The Nixinger Report

One of man's nobler qualities is his irrepressible drive to apply reason and a sense of order to a world that is stubbornly irrational and untidy. Few official documents illustrate that passion more forcefully than President Nixon's annual State of the World reports. His third, prepared under the rigorous supervision of National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and released last week, optimistically organizes U.S. foreign policy into manageable problems and fits each specific American move into a grand strategy for achieving "a generation of peace." In 236 pages of clear prose, remarkably free of diplomatic delicacy, the Nixon-Kissinger paper offers a unique guide to how the White House approaches problems as lofty as halting the strategic arms race or as lowly as stopping quarrels over fishing rights.

Much of the report retraces the familiar terrain of the spectacular Nixon initiatives in "the watershed year" of 1971: his historic overture to China, his abrupt shake-up of world monetary and trade policies, his personal summitry with U.S. allies, and the invitation for him to visit Moscow. The personal pride with which Nixon views these moves shows through, as does the belligerence with which he defends his also familiar--and still embattled --policy on Viet Nam.

While bristling with self-confidence, the report is not offensively self-righteous. It forthrightly ticks off some U.S. failures: to prevent the India-Pakistan war, stimulate fruitful negotiations between Egypt and Israel, keep Taiwan in the United Nations, find a better way to help nations of Latin America develop economically. It concedes that not achieving a negotiated settlement in Viet Nam was the Administration's most serious failure, but blames this on Hanoi.

Unfortunately, the report immodestly begins each major section with a Nixon quotation, and arrogantly dismisses the foreign policy of previous Administrations. Before Nixon came along, the U.S. was either "drawn into situations, responding tactically, without a clear perception of where we would end up," or failed to take bold steps of its own because "we had no positive conception of where we wanted to go." But under Nixon, "the United States is once again acting with assurance and purpose on the world stage."

The report also suffers from a lecturer's tone, revealing some obvious truths as intellectual insights. For example, after "meticulous preparations" in seeking an agreement with the Soviet Union on limiting strategic weapons, the Administration concluded that "the strategic balance would be endangered if we limited defensive forces alone and left the offensive threat unconstrained."

The global report deals most notably and forcefully with these specific topics:

SOVIET UNION. For a President who will soon visit Moscow, Nixon is surprisingly blunt in criticizing Russia. The report accuses the U.S.S.R. of using the Arab-Israeli conflict "to perpetuate and expand its own military position in Egypt," of allowing hostilities between India and Pakistan "to boil up toward crisis in the hope of political gain," and of rapidly building up its military forces "beyond a level which by any reasonable standard already seems sufficient." Yet the report cites enough contradictory instances of Soviet accommodation (including progress at SALT, agreement on access to Berlin, treaties banning biological weapons) to convince Nixon that "a summit would not be an empty and self-deluding exercise in atmospherics." It is up to Moscow to determine whether a period of detente is to be used as "another offensive tactic" or a chance to stabilize relations between the two powers.

SALT. The report worries about the Soviet arms buildup, claims that an apparent pause in Soviet ICBM silo construction only served to permit "a totally new missile system" to be deployed. Now nearly 100 new ICBM silos are under construction in the U.S.S.R., multiple warheads have been tested, submarine-launched missiles are being improved, and there are more ballistic missile submarines being built than the U.S. now has. Erection of anti-missile defenses around Moscow has been resumed. Moreover, says the report, the Soviet Union has "the technical capability" to develop a missile system that on a first strike could knock out the U.S. ability to retaliate effectively. While wondering whether Moscow might not be stalling in the SALT talks until it develops a superior strategic force, the report nevertheless holds out substantial hope for agreement. Nixon sees this developing in steps: first a long-term treaty limiting defensive systems, next "an interim agreement" that would freeze levels on "certain offensive weapons" and, finally, a second phase of negotiations to work out a more permanent limitation of most offensive weapons.

INDIA. The Administration offers no apology at all for its controversial "tilt" toward Pakistan, contending that it has undisclosed but "convincing evidence" that India wanted to do more than carve out Bangladesh in the East: New Delhi intended to destroy Pakistan military forces in the West as well. Since India was the aggressor, the report claims, the U.S. could either "take a stand against the war and try to stop it, or we could maintain a 'neutral' position and acquiesce in it." Typically, Nixon posed extreme alternatives (akin to the choice between "settlement and surrender" in Viet Nam) when more complex options were open. A firm denunciation of Pakistan's slaughter of Bengalis, for example, might have put the U.S. in a stronger position to denounce India's resort to force--and could hardly have been less effective. The report nonetheless offers to open "a serious dialogue" with India, and hints that the future of U.S.-Indian relations depends heavily on how much independence from the Soviet Union India retains.

JAPAN. Neither does Nixon's report apologize for the shocks the Administration gave Japan by approaching Peking and moving unilaterally on trade. These shocks, says the paper, "only accelerated an evolution in U.S.Japanese relations that was overdue, unavoidable, and in the long run, desirable." Nixon tells Japan that both

Tokyo and Washington can deal with Peking without hurting each other. There is soothing flattery for the Japanese: the report praises their "remarkable display of disciplined energy" and their emergence "firmly in the front rank of international powers."

More broadly, the Nixon-Kissinger view of an orderly world calls for the major powers to deal realistically with one another's national interests and to downgrade ideological differences so long as they do not endanger world peace. Nixon says, for example, that the U.S. will deal with Communist countries "on the basis of their foreign and not their domestic policy." Similarly, on the disputes between China and Russia, the report dismisses their arguments over Communist philosophy as "a subject in which we have no competence and little interest."

If that all sounds refreshingly realistic, there is also a certain amount of wishfulness in the notion that nations can neatly separate their foreign interests from their internal political concerns. The difficulty is demonstrated by Nixon's pledge to help friendly Asian nations combat "subversion and guerrilla warfare" with U.S. funds, even though such movements may be highly ideological and may not always threaten U.S. security. The Nixon report also criticizes racial injustice in South Africa somewhat more vigorously than the Administration has attacked racial inequality in the U.S., raising subtle questions of which problems transcend boundaries and which are really internal.

Certainly, Nixon and Kissinger make sense in trying to deal with the emerging multipolar world in a way that more closely equates the nation's commitments with its limited ability to influence events everywhere. They are constructive, too, when they argue that "the heart of our new conception is a more balanced alliance with our friends --and a more creative connection with our adversaries." If the President and the professor seem uncommonly impressed by their own fallible formulations, perhaps even that is understandable in a presidential election year.

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