Real War

by Richard Nixon

  Since then, I have met with the Shah on a number of occasions. We became friends. I saw him grow in power and in wisdom. While I was out of office, during the 1960s, I made four trips to Tehran to see him. By then he had matured into a world leader of the first rank. What was even more important and exciting, he had made a revolution in Iran. In less than twenty years he had brought Iran into the twentieth century. Before he came to power, well over half of Iran’s lands had been held by less than 1 percent of its people. He initiated a massive land-reform program, which included a wholesale divestiture of Crown lands as well as forcing the wealthy landowners and Moslem clergy to give up much of theirs; for Iran’s peasants, this meant their first chance ever at owning their own land. He launched an imaginative plan to give Iran’s workers a share in the economy, first through profit-sharing, and then by encouraging workers to buy stock in the enterprises they worked for; he even had the government lend them the necessary capital to buy it. To help the rural poor, long one of the most poverty-stricken and disease-ridden populations in the world, he organized young Iranians into a Literacy Corps, a Health Corps, and a Reconstruction and Development Corps—as alternatives to military service—and sent them into the countryside. The number of schools and colleges skyrocketed; the level of illiteracy plummeted; eventually, with the Shah’s help and encouragement, more than 40,000 young Iranians were also studying abroad. Enormous strides were made in health care. In what amounted to a revolutionary change in Moslem Iran, women were given full political rights over the bitter opposition of traditional Islamic leaders.

  Even before the oil boom that began in 1973, Iran’s economy was growing at an impressive rate of 9 percent a year. Unemployment and underemployment nearly vanished. The Shah told me that Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson once commented that under the Shah’s leadership Iran had done more in achieving the goal of socialism—more prosperity equally shared—than had Great Britain. The Shah also developed substantial military strength and was filling the vacuum left by the British when they withdrew from the Persian Gulf area.

  He did not provide as much progress in political rights as most Americans would have wished. Iran had no tradition of democracy, and his government still used what by Western standards were harsh measures to keep its political opposition in check. But the people of Iran had made far more progress in political and human rights than any of their neighbors except Israel. Under the Shah, Iran was advancing internally and was secure externally. In one of the last comprehensive studies of Iran done before the upheavals of 1979, under the auspices of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the Shah’s rule was rightfully judged to have been one that oversaw “Iran’s transition from weakness to strength, from backwardness to progress, from poverty to wealth.”

  When I saw him in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in July 1979 I found that the Shah had lost none of the dignity, character, or courage that were his trademarks when he was in power. But he was deeply depressed. Tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke of the savage slaughter of his friends and supporters by the new regime. But he was not sorry for himself. He was sorry for his country. The clock had been turned back a hundred years for the Iranian people. Women had lost their rights. The economy was in shambles. Four million people were unemployed. Inflation was running at 40 percent. Iran was no longer the staunch friend of the West holding back the forces, internal and external, that threatened to cut our oil lifeline.

  The Shah was hard on himself, admitting that he made his share of mistakes. But he had tried desperately to do his best. He still has great affection and respect for the United States. He finds it difficult, however, to understand the policy of the U.S. government toward him during his ordeal. Despite the economic progress that had been made during his reign and the slow but sure movement toward more democracy, the United States, both privately and publicly, pushed him to do more. He tried to comply. But, as he reflected, he feels now that he may have tried to do too much too soon—both economically and politically. The more the people got, the more they wanted. He had antagonized the Moslem leaders by forcing them to give their lands to the peasants, as he had done with his own lands, and by emancipating women. He had enormously increased the availability of higher education; but then thousands of educated young Iranians—particularly those who had gone to school in the United States—joined his opponents and insisted that he abdicate so that democracy and human rights, American style, could come immediately to Iran.

  Instead of rights, they got an Islamic dictatorship.

  He found it difficult to understand the attitude of the French. Iran had been a friend to France, and even had contracts to purchase at least $10 billion worth of goods from the French. Yet the French government allowed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to set up what was in effect a government-in-exile outside Paris and to use it as a forum to attack him from abroad and to direct and incite the mobs in the streets at home.

  As he sees it now, the crucial mistake the United States made was not in giving him support or failing to give him support, but in being indecisive. One day, he would receive public and private assurances of all-out support. The next day, a story would be leaked to the effect that second-level U.S. emissaries were in contact with his opposition. The day after that, a statement from the White House would indicate that the United States, in the event that the Shah was overthrown, would accept any government the people wanted. A vacillating United States government could not seem to decide whether to support the Shah unequivocally, force him to compromise with his enemies, or leave him free to maneuver without its support.

  The Soviets did not vacillate. They beamed inflammatory radio broadcasts to Tehran and other major cities. They supported the small but well-organized Communist Party and other dissident groups. They did not expect to bring Iran into the Soviet camp immediately. But they knew that chaos in Iran was their ally, and if they could generate enough of it, over a long enough period of time, Tehran would cut its Western ties, become neutral at the very least, and perhaps move toward the Soviets. Their strategy worked.

  The Shah became a man without a country, hounded from one refuge to another. American diplomatic personnel were taken hostage, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini thumbed his nose at the U.N. and the rest of the civilized world. While demands that the Shah be forcibly returned to Iran have been refused, the way he was treated by many of his erstwhile friends once he fell from power contrasted shabbily with the way he had stood by them in their own times of need.

  The United States and the West have lost a staunch friend in an explosive area of the world where we desperately need friends who will act as a stabilizing force. Countries in the area, such as Saudi Arabia, that have the will to assume that stabilizing role lack the military power. Those, such as Iraq, that have the power may not seek the same kind of stability. The Soviet threat looms larger. Now the United States and our Western allies must fill the vacuum, or have it filled in a way detrimental to us.

  Iran has lost an effective leader. The world has lost one of those leaders who, far from being parochial, have a better understanding of the great forces that move the world than leaders of most major countries. When I saw him in Mexico the Shah gave me, at my request, an hour-long appraisal of developments in the Soviet Union, in China, in India, in the Mideast, in Africa, and in Latin America. His knowledge was encyclopedic and his wisdom was incisive.

  There are lessons for the future in this tragic development.

  Especially when a key country like Iran is involved, we must never forget that our choice is usually not between the man in power who is our friend and somebody better, but rather between him and someone far worse.

  We must not set higher standards of conduct for our friends than for our enemies.

  We must not insist on forcing American-style democracy on nations with different backgrounds and different problems. They must move in their own way at their own pace toward the goals that we in the West have taken hundreds of years to achieve.
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br />   Above all, in the future we must stand by our friends or we will soon find that we have none. After seeing what happened to the Shah in Iran and how he was treated by the United States after he left Iran, other rulers in countries that are very important to us—such as Saudi Arabia—now wonder if the same thing will happen to them if they come under attack from foreign-supported internal revolutionaries.

  As the Wall Street Journal observed:

  The United States needs friends. And more often than most allies the shah was willing to help, for example in fueling U.S. warships in the midst of the Arab oil embargo. If his reward for this is infamy even in the U.S., how many future rulers will take risks for the U.S. side? We can be sure that the fate of the shah is carefully watched by Prince Fahd controlling the oil taps, King Hussein sitting next to the West Bank and King Hassan holding one side of the straits of Gibraltar. To the extent the shah is ill-treated by the U.S., it is one more incentive for them to cut the best deal they can with the anti-Americans.

  We must grasp the distinction between “totalitarian” regimes, which deny all freedoms, and “authoritarian” regimes, which may severely limit political rights but allow personal liberties—for example, the right to free choice in education, religion, employment, marriage, friends, workplace, and family life, and in some cases the protection of a system of jurisprudence, which while not as advanced as ours, is nevertheless far more meaningful than the purely paper legality of the U.S.S.R. or the Koran’s protection in present-day Iran.

  Many Third World countries are governed by authoritarian regimes run by dictators, often military men. The Shah’s father was a military man who seized power and made himself the new Shah; Franco was a general who prevailed in the Spanish Civil War; the Greek colonels ran an authoritarian regime; so does the Chilean junta.

  One thing we should recognize about these and similar regimes is that they are not run by zealots determined to impose their iron will on every aspect of their citizens’ personal lives. For these authoritarian rulers, political repression is an expedient to enable them to hold power and maintain order. By contrast, the Cambodian bloodbath was a brutal effort to transform a society and to destroy everyone who resisted change. In this it differed only in degree, not in kind, from other communist regimes.

  • • •

  We must also grasp the distinction between those regimes that threaten their neighbors and those that do not. As one British writer put it, “We should distinguish between those systems, usually totalitarian, that wish to export their repression and those, usually authoritarian, that don’t. Even the simpleton understands that no matter how obnoxious they may be, neither Chile nor South Africa has submarines lurking around the oil fields in the North Sea.” He might have added that unlike Cuba, they are not exporting communist subversion to their neighbors in Latin America, or sending their troups to serve as Soviet Hessians in wars of “liberation” in Africa.

  Exerting more pressure on friendly regimes that provide some rights and do not threaten their neighbors than we exert on hostile regimes that provide no rights and do threaten their neighbors is not only hypocritical, it is stupid. Alliances are arrangements of convenience. Allies do not have to love one another or even admire one another; it is enough that they need one another. Being joined in an alliance neither obliges nor entitles us to deliver condescending lectures in political morality to our partners. The “moral imperialists” who insist that other nations be re-created in our image as the price of our friendship do freedom no favor.

  I do not suggest that we abandon our committment to “human rights” in our relations with our friends. But to be effective, we need to adopt a policy of realism. And to do this we must make a simple but crucial differentiation in our minds between the long view and the short view, between the ideal goal and what is immediately feasible.

  In the long term we should hold high the banner of the American Revolution as the standard to which man aspires. But in the short term—in the immediate, real world we must deal with—we must recognize that for much of the world this is still a distant dream. It took centuries for Western Europe, with its relatively advanced civilization, to evolve democratic forms, and even some of these countries have at times lapsed back into authoritarian rule. American-style democracy is simply not suited for many countries, and if they tried it, it would not work. Democracy is like heady wine—some can handle it and some cannot, at least not right away.

  In the world contest one of the West’s most powerful weapons is the idea of freedom. The communist nations have proved that they can equal us militarily. Economically, they will continue to try to match us. But in terms of human aspirations, it is no contest—the West wins hands down.

  As the free world’s leader, the President must use that weapon—the idea of freedom—to the hilt. But he must use it precisely and effectively. It would be tragic if we misused this powerful weapon, flaying about with it at random, hitting our friends and foes alike and ultimately injuring ourselves. The “bully pulpit” is a place for moral leadership, not for moral imperialism.

  11

  No Substitute for Victory

  Russia fears our friendship more than our enmity. The Soviet dictatorship could not stand free intercourse with the West. We must make Moscow fear our enmity more than our friendship.

  —Winston Churchill

  The object in war is to attain a better peace. . . . Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace, and of one’s people, is better after the war than before.

  —B.H. Liddell Hart

  Nearly thirty years ago as a junior senator from California I heard General Douglas MacArthur tell a joint session of Congress that “in war, there is no substitute for victory.” The members rose to their feet. They cheered. Grown men cried. The nation was then mired in a war in Korea. MacArthur, the hero of the Pacific in World War II, had been fired by President Truman from his command in Korea. MacArthur had wanted to carry the war to the enemy. Truman was determined to contain the war and to achieve a negotiated truce.

  Historians and strategists will argue over which was right in the circumstances of that time. But as we look across the balance of this century and beyond, as we think of the stakes involved, we must conclude that in World War III there is no substitute for victory.

  Victory requires knowing when to use power, how, and where—not just military power, but all the different kinds of power at our disposal.

  History tells us that time and again nations that were stronger militarily, stronger economically, even nations that had the edge in will and courage, were defeated because their enemies used power more effectively. In World War III the Soviets have both a goal and a strategy for victory. Their goal is total, unconditional victory, and unconditional surrender for the West, and their strategy involves the use and orchestration of all means as prudently as possible toward that end.

  The nations of the world want to be on the winning side. Most of them have lost wars. Most—and this especially includes Japan and Germany—do not want to be on the losing side again. The American people want to win. This is why MacArthur struck such a responsive chord, why he drew such a gut-level response. One of the most devastating results of the outcome in Vietnam was that America felt that for the first time it had lost a war.

  In World War III, in the long run the alternative to victory is not an uneasy truce, but defeat in war or surrender without war. This is not acceptable.

  Americans are unaccustomed to thinking in global terms, and uncomfortable with the exercise of power unless directly provoked, as we were at Pearl Harbor. It should be clear by now, however, that the Soviet challenge is such a provocation on a global scale.

  A somewhat oversimplified but useful way of looking at the evolution of America’s response to that challenge during the thirty-five years from the end of World War II through the 1970s is to view it as a progress from confusion to containment to détente. In the wake of the Soviet move into Afghanistan, the 1980s
began with a rash of hasty obituaries for détente. Most missed the point of détente, of how and why it worked when it did. Afghanistan interrupted détente. But looking to the future, we need a steady policy that will again make it in the Soviet Union’s interest to negotiate with the United States on a realistic quid pro quo basis. A successful détente can help make victory for the West possible—without war. But first we must recognize that containment is an essential element of détente. It is, in fact, what makes a successful détente possible.

  Containment

  In the immediate aftermath of World War II the West, weary of war, disarmed and turned its attention to rebuilding from the ashes of conflict. Europe lay devastated and powerless. The Soviets moved into the vacuum, cementing their hold on Eastern Europe. With Soviet support, the communists swept to power in China and fastened their hold on North Korea.

  In responding to the Soviet moves after World War II the United States evolved what came to be known as the policy of containment. On the European front the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and the establishment of NATO in 1949 checked further Soviet advance. Then, in 1950, with both Soviet and Chinese support, North Korea invaded South Korea. A swift military response by the United Nations, with the United States taking the lead, checked communist aggression there, and the American policy of containment was visibly in place.

  George F. Kennan, then the director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, set forth the principles of the policy in an article he wrote anonymously—under the pseudonym “Mr. X”—for the magazine Foreign Affairs in 1947. In it he urged “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world.”