BOOK REVIEW : ‘Elder Statesman’ Nixon on Geopolitics : SEIZE THE MOMENT; America’s Challenge in a One-Superpower World, <i> by Richard Nixon</i> , Simon & Schuster $25; 322 pages

Thirty years have passed since Richard Nixon vowed that we would not have him to kick around anymore, but he’s still very much with us.

Nixon’s latest book, “Seize the Moment,” reveals exactly why the former President has such staying power in American media and politics--the scrappy and pouting Nixon we once knew has been thoroughly eclipsed by Nixon the Elder Statesman.

“We now live in a world in which the United States is the only superpower,” Nixon writes, summing up the premise of this book.

“We are not mere passengers on the voyage of history. We are its navigators. We have the opportunity to forge a second American century.”

In “Seize the Moment,” Nixon offers himself as the Great Helmsman, a man with the experience and vision to direct the remaking of America’s role in world politics and world history.

Indeed, Nixon’s new book consists of a region-by-region assessment of recent developments in global politics and diplomacy--Europe and the former Soviet Union, Japan and China, the Muslim world, etc.--and his specific foreign-policy advice for each one.

There’s not much evidence of the old Nixon here. He presents himself as a high-minded guy, a centrist, even a liberal. He decries “knee-jerk” responses on both the right and the left, and he warns us against “substituting emotionalism for foreign policy.”

All policy options must be evaluated, the thoroughly non-ideological Nixon suggests, by “the enduring realities of geopolitics.”

Now, if “Seize the Moment” had been written by someone less notorious than Richard Nixon, it would be still be worthy of attention.

The book is clear, balanced, comprehensive in scope, mostly (but not always) temperate in tone, both thoughtful and thought-provoking: It’s precisely the kind of dispassionate geopolitical survey that ought to be undertaken before we come to any conclusions about the “new world order.”

What’s more, the book displays an intellectual poise that may come as a surprise to those of us who remember the Checkers speech and the 1960 presidential debates.

Nixon invokes Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, Charles de Gaulle and Andre Malraux, Alexis de Tocqueville and Lincoln Steffens. He decorates his mostly plain-spoken prose with occasional moments of elegant phrase-making: Gorbachev, Nixon writes, “is an homme serieux , in both the literal and broader senses.”

As with any public figure, of course, one may speculate on how much of the elegance and erudition were actually provided by ghostwriters.

Nixon readily acknowledges the contribution of “my staff and . . . experts in various fields,” including several men and women who are thanked by name for their “insightful background papers.”

But Nixon has published nine books since “Six Crises” back in 1962, and I suppose that he has earned the right to be regarded as the author of the books that bear his name.

And the fact remains that “Seize the Moment” is especially intriguing precisely because it is Richard Nixon’s book, and he does not hesitate to remind us of his own stature as a world-historical figure.

The very first sentence harks back to the moment when he opened the door to China, and he invokes the Kitchen Debate--”when I parried verbal jabs from Nikita Khrushchev”--as one of the great moments in history.

Only rarely does Nixon betray some deeper emotion, however, and even then, it’s a mostly a matter of reading between the lines. For example, Nixon works himself into a high dudgeon when complaining that government and media insiders preferred the urbane and dapper Gorbachev over the “oafish” Yeltsin.

His characterization of Yeltsin as “a victim of a blatant double standard” reads as an echo of old resentments over the media flirtation with John F. Kennedy.

“Politics,” writes Nixon, “is not learned from the pages . . . of a fashion magazine.”

“Seize the Moment” might have been a livelier book--and a more enduring and important one--if Nixon had indulged his passions to a greater degree.

As it is, Nixon’s reminiscences are overwhelmed by his relentless cheerleading for American self-confidence and self-assurance as a way of working our will on history.

“We have a historic opportunity to change the world,” Nixon insists. “If (America’s) status as the world’s only superpower erodes, that will result from choice, not necessity.”

Next: Paul West reviews “Almanac of the Dead” by Leslie Marmom Silko (Simon and Schuster).