Free Real War by Richard Nixon

can, to exacerbate tensions, to stir up discontent, to foment wars and revolutions. They do not want human needs met. They do not want problems between nations solved. They want to exacerbate the problems in order to seize the nation.
    Because the Soviets are poised to exploit them, disorder and chaos are the greatest enemies of freedom today. Those who are unrealistically impatient for progress do the world a great disservice when they convulse vulnerable societies with non-negotiable demands; however pure their own intentions, the convulsion may open the door to a totalitarian regime. Looking back, we must ask ourselves: What would have happened if the Soviet Union had been on the scene during the American Revolution?
    The American colonies fought a war of independence forseven years. It took six more years before the Constitution was adopted, and two more after that before the Bill of Rights was added. Even then, tensions and inequities persisted that eventually led to a brutal civil war. Our country had time to sort out its problems, protected as it was by two oceans from the outside world. People striving for liberty today do not have the same luxury. The road for them will be much more difficult. They too need time. They too need protection.
The Danger: Defeat by Default
    The Russians play chess. In chess a player gains an advantage by eliminating as many of his opponent’s men as possible. But chess masters know that the game can be won when there are still many pieces left on the table. All that is necessary is that the opponent’s king be immobilized, hemmed in by threats on all sides so he cannot move.
    The king in the Western chess set is the United States. We are the principal obstacle between the Soviet Union and its goal of world domination. The Soviets know they will never be able to outproduce us economically. They also know they can only hope to overwhelm us militarily if our guard remains down long enough to let them get a decisive advantage. But in our will they sense a weakness that could offset the margin of safety our other strengths give us. The Soviets know their multiplication tables. Looking at Sir Robert Thompson’s equation, national power equals manpower plus applied resources, times will, they understand that if the will factor is zero the whole equation is zero.
    As British military historianB. H. Liddell Hart has noted, “Lenin had a vision of fundamental truth when he said that ‘the soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.’ ” This is the Soviet strategy. They seek first to demoralize us so that they can then destroy us. They want to end World War III not with a bang, but with a whimper.
    They do this in three ways. First, they try to deceive us, inorder to disguise their intentions and make us relax our will; second, they try to make us feel guilty and defensive, even about our most dramatic successes, so that our will is paralyzed; third, they try to break our will by bullying us with threats and bluffs.
    I vividly recall my old friend, NATO Secretary General Manlio Brosio, who had served for five years as Italy’s ambassador in Moscow, emotionally telling me in 1967, “I know the Russians. They are great liars, clever cheaters, and magnificent actors. They cannot be trusted. They consider it their duty to cheat and lie.”
    To the Soviet Union, the United Nations is not a place where differences between nations can be settled amicably; it is a place where propaganda points can be scored, where the West can be condemned, where the jailers can parade as the justices. This elaborate masquerade is performed in order to deceive others and to make us doubt ourselves. Over the course of many years even the most absurdly misapplied words, if repeated often enough, have an effect. Some begin to believe that “Democratic” Kampuchea