Book: The Real War

Overview
Published in 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and amid the Iran hostage crisis, Richard Nixon’s The Real War argues that the defining struggle of the late 20th century is not a conventional battlefield contest but a comprehensive competition in power, will, and ideas. Drawing on his experiences in the White House and decades in foreign policy, Nixon presents a strategic diagnosis of Soviet ambitions and a program for American renewal. He contends that the 1980s will be a decade of maximum danger in which the balance of power, and with it the fate of the free world, will be decided.

The Soviet Challenge
Nixon portrays the USSR as a determined, centrally directed rival leveraging military buildup, political subversion, and exploitation of crises to expand influence. He details the growth of Soviet strategic and theater forces and the emergence of a blue-water navy, arguing that Moscow seeks advantage through both hard power and proxies. He criticizes what he sees as Western complacency and the misreading of détente as an end to competition. Negotiations remain essential, he writes, but they must proceed from strength, with arms control serving national interests rather than masking strategic erosion. The core danger lies in the intersection of Soviet opportunism and Western uncertainty after Vietnam, Watergate, and the oil shocks.

Global Battlegrounds
The book maps the arenas where Nixon believes the contest will be decided. Europe remains the central pillar; NATO’s cohesion, modernization, and public resolve are indispensable, including theater nuclear deployments to counter Soviet SS-20s. In Asia, Nixon highlights the strategic triangle among the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, urging deeper ties with Beijing and steady partnership with Japan while maintaining credibility on the Korean Peninsula and in Southeast Asia.

The Middle East and the Persian Gulf are framed as the energy heartland whose control or disruption would tip the global balance. Nixon calls for a credible American capacity to project force into the region, partnerships with moderate states, and a diplomacy that manages Arab-Israeli tensions without forfeiting strategic leverage. In Africa and Latin America, he sees proxy conflicts, from Angola and the Horn of Africa to Cuba’s activism and revolutionary movements in Central America, as critical tests of Western staying power. These theaters matter not only for resources and sea lanes but for perceptions of momentum and will.

Program for American Renewal
Nixon’s prescription blends military, economic, and political measures under the rubric of peace through strength. He urges rebuilding the strategic triad, modernizing theater systems, expanding the Navy, and restoring conventional readiness to raise the threshold against aggression. Economic vitality is cast as strategic power: secure energy supplies, disciplined inflation, technological leadership, and a trade policy that binds allies while restricting critical transfers to adversaries. He stresses intelligence, political warfare, and aid, overt and covert, to friendly governments and insurgents facing Soviet-backed forces. Democratic ideals should be affirmed, yet he argues that in the short run Washington must sometimes work with imperfect regimes to prevent totalitarian expansion. Across all fronts he emphasizes alliance management, public diplomacy, and the careful use of linkage to make adversaries pay for adventurism.

Tone and Legacy
Written with a sense of urgency and historical analogy to the 1930s, the book seeks to stiffen Western resolve and to reframe détente as competitive coexistence guided by hardheaded realism. It anticipates key elements of the 1980s: a major U.S. defense buildup, renewed partnership with China to balance the USSR, support for anti-Soviet movements, and NATO’s missile deployments. The Real War stands as Nixon’s strategic manifesto for the post-Vietnam era, insisting that American leadership, if sustained by strength and clarity of purpose, can deter war and win the larger contest for the future.