members of the Pacific triangle would not have taken the Soviet Union seriously. Because of this power, however, they could not have afforded to ignore Moscow’s concerns. This leverage was earned by a comprehensive military buildup larger in many ways than Soviet efforts in Europe:

  —It has doubled its deployments in the Far East since 1970 to a total of fifty-five divisions—which account for 43 percent of its ground troops east of the Ural Mountains.

  —It has quadrupled its combat aircraft in the region, with its deployments accounting for 54 percent of its tactical aircraft east of the Urals and including its most advanced Backfire long-range bombers and MiG-31 fighter-bombers.

  —It has developed a vast military infrastructure—bases, airfields, supply depots, roads, and railroads—in some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain to support the 500,000 troops in active units in the area.

  —It has modernized its Far Eastern ground forces with equipment withdrawn from Eastern Europe and areas west of the Urals.

  —It has redeployed 120,000 troops removed from Eastern Europe to the Sino-Soviet border, negating the effects of its earlier withdrawals in the late 1980s.

  —It has built up the Soviet Pacific Fleet—particularly its 110-strong nuclear attack and ballistic-missile submarine force—in an effort to counter the maritime power of the United States.

  —It has brought its total ICBM force in the Far Eastern military districts to 493, adding 85 missiles in 1990 and 1991 and thereby enabling its planners to cover all Pacific targets assigned to SS-20 missiles before they were destroyed under the INF treaty.

  —It trimmed its permanent naval deployments at Cam Ranh Bay and aircraft at Da Nang in Vietnam in the late 1980s, but Moscow’s military presence in Indochina vastly exceeded its deployments in the area even during the Vietnam War.

  At a time when lessening East-West tensions prompted the United States to reduce its forces in the Pacific, the Soviet Union’s peaked in terms of numbers and capabilities. This did not mean that Moscow intended to launch a Pacific blitzkrieg. But it did mean that its efforts to advance its political and economic presence in the region were built upon the rock-hard foundation of military power.

  Gorbachev’s political “peace offensive” was the main axis of his strategy in the Pacific. Unlike his predecessors from Stalin through Chernenko, he knew that overt threats and bullying would win little ground among the region’s major powers. Instead, he borrowed successful lessons from his diplomacy in Europe. Soviet officials called for the development of “an Asian common home” and “a single Eurasian area of stability and security.” Both concepts would have excluded the United States. By making political inroads now, Gorbachev wanted to tap the Pacific rim’s dynamic economy to save his Communist system. His subtle tactics—which sought to address China’s and Japan’s demands in form but to hold back in substance—were designed to parlay diplomatic initiatives into political gains.

  The centerpiece of his diplomatic offensive was the rapprochement with China in 1989. For forty years, the relationship with China served as the driving force behind Soviet policy in East Asia. Ideological and geopolitical competition between the two major Communist powers spawned diplomatic maneuvering and even military clashes between them. When Gorbachev realized the depth of the Soviet internal crisis, he concluded that he could no longer afford the Sino-Soviet enmity. Both powers buried the ideological hatchet, accepting each other’s brand of socialism as legitimate interpretations of the Marxist-Leninist canons, and began diplomatic exchanges to bridge the key issues dividing them.

  Most important, Gorbachev yielded on Deng’s “three conditions” for normalization of relations—a reduction in Soviet forces on the Sino-Soviet border, a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia. But he did so in measured and qualified steps. Soviet force levels still remained much higher along the Chinese border after the withdrawals than before the Soviet regional buildup began in the 1970s. Gorbachev kept a significant number of “advisers” in Afghanistan and continued to keep the Kabul regime in power through massive military and economic aid. Despite Hanoi’s pullout from Cambodia and the 1989 Sino-Soviet agreement on a process to end the Indochina conflict, the Vietnamese-backed Hun Sen government continued to impede a final peace settlement. While Gorbachev got his half of the bargain up front, the Chinese have had to work to collect on theirs.

  Gorbachev sought to employ the same formula—concessions in form but not in substance—to the third corner of the Pacific triangle, Japan. He knew that Moscow could not be
a credible Pacific power without a cooperative relationship with Japan. In order to win normal relations with and massive economic aid from Tokyo, he tantalized the Japanese with rumors of Soviet flexibility on the crucial issue of the four islands seized by the Soviet Union in the last days of World War II. He floated trial balloons calling for a swap of territory for billions in aid, hoping to crown his visit to Japan with a major political breakthrough. But the Soviet concessions actually put on the table, such as easing visa requirements for Japanese visiting some of the islands, left Tokyo cold. Gorbachev best encapsulated his bottom line when he remarked in September 1990 that the Soviet Union had “no land to spare” for Japan.

  His economic opening to the Pacific was the element of his policy that Gorbachev most needed but for which he had the least to offer. Although Sino-Soviet trade has doubled over three years and totaled $4.5 billion in 1991, it lags far behind the $18 billion in U.S.-Chinese trade. Even though Moscow and Beijing have reached several long-term trade agreements, their trade will not exceed modest levels in the near future, particularly because much of it must occur through barter agreements. For Gorbachev, however, Japan represented the real catch. On his state visit in March 1991, Tokyo refused to rise to his bait. Genuine opportunities for investment would have hooked the Japanese, but Gorbachev had been fishing for aid, not trade.

  Gorbachev played a skillful diplomatic game in Asia. While enhancing Soviet relations with South Korea—moving from no ties to full diplomatic relations in only three years—he continued to back North Korea, though slapping its leader on the wrist for its nuclear program. While Soviet trade with South Korea will rise from $85 million in 1985 to an estimated $1 billion in 1995, Moscow continued to provide $1 billion in aid to North Korea and to equip the 1.1 million troops in its armed forces with Soviet weapons.

  Gorbachev’s strategy was to use his military, political, and economic policies to supplant the United States as the principal power along the Pacific rim. We should seek to make the new noncommunist leadership in the Russian republic a partner in resolving the issues on which Gorbachev would accept only a partial accommodation. Unburdened by the totalitarian baggage of the past, the new noncommunist leaders should be more willing to demilitarize the Sino-Soviet border, to phase down Soviet naval deployments in the Pacific, to accept a political settlement in Afghanistan based on elections, to cut off the Communist regimes in Vietnam and North Korea from military and economic aid, and to return the Northern Territories to Japan.

  With modernist, democratic leaders instead of insular, Communist despots, Russia can begin to make a constructive contribution to Pacific security. But the United States cannot assume that this process will occur in a fortnight. The nations of the Pacific triangle harbor deep national suspicions of each other. Unlike Americans, the Russians have traditionally had great difficulties relating to China and Japan, not only because of their political differences, but also because of their clashing cultures and centuries of geopolitical antagonism. A closed and parochial society for much of this century, Russia has a strong streak of xenophobia that will influence its Pacific policies even in the postcommunist period. Because the new leaders in Moscow have ceased being Communists does not mean that they have ceased being Russians.

  China, Japan, and the smaller countries in the region want a continuing, strong U.S. military presence in the Pacific. Current U.S. ten-year defense plans—which foresee a 12 percent cut in Pacific troop deployments in the first phase alone—must not reduce our forces to the point at which we would lack the forward-based infrastructure needed for a major intervention into the region. The 16 percent of U.S. forces stationed in the Pacific are stretched thin already. Cuts proportional to those made in our European forces would seriously weaken our ability to deter countries that might harbor ambitions of dominating the region through military coercion or intimidation.

  Compared to Europe, our deployments in the Pacific are not great. But they make an enormous contribution to regional stability. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations spend a total of over $50 billion a year on defense, a figure that will rise to $120 billion by the year 2000. To cap this growth, the United States should maintain a high profile in the region, keeping both its naval forces in the South Pacific and its ground forces in South Korea and Japan. In addition, it should work with friendly countries, such as Singapore, that will allow an increased U.S. presence through short-term rotation of aircraft at their air bases and ship maintenance at their naval yards. While these measures might pack little military punch, their symbolic value is vital to keeping potential escalations of arms spending in check.

  Our military presence must be sufficient to prevent a security vacuum from developing in the Pacific. Over the last forty-five years, U.S. security guarantees have enabled the countries of East Asia to develop politically and economically, and our own standard of living has benefited significantly as a result. Other countries might be able to match our economic, political, or military power. But unlike the three members of the Pacific triangle, the United States has no history of hegemonic aspirations. We may think of China’s, Japan’s, and even Russia’s imperialism as ancient history, but in the region they are as fresh as the morning’s news.

  • • •

  Although we must avoid pretensions of acting as the prime mover in the geopolitics of the Pacific rim, we have a unique role to play. Only the United States has the credibility to maintain the balance of power in the region, an essential precondition for Pacific prosperity.

  The conflicts between the powers of the Pacific triangle did not begin with the cold war and will not end with the end of the cold war. As a nation, Americans have difficulty grasping the depth of historical antagonisms between other nations. But these intractable conflicts have dominated the politics of the Pacific triangle for decades. The record of the rivalry between Japan and Russia reaches back far beyond the postwar period. The centuries-old, visceral antipathy between Russia and China and between Japan and China cannot be overcome by a cleverly worded communiqué. Though a more democratic and less aggressive Russia should be able to tamp down the most acute conflicts, it would be foolhardy to assume that all the great rivalries between Pacific nations that predated the Communist era will remain dormant.

  Japan, a democratic ally and a technological power capable of building nuclear weapons, must remain our intimate geopolitical partner, regardless of our commercial disputes. The new governments in the Kremlin and the Russian republic have created the possibility of closer economic and political relations with Tokyo, once the Northern Territories are returned to Japan, but these would be short-lived in the absence of an active U.S engagement in the Pacific. Without a security link to the United States, Tokyo might temporarily strike a security deal with Moscow but would inevitably develop its own nuclear weapons, thereby rekindling its historical antagonisms with Russia and China.

  Just as Japan is a political ally but an economic competitor, China is a potential strategic partner despite its totally unacceptable violations of human rights. A stable and modernizing China is vital to Pacific security. We cannot ignore China’s internal repression, but it should not be ostracized or endlessly harangued. Besides the United States, no great power—neither Japan, Russia, nor any country in Europe—can foster peaceful change in China. While we may have to work with repugnant hard-line leaders in the short term, a continuing engagement with China will serve our interests and those of the Chinese people in the long term.

  Most important, as a result of the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union, a window of opportunity has opened to explore the possibility of what Gorbachev might have called a “common transpacific home.” We should recognize that Russia, like the United States, has a proper role to play and legitimate interests to protect in Pacific affairs. But before we can welcome even the new Russian leaders as constructive geopolitical partners, they must first check their guns at the d
oor.

  A continued U.S. presence in Europe is important, but a continued U.S. role in the Pacific is indispensable. Without the United States, the Pacific triangle will be like a three-legged stool: unstable and potentially dangerous. The competition among Japan, China, and Russia would be unbridled, with each driven to seek preeminence in the region. The United States must serve as a stabilizer—the fourth leg of the stool—in order to advance the interests of all East Asian nations. Whether or not East-West relations continue to improve, America’s role as regional balancer, honest broker, and security guarantor in the Pacific will only increase in importance.

  5

  THE MUSLIM WORLD

  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. They remember the three wars waged by the Arab states to try to exterminate Israel, the seizure of American hostages by the fanatical Ayatollah Khomeini, the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian commandos from the Black September organization, the endless and senseless slaughter by rival Muslim militias in Lebanon, the bombing of civilian airliners by Syria and Libya, and the attempted annexation of Kuwait by a Hitler-like Saddam Hussein. No nations, not even Communist China, have a more negative image in the American consciousness than those of the Muslim world.

  Some observers warn that Islam will become a monolithic and fanatical geopolitical force, that its growing population and significant financial power will pose a major challenge, and that the West will be forced to form a new alliance with Moscow to confront a hostile and aggressive Muslim world. This view holds that Islam and the West are antithetical and that Muslims view the world as two irreconcilable camps of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb—the house of Islam and the house of war where the forces of Islam have yet to prevail. It foresees the forces of resurgent Muslim fundamentalism orchestrating a region-wide revolution from Iran and other states and prompting the need for a comprehensive Western and Soviet policy of containment.