Richard Nixon was right — and time has proved it. Richard Nixon never believed the Cold War was a temporary misunderstanding that would simply dissolve with goodwill, trade, or summit diplomacy. He understood something many Western leaders chose to forget after 1991: Russia’s behavior is structural, not ideological. Nixon’s core view of the Cold War Nixon did not see the Cold War as merely capitalism vs. communism. He saw it as a permanent competition between power centers, rooted in geography,