The Real War

Nixon's 1980 Cold War strategy book

Tradition: Political realism / Cold War strategy

Nixon's 1980 Cold War strategy book

The Real War (1980) is Richard Nixon's (1913-1994) major post-presidential book on Cold-War-strategic thought — written in his 1979-80 post-Watergate exile years at his San Clemente / La Casa Pacifica California compound, and addressed to the policy debate over American Cold-War strategy entering the 1980 Reagan-Carter election season. Nixon argues that America had been losing the 'real war' — the long Cold-War struggle against Soviet expansion — across the post-1973 decade through a series of strategic-and-psychological-political weaknesses: the Vietnam-induced loss of national strategic-confidence, the post-Watergate hobbling of the executive branch, the détente-period American withdrawal from contested theatres, the late-Carter-era defence underfunding, the loss of American allies (Iran 1979 most conspicuously, with the Khomeini revolution and the Tehran embassy hostage crisis), and the Soviet exploitation of these openings (Soviet-Cuban Angola intervention, Afghanistan invasion December 1979). Nixon's recommended strategy: rebuild American military capacity (especially strategic and naval); restore the executive-presidential authority to act decisively; cultivate American allies (especially China against Soviet encirclement, drawing on Nixon's own 1972 China opening); resist Soviet adventurism in the Third World; maintain strategic-arms-control negotiations from a position of strength. The book was widely read in early-Reagan-administration foreign-policy circles and articulated much of what would become the explicit Reagan-doctrine consensus of 1981-85 (military buildup, support for anti-Soviet insurgencies in Afghanistan and Nicaragua, strategic-arms-control from strength). Together with No More Vietnams (1985), Leaders (1982), Real Peace (1983), Victory Without War (1988), Seize the Moment (1992), and Beyond Peace (1994), The Real War constitutes Nixon's substantial post-presidential body of Cold-War-strategic-thought, which earned him an increasing rehabilitation as 'elder statesman' across his last decade.