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Putting Aside Globaloney
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19887 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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4 / 1992 |
2,340 Words |
| Author
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Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried is a senior editor of the Modern Thought
section of The World & I and author of The Search for
Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right. |
SEIZE THE MOMENT
America's Challenge in a One Superpower World
Richard Nixon
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992
322 pp., $25.00
There are two types of political commentaries: those written while the relevant events are unfolding and those done after the facts. Most of the writings of former President Richard Nixon fall into the first category, his newest book being no exception. Even the autobiographical and quasi-autobiographical parts of his oeuvre--namely Six Crises (1962); The memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978); Leaders (1982); and In the Arena (1990)--abound in observations on and references to contemporary events.
Moreover, most of Nixon's works deal with particular crises. The emphasis in his first book on personal challenges that had to be surmounted was not a tactic of self-justification, as Nixon's critics maintain. It foreshadowed the polemical focus of his later, thoughtful volumes on international relations. In Nixon's view, politics on all levels must come to terms with conflict and dislocation; both challenge the sober statesman, who must learn to understand in order to curb human contentiousness.
Clearly, Nixon believes in the classical conception of power politics, as expressed by thinkers ranging from Machiavelli and Hobbes to Hans Morgenthau in the present century. In fact, many passages in his writings recall Morgenthau's once-influential textbook, written in 1948, on the role of power in international dealings, Politics among Nations. Neither Nixon nor Morgenthau gives evidence of believing that the politics of nations will lead to world unity (except as an act of imperialist self-assertion by a particular nation). Nor does either suggest that human nature can be rendered fundamentally peaceable as a result of social engineering or specific educational policies. Both prescribe prudent diplomacy and collective security pacts as the only effective way to deal with a recurrent and perhaps inevitable problem: aggressiveness by political powers that decide to take advantage of their neighbors' weakness or vulnerability.
The dominance of conflict as well as crisis in Nixon's works can be seen by looking at some titles and subtitles: The Real War (1980), Real Peace: A Strategy for the West (1983), No More Vietnams (1985), and 1999: Victory without War (1988). In the Arena, which ostensibly was written as a memoir,
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