Seize the Moment
Nixon, Richard M.
After half a century in public life, Richard Nixon has written what may be his most important book. Early in his career, Nixon helped shape a bipartisan consensus against Soviet expansionism. Today,...
...Consider it: from 1980 to 1990, total world exports rose from roughly $2 trillion to $3.4 trillion, up nearly 70 percent...
...Nixon writes: The leaders of the Asian Tigers understood that the most basic human motivation—the desire to better the condition of one's self and family—is the mainspring of economic growth...
...Forgotten is that the Marshall Plan transferred more aid to stagnating Britain than to fast-growing West Germany...
...That consensus became frayed during the struggle for Vietnam and after...
...It is a formula for unlimited economic growth for all nations...
...The former socialist nations do not need our cash...
...Tempered by Nixon's trademark "realism," it paints a bold view of America's role...
...Even the lifting of wage and price controls has been hampered by the continuing involvement of government bureaucracy...
...These factual errors are all the more surprising given Nixon's friendliness toward Israel...
...Today, considering the triumph of the West, he concludes, "We now have a cause even greater than the defeat of communism—the victory of freedom...
...Seize the Moment is a textbook for "winning the peace," and for realizing the dream of all people everywhere for rule of law, private property, and human rights...
...The defeat of the Soviet Empire does not guarantee the spread of democracy, and Nixon believes that, much as at the outset of the Cold War, America faces a profound choice: whether to accept the responsibility and the opportunity of leading the Free World or to stand down from the struggle for freedom and the rule of law...
...With nuclear weapons and their delivery systems proliferating, we cannot count on the chimera of arms control alone...
...Today, capitalist Taiwan's per capita income is $6,355, more than nineteen times higher than that of the PRC...
...In his concluding chapter, "The Renewal of America," the President who signed the 1972 ABM treaty declares unequivocally: The United States must commit itself to deploying by the end of the decade a limited space- and ground-based defense against ballistic missiles through the SDI...
...Until the new noncommunist leadership tackles those issues, no amount of Western aid will bring the economy out of its present nosedive...
...And without free markets, as Milton Friedman reminded us years ago, democracy itself is in peril...
...But events have not brought the instant restoration of "incentives for individuals and enterprises...
...Nixon underscores the importance of the Arab-Israeli peace process to the future of the Middle East, but stumbles in recounting Israel's record...
...West Germany, under its social-compact, free-enterprise Finance Minister, Ludwig Erhard, quickly outpaced Britain, whose socialistic economic policies—subsidized by Marshall funds—stifled growth...
...But the advent of democratic government in the former Soviet Union permits us once again to support a bipartisan foreign policy in the cause of freedom...
...And in a bold departure from the conventional wisdom, Nixon affirms that democratic capitalism can bring prosperity and freedom even to that "corner of the word" called the Middle East...
...Nixon's refusal to be bound by the dogmas of the past is even more refreshing...
...In actual fact, it was Egypt that unilaterally withdrew from the autonomy talks in August of 1982, to protest Israel's invasion of Lebanon...
...Tiny, free-trading Singapore, whose economy has grown at a 7-percent rate over the last twenty-five years, attained a per capita GNP of $10,450 in 1989...
...Yet the demand-side taskmasters still offer their failed prescription of shock therapy for the former socialist countries...
...For the rise of democratic capitalism in the Middle East will be the surest guarantee of our vital interests in the Persian Gulf...
...economy in 1977—the former Soviet Union's fundamental economic problem cannot be lack of resources...
...1:3 The American Spectator June 1992 61...
...People, regardless of their education and background, have responded to such basic economic incentives from the dawn of time in every corner of the world...
...B ut, on the whole, Seize the Mo- ment eschews the controversies of the past and presents a grand strategy for the future...
...To smooth the transition, they advise generous transfusions of foreign government credits...
...With the rise of Boris Yeltsin since the completion of Seize the Moment, Nixon has recently warmed to the idea of aid to the former Soviet Union...
...He calls for supporting those Muslim countries—like Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Turkey—that have moved in varying degrees toward free markets...
...In one camp are East Coast liberal Keynesians like Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs, and Western bankers who call for IMF-style austerity measures to beat eastern Europe's economies into submission...
...These policies are rooted in the Malthusian vision of economics that earned it the name of "the dismal science"—before the Reagan Revolution demonstrated the SEIZE THE MOMENT: AMERICA'S CHALLENGE IN A ONE-SUPERPOWER WORLD Richard M. Nixon Simon & Schuster/322 pages /$25 reviewed by JACK KEMP 60 The American Spectator June 1992 power of incentives and sound money to create long-term, non-inflationary economic growth...
...For while Freedom House could report this year—for the first time—that a majority of the world's nations are democratic, it is far from certain that free markets will take hold in these fledgling republics...
...Nixon goes a long way toward mapping out that strategy...
...In an age in which trade accounts for nearly a third of our GNP, we cannot just cash in our chips and "come home...
...Jeffrey Sachs's Harvard Plan, built on the IMF model, calls for a new Marshall Plan for the East...
...In Seize the Moment, written before Gorbachev's fall from power, Nixon is skeptical of proposals for massive Western economic aid to Gorbachev's government: With its estimated GNP of $1,900 billion—the equivalent of the U.S...
...They recommend currency devaluations, high taxes, draconian budget cuts, and piecemeal privatization...
...We need defenses...
...In the other are the neoconservative, free-market American economists who argue for entrepreneurial capitalism, rapid privatization, sound money, and liberalized trade...
...At stake is not only the economic future of east European countries, but the future of entrepreneurial capitalism around the world...
...Our total exports have doubled since 1985, reaching $422 billion in 1991...
...These nations have only to unleash the full potential of their peoples to realize a new era of prosperity and growth...
...As America embarked on what President Kennedy called our "long, twilight struggle" with Communism, Republicans and Democrats forged a common commitment to winning the Cold War...
...T oday, there's an intellectual battle on for the hearts and minds of the former socialist world...
...In a March 11 speech in Washington, he generally endorsed a five-year, $100-billion aid program...
...In a region barely familiar with the principles of freedom, Israel has been a shining example, and must continue to be our preeminent ally there...
...He states that while the Palestinian autonomy talks called for in the Camp David Accords should have been completed by 1984, "To put it bluntly, Israel stonewalled the United States and Egypt...
...In fact, IMF loans have created permanent debtor nations from Africa to South America...
...We are once again the number-one export power in the world...
...For years, the IMF and World Bank have imposed their "No pain, no gain" philosophy on struggling Third World nations...
...But it was Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser who closed the Straits of Tiran and blockaded Israel's sea lanes in May of 1967, an act of war under international law (the blockade coincided with the massing of troops on Israel's borders...
...Ever since Adam Smith demolished mercantilism, we have understood that free trade allows nations to do what they do best and to benefit from the advantages of their competitors...
...He further suggests Israel should surrender land for peace because the 1967 Six-Day War—in which the occupied territories were captured—"resuited from actions by both sides...
...with Latin America under President Bush's proposed North American Free Trade Agreement could create 1.2 million new jobs for American workers...
...While committed to free market reforms, Yeltsin's government has moved only tentatively towards privatization and monetary reform...
...In 1949, per capita income in both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan was about $50...
...Instead, it is a misapplication of those resources and the absence of proper economic incentives for individuals and enterprises...
...Some forty-eight countries have received IMF money and advice...
...Yet most are still poor...
...And the doubling of American trade Jack Kemp is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...
...They act as if the weak nation George Washington spoke of when he recommended no "entangling alliances" had not grown in the last 200 years...
...Nixon points to the example of the "Asian Tigers" (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea...
...This phenomenal record of economic growth was not engineered by the World Bank or the IMF but by investors and entrepreneurs...
...From this persuasive evidence Nixon derives a simple doctrine: "Foreign trade, not foreign aid...
...American manufacturing exports to Japan are up by 70 percent since 1987, and have created half a million American jobs...
...The former socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc are engaged in an unprecedented transformation, and their success must be a paramount objective of American foreign policy...
...they are rich in the most valuable commodity of all: human capital...
...Some Americans, on the left andironically—the right, would have us retreat to Fortress America, defend against direct threats to our shores, and abandon the rest of the world to fate...
...Some, like Russia, possess vast natural resources...
Vol. 25 • June 1992 • No. 6
