Stuart Lenig

The Complicated Rapprochement

Foreign Policy Process

Fall 2018

Professor Miner

University of North Georgia

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Abstract; While President Nixon’s Asia Policy and Rapprochement with China seemed to

be a supremely orchestrated political move that transformed the balance of international

relations to a triangulated diplomacy between China, Russia, the U.S. and embraced an

ever more divergent set of players, in reality the China relationship evolved fitfully and

was developed through complicated reasoning, strategic gaming, and fortuitous events

that brought Nixon, Kissinger, Zhou En Lai and Mao into a dialogue that utilized both

realist and emerging neoliberal ideas about international interaction.

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Dark Spring/The Background to Foreign Policy Experimentation

When President Nixon accepted an invitation to journey to China in July of 1971

he set in motion a series of diplomatic mechanisms that profoundly shifted the

relationship of cold war countries in the later half of the twentieth century and

transformed the frosty US/Sino relationship into a thriving period of international

cooperation, diplomatic negotiation, and complicated gamesmanship in the years to

come. Yukinori Komine reports that Nixon’s announcement to the world via a brief

televised speech, “astonished and delighted a large number of the American and

international audiences.” (Komine, 1) However, though critiqued as merely domestic

theatre, a smokescreen for Nixon’s abuse of power, a band-aid on an ailing economy, and

failed statesmanship with Russia, the personal influence of Richard Nixon, the

complicated statecraft of foreign policy expert Henry Kissinger, the transforming views

of Zhou En Lai and Mao Sedong, the emerging competition between Russia and the PRC,

and the propitious timing of the talks rendered the problematic Vietnam War, the

troublesome aggressions of Russia, and numerous American domestic problems moot, as

the new relationship with China transformed world economies, long term strategic

alliances, and most importantly legitimized a new status quo including China and the

emerging Asian tigers as key players in an increasingly global and diverse world

economy and political arena. In essence, Nixon’s largely unheralded moment changed the

world.

Nixon’s career emerged from chaotic post-World War Two politics, that saw the

repudiation of the new deal, the rise of the new conservatism under Buckley, Goldwater

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and others, the Cold War with Russia, and a bleak, hostile and paranoid political climate

energized by McCarthy’s Congressional tribunals against Hollywood liberalism, and an

era of orthodoxy and a broad intolerance. Nixon rose to prominence as a junior

congressman supporting the Taft-Hartley Act, a watchdog law on unions, the HUAC, the

House Un-American Activities Committee that sought to uncover communist insurgents

in every walk of American life, and prosecuting the Alger Hiss spy case. As Vice-

President he was Eisenhower’s hatchet man taking the tough fights while Eisenhower

remained above the fray and presidential. Nixon was a capable Vice-President and given

more powers and attended more foreign policy meetings than previous holders of the

office. When Eisenhower had a heart attack and a stroke in 55 and 57 respectively Nixon

stepped in capably, he urged Eisenhower to sign the Civil Rights Act, and participated in

the Kitchen Debates at a tradeshow with Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev.

After a failed presidential bid, and run for California governor, he spent six years

in the wilderness outside the political arena. Widely reviled and rejected in his own land,

Nixon sought refuge and understanding in the field of foreign affairs, a place where he

felt comfortable, confident, and free from the sort of snipping character assassination that

beset him in the states. In his trips to Europe from 1962-68, Nixon saw a changing world

market and political environment and, strangely, took on the guise of a globalist. Though

Nixon’s vision of the world was framed in the fears of World War two and post war era

in which the ideas of realism reigned, his ideas had evolved. The realist school believed

that the international system was chaotic, that nation states had to arrive at policies that

served their own best national interests and that raw power was the guideline by which all

actions were judged. While some might argue that Nixon never left that stance, there are

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other who would argue that his thinking, at least in terms of the international arena began

to consider the ideas of neoliberalism in which, “all participants can advance their own

interests peacefully without threatening others.” (Hastedt, 33) While many would argue

that Nixon was still a strong realist, certainly he began to see negotiation and settlement

as preferable to the tendency to pursue continuous warfare as a national strategy.

Nixon’s national security advisor and later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

was an active proponent of the concepts of realism because, as a young Jew, arriving

from the repressive Germany of Adolph Hitler, Kissinger had seen realpolitik ideologies

in action. He had seen power was wielded by a maniacal faction used to create chaos and

genocide. His subsequent experiences in the OSS and at Harvard were founded on his

dark youth, and he nurtured a lingering mistrust of foreign powers, but a hope for a more

tolerant world through negotiation.

By 1968, Nixon saw ripe opportunities for engagement. With Kennedy dead, the

Johnson administration having bungled the Vietnam War, civil strife, rioting and the left

in disarray, Nixon saw the chance to set the agenda for new negotiations, new deals, and

new visions of a domestic and an internationalized strategic America. He ran for

president, and to everyone’s surprise, he won.

Prior to the 1971 announcement of talks with China, American/Chinese relations

had been in a deep freeze fostered by Cold War thinking. This old thinking and the

baggage that accompanied it held American statecraft in check and old cold warriors who

feared or hated the Russians and communists couldn’t see past their previous visions of a

world order of dangerous brinksmanship.

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 The problems with a China relationship were fourfold. First, after the end of the

Chinese civil war that concluded with the victory of Mao Sedong, western rhetoric

concluded that China had ‘been lost to communism.’ Certainly the nation had been

transformed into a communist nation after the war, but the rhetoric that the war torn

China had been lost to the United States when it became a communist country in 1949

after the civil war ended was a sad depiction of events. At the time, China was a poor war

devastated nation and a helping hand from the Americans at that juncture might have

done much to alter the next abortive twenty years of fitful and erratic communication.

Chiang kai Shek had been ousted and fled to the island of Taiwan, and the United States

spent much of the next twenty years realizing that the mythology of Shek retaking

mainland China was a hollow fantasy. Mao inherited sole control of the territory of the

Chinese mainland. Secondly, the emerging China had supported North Korea during the

Korean War in that nation’s attack on the South and their desire to overrun and take over

that whole country. The United States blamed the Chinese for sponsoring the opponents

of a free Korean society. Thirdly, the Chinese government supported the communists in

North Vietnam and the United States saw them as the real antagonist behind the Vietnam

War. And finally, although the relationship had soured amidst animosity and growing

jealousy of China’s emergence, the Chinese were still ostensive allies of the Russians,

something that American foreign policy could not tolerate. There was no precedent in

American foreign policy for embracing any form of communism, even if it was willing to

seek a relationship with capitalist countries. In fact, Washington was extremely skeptical

of socialist tendencies emerging in Western European democracies following the Second

World War. The so-called Socialist Welfare States that had emerged were thought weak

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and bowing to Eastern bloc pressures. Their economies performed poorly, and much of

Europe was dependent on the United States’ thriving production. Americans viewed

experiments in Britain such as the council houses, erected to find homes for the poor and

disinherited after the bombing of Britain as questionable, New Deal era, costly

expenditures.

The Troubled View of China

However, as the war in Vietnam declined, critics like William Fulbright began to

attack the American foreign policy about China. Fulbright launched a series of largely

educational hearings with scholars that began to prompt a reevaluation of the US role

with China. Guolin Yi writes that the Washington Post and the New York Times began to

cover China differently. He writes that, “beginning on March 8, he (Fulbright) called for

a review of the United States’ China policy for education purposes and invited twelve

scholars, the most prominent of whom were A. Doak Barnett from Columbia University

and John K. Fairbank from Harvard University. At the hearings, Barnett put forward his

famous “containment without isolation” thesis, which called on Washington to adopt

measures to end the isolation of China from the world community while continuing to

contain its expansion.”(461) By the mid-sixties the view of China was evolving

nationally and Nixon was listening to the public will. Yi writes that, “the Times argued

that the Fulbright hearings had validated its long-held view that ‘the country was far

ahead of the Administration’ in openness to new approaches. Citing a report that a

statement calling for a more flexible China policy had recently been supported by 198

scholars and opposed by only nineteen members of the Association for Asian Studies, it

claimed to have found where the weight of ‘informed American opinion’ was.” (461-462)

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China’s View of the West

China was experiencing a messy maturation process. Mao had called for more

revolutions and had fostered the cultural revolution of the sixties, which wrecked havoc

on society and his ideological wars with Moscow had weakened his ties with the other

communist giant state. Mao was interested in pushing revolutionary politics further, but

moderates like Zhou En Lai urged moderate policies and, “only Zhou’s personal

intervention on the behalf of the moderates prevented an actual bloodbath in the foreign

ministry.” (Tudda, 23)

The Chinese, seeing the value of better relations with Washington were no longer

forced to a binding, rigid, and restrictive relationship with a communist state that did not

necessarily share the ideals and goals of the Chinese communists. Further, in recent

years, there had been frontier skirmishes along the border with Russia. Shots had been

fired and over 30 Chinese troops had been killed. The Chinese were now dubious of the

fact that their northern partners in communism wished them well. Jealousy and animosity

had made the Chinese worry that the Russians saw international communism as their own

private domain with no room for other competing big communist states. International

communism was a good idea only if it was Russian-endorsed communism. Also, the

pragmatic and Confucian leaning Chinese had determined that very limited forms of

capitalistic enterprise and competition between regions and principalities might in fact be

good for their economy. This was something, the orthodox Russian Marxists simply

rejected.

Other advantages included that a stronger relationship with Washington could

open trade doors, loosen the ability to obtain western products and technology, and allow

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China to grow in their own sphere without an envious neighbor to the north seeking to

control and curtail Chinese expansion in influence and territory. Washington seemed like

an able competitor, a good trade partner, and a beneficiary to the struggling Chinese

people at a time when an aging Mao, during the cultural revolution was struggling to

modernize his country and quietly and fitfully experimenting with limited forms of

capitalist enterprise to spur and guide his fledging economy forward into the future.

Like Nixon, Mao had quietly begun to change. Mao was rethinking his hard

stance against the US. He had rehabilitated several moderate key advisors and asked them

to write reports on Nixon’s inaugural address. Mao studied Nixon’s articles in Foreign

Policy and looked for wording that showed a softening of feelings towards China. Border

conflicts with the Soviets kept erupting letting Mao know that his neighbors to the north

were aggressive and did not wish him well. Tudda writes, “It was in this atmosphere of

increased Chinese insecurity that Chinese soldiers engaged Soviet troops in the remote

border area on the Amur and Ussuri rivers on March 2, 1969, that left fifty Soviet soldiers

dead.” (25)

Goals of the West

The era of the sixties was the age of Aquarius and was permeated with new ideas.

After the bleakness of existentialism and realism that infected the post war period of

foreign relations theory, a new idea was gaining strength known alternately as liberalism

or neoliberalism. One can see many of the ideas of Keohane and Nye’s Power and

Interdependence (1977) begin to color Nixon’s vision of the sixties’ political landscape.

For one thing, Keohane and Nye define power as a different thing than the realists’

concept of power. For the authors, power was simply, “the ability of an actor to get others

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to do something they otherwise would not do.” (Keohane, 11) Another idea that Nixon

and Kissinger grasped was the concept of asymmetrical interdependence. That is having a

weaker state dependent on a hegemonic state can provide power benefits. China had

many resources, but needed the United States’ technology and ingenuity. If the states

could be interdependent through trade, that might offer further benefits. Interdependence

can lessen chances of aggression. Nations don’t fight their suppliers. Military force can

often be supplanted by soft power. Some items can be interchangeable in a relationship or

fungible. Militarism could be exchanged for trading relations. Finally, in neoliberal ideas,

multiplicity of goals including economic achievements or environmental stakes might be

as important as issues of raw power. Nixon and Kissinger were keen to replace issues of

war and territory with issues of trade and harmony.

Further the exploration of this new relationship with China gave the west a chance

to penetrate this mysterious and unknown middle kingdom that has been hidden from the

west since the Korean War and invited new access to one of the largest and most needy

emerging economies in the world.

In another sense, Nixon and Kissinger hoped that a renewed relationship with

China would provide further leverage to end the long and bedraggled conflict in Vietnam

that had neutered the US in its foreign policy and stopped the giant from initiating any

new initiatives to capitalize on the growth of the emerging Asian tigers that were already

showing signs of stirring. The growth of manufacturing in Asia surprised America. Japan

and Taiwan’s emerging markets and manufacturers retarding American industrial growth,

and the United States needed a trading partner that might be more receptive to American

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goods and crops and could leverage the relationships with South Korea, Japan and

Taiwan to provide some favorable trading for American companies.

A key component of the rapprochement was the element of high drama. Imagine

the theatre of a cold warrior with Nixon’s reputation as an anti-communist, and his

historic meeting with communist avatar, and living symbol of China, Mao Zedong. It

was the photo opportunity of the century. Further the arrival of China on the world stage

and its long awaited recognition by an American president signaled a new way of seeing

that world dynamic not as a dyad between the US in the west and Russia in the east, but

forming a more complicated series of transactions between the triad of the Soviet Union,

China and United States. Again, the new notion of liberalism’s interdependence trumped

the realist vision of hard power with the more malleable tool of soft power. Persuasion

replaced armed conflict, and détente and dialogue replaced diatribe. It allowed the United

States to penetrate the relationship between two communist countries, something that had

not previous occurred, it opened China to more development and liberalization, and it

diminished the bargaining power of the Soviet Union to be the voice of the Communist

world. Also any alliance between China and the United States could threaten Soviet

positions in Asia and the developing world where Russia, the United States and soon,

China would be in competition.

While not heralded as such at the time, the rapprochement project between the US

and China ended two decades of hostility, and, in a sense, began winding down the US

involvement in Vietnam with Nixon recognizing that Southeast Asia was likely more

China’s area of influence and that if radical and repressive characters like Ho Chi Mein

were to prevail they would end up being China’s problem and not a responsibility of the

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United States. Such a project also reawakened American interest in the culture and

economy of China, and started a slow but eventual process of cross-fertilization which

would build stronger and more normative ties between the two cultures.

Further, the relationship with China changed American foreign policy about

China from a wariness of the sleeping giant as a potential competitor to a more

cooperative business partner, a competitor that was owed its own place at the table and its

own share of the international market. The neoliberal model of cooperative competition

replaced pitched ideological battles. In some ways some might have seen this as a

collapse of foreign policy’s strong stand against communism. Still others might have seen

it as a realization of the power of China to be a dominant and effective positive force in

the region, militarily and diplomatically. In a sense this was the beginning of a more

rational United States recognizing they could not be forever the world’s policemen.

Further if the United States and China were becoming friends and neighbors, the Nixon

administration had hoped that this move would serve to ostracize and alienate the North

Vietnamese regime from its prime supporter.

The Emerging New China Policy

The China intervention developed slowly over a three-year period. Nixon and

Kissinger probed the Chinese for a sense that there was a willingness to negotiate. On the

Chinese side, the PRC used tough rhetoric, but carefully tempered criticisms that invited

room to forge new accords. The Johnson administration were deeply pessimistic about

hopes for any peace with China. When Nixon won the election in November of 1968, the

Chinese simply repeated demands that the US get out of Taiwan and leave the

governance of Southeast Asia to them. However, there were several indications that

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Nixon had enlightened thinking about the issue of China. Evidence is contained in his

inaugural address, that though seemingly conciliatory suggested real transitions in the

shape of American foreign policy. He said that “after a period of confrontation, we are

entering an era of negotiation.’ Nixon wanted ‘an open world’ where ‘no people, great or

small, will live in angry isolation.’ He invited ‘those who would be our adversaries’ to

engage in ‘peaceful competition—not in conquering territory or extending dominion, but

in enriching the life of man.’” (Tudda, 18) For someone like Nixon, who was framed as a

conventional realist who had believed the use of hard power was necessary to survive in a

cold war environment, the rhetoric depicted someone interested in the rising of

neoliberalism with its notion of cooperation, competition, and working to achieve a

peaceful status quo.

Another aspect of the renaissance of foreign policy with China was a complete

retooling of the mechanism of the NSC. The Nixon administration’s revitalization of the

National Security Council as a stronger policy organization within the administration was

part of Nixon’s plan to eradicate the bureaucracy and centralize decision making unto

himself and a small group of advisors. Chris Tudda writes, “Kissinger quickly proposed

that the existing NSC system be changed because Nixon distrusted the State Department,

wanted to centralize decision-making in the White House, and wanted his national

security advisor to formulate, not simply coordinate, foreign policy.” (16) Such a move

also benefited a relative newcomer, such as former Harvard professor and newly

appointed National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.

They reinvented the organization as a decision-making group with three levels.

This multilevel organization allowed for a strategic approach to foreign policy decisions.

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The council itself stood at the top of this new hierarchical system. Kissinger was in

charge of the Review and Operational groups in the center, with the interdepartmental

groups at the bottom.

In some ways the idea of a rapprochement with China was a novel re-framing of

the relationship of two long time enemies and rivals. Kimone describes the concept of a

rapprochement as “a coming together of former enemies to form a reconciliation or a

restoration of friendship.” (Kimone, 2) The Oxford English dictionary defines it as, “a

coming together; an establishment or resumption of harmonious relations; esp. between

nations.” (OED) the term is derived from the French ‘rappprocher’ meaning to come

closer, come together, or to bring closer, sometimes with force. (OED)This era also

brings to light the use of channels other than the state department to forge US foreign

policy. This was an innovation in diplomacy since Nixon himself had a keen interest in

diplomacy.

Other new factors made the move novel and a different practice of statecraft.

Kimone argues that the leverage and moves of Nixon and Kissinger forced a wedge in the

State Department’s traditional role in foreign policy making. In the traditional rational

actor model in the realist school of international relations it is presumed that the state will

do things in the best interests of the state. Kimone compares that thinking with the

bureaucratic politics model where different departments vie for control over situations.

Kimone sees Nixon’s work as, ‘personalizing’ diplomacy and the use of holding secret

talk with the Chinese leaders regarding the reduction of direct threat from the respective

sides as a new way of wresting concessions from both parties.

Like a murder investigation, the work of foreign policy often involves, motives,

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opportunity, and a weapon or vehicle to commit the act. Only in foreign policy the goal is

usually to avoid pointless bloodshed. Here the motive was better relations, the

opportunity was a clever utilization of events, people used as messengers, and things that

occurred at the right time. The vehicle was a staged show of diplomacy as theatre. Sadly,

unlike very direct forms of negotiations, Nixon’s circuitous approach is much harder to

quantify and describe because the logic and reasoning took place over time and a

succession of separate events, culminating in a strategic meeting between the principles,

Nixon and Mao, and their secretaries/coworkers, Kissinger and Zhou En Lai.

One pivotal aspect of this lengthy process was the introduction of the Nixon

Doctrine, a set of new policies initiated in a speech in Guam. It proposed, “in effect, a

plan of reduced American involvement around the world. While the United States would

honor all existing treaty commitments, it would enter future agreements with a greater

degree of caution.”(Nichter, 106)

Nixon’s method employed an extreme secrecy approach that veiled all the efforts

under cover. Nixon did not want to risk personal embarrassment or expose the United

States to ridicule through a failed attempt to meet. He sought to address security issues

through these talks and provide a framework for future Chinese/American forums and

common strategic policies.

A key component of Nixon’s strategy was employing National Security Advisor

Henry Kissinger as a negotiator. Nixon’s sense of secrecy and maintaining a small circle

of advisors was key to his thinking and implementation. He saw himself and Kissinger as

vehicles for conveying foreign policy. Nixon to some degree feared and mistrusted

bureaucratic attempts to manipulate the power of the presidency. His career shows a

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marked disuse of bureaucratic methods. Margaret Rung writes in “Richard Nixon, State,

and Party: Democracy and Bureaucracy in the Post War Era,” that Nixon felt, “the

bureaucracy’s lack of responsiveness to the will of elected official constituted the

‘trouble’ with government.” (421) Nixon saw bureaucrats as muddying the ideas and

concepts of the leaders and that real power should lay with the parties in charge, not

bureaucrats who could destroy or unintentionally disturb the ideas of the leaders of the

government. Focusing leadership and decisions in the hands of a few was a second

strategic part of Nixon’s work.

A third turning point was the office of ACA (Asian Communist Affairs) within

the State Department that advised the Nixon administration to pursue one of three

policies: rapprochement, flexibility without specifics, and the possible withdrawal of

troops from Taiwan. This council and good advice represented a realistic assessment

from the state department who had studied the territory of southeast Asia in recent years

and had upgraded their assessment of China. It also assured that the State Department

would not be entirely excluded from Nixon’s calculated personal diplomacy.

While the public may not have realized that Nixon was to embark on an ambitious

foreign policy initiative in China, he had already situated the new American foreign

policy in a statement he gave to the press in Guam in 1969 that laid out his plans for

winding down the Vietnam War. This new framing of policy could be construed as a

fourth component of Nixon’s discourse with China and was another means for him to

communicate with the Asian giant. It was later referred to as the Nixon Doctrine, and it

was described as, “once the phrase Nixon Doctrine was in vogue, it gave ‘his policy

actions a colorful and systematic image,’ as William Bundy observed. It along with other

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catchy terms-Vietnamization, detente, triangular diplomacy, opening to China, structure

of peace-boosted his and Kissinger's foreign-policy stature through the remainder of his

presidency and even after Watergate revelations forced his resignation.” (Kimball, 71-72)

Kimball and other writers saw the strength in Nixon’s ideas, and they (Nixon’s ideas)

supported a way out of a war that had become a national nightmare. What most did not

anticipate was that Vietnam was a minor affair in relation to the gigantic prize of Chinese

attention.

Nixon’s own memoir, RN describes his continual frustration with dealing with

diplomats from Vietnam who were unwilling to give any ground in negotiations to end

the war despite the fact that Kissinger assured them that President Nixon’s policies were

firmly supported by the majority of people. However, Nixon’s interest in China seemed

prompted by key points. In November of 1971 during a tense period involving a Indo-

Pakistan War, the Chinese remained sort of poised on the border waiting to intervene.

Nixon himself seemed very personally involved in making sure there was a clear

awareness that the US did not want to engage China in a direct confrontation. This sense

that Nixon and by extension the entirety of American forces were against conflict may

also have been a deciding factor in obtaining China’s willingness to negotiate directly

with the U.S. The Chinese saw the Vietnam War and the Korean Conflict as a thinly

veiled proxy war against the PRC and felt it hid an eventual attack on the mainland.

Nixon’s willingness to stay out of the Pakistani-Indian conflict bought Washington

valuable credibility with Beijing who were now less inclined to see Washington as an

aggressor, and more willing to accept that the U.S. was ‘stuck’ in a commitment to

defend South Vietnam. Nixon wrote, “Three days after the cease-fire was arranged, we

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sent the Chinese a brief description of its major points. We concluded, “it is the U.S. view

that recent events in South Asia involve sobering conclusions. The governments of the

People’s Republic of China and the United States should not again find themselves in a

position where hostile global aims can be furthered through the use of proxy countries.”

(Nixon, RN, 701) Again, Nixon’s reassurance to the Chinese provided valuable

institutional capital in the efforts to broker a new relationship with Beijing.

The China Gambit

In William Bundy’s Tangled Web, a look at foreign policy making in the Nixon

Era, Bundy recites the various methods that Nixon used to obtain his foreign policy

achievements despite the fact that he had little respect for the man. The New York Times’

Evan Thomas discussed Bundy’s book saying, “while working for the National Security

Council in the 1950's, Bundy found then Vice President Nixon's approach to foreign

policy problems to be ''serious and professional.'' He is careful to give President Nixon

credit as a shrewd strategist and artful manipulator -- but not as a statesman.” (Thomas)

However, even Bundy credited Nixon in the fifties as “more involved in foreign policy

than any previous Vice President.” (Bundy) While Nixon’s engagement with foreign

policy matters might not be an actual factor in the success of his efforts with China it was

certainly a contributing factor.

Finally, like any good murder case, not only does the crime need a motive and a

weapon but it also needs a very viable opportunity and the sixties provided the right

climate for that. China and Russia increasingly saw the world as different spheres. In

essence, this location in the sixties might constitute a fifth component of the foreign

policy case, a so-called ‘scene of the crime’ of the act of foreign policy. Tudda writes,

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“The two communist powers had experienced a bitter falling out in the early 1960s, and

this had only been exacerbated by the Cultural Revolution and the Soviet invasion of

Czechoslovakia.” (Tudda, 20) With the two communist rivals feuding, times were

appropriate for the United States to offer a bolstering peace to the Chinese government.

Again, it is not inconsequential that Nixon gravitated to foreign policy in his

presidency. His elusive mercurial mind liked the conundrums of international

agreements, the psychology of world leaders, and the shaping of master plans. In the U.S.

they may not have liked him much, but overseas he was often treated with respect and

deference as a foreign policy authority. After his 1962 defeat for the governorship of

California, it is significant that “Nixon embarked on a six-week tour of Europe meeting

with several world leaders in what amounted to a diplomatic circuit of international

capitals. Upon returning to his law practice, Nixon decided that the most politically

sensitive region for the United States in the coming decade would be Asia.” (Johns, 318)

Certainly, Nixon was a politician and certainly he liked being in power, but the events of

Vietnam and his sharp eye for foreign policy detected that the hot theatre for United

States activity was in Asia, and before he ran for president he apparently had already

begun to prepare for his China adventure.

The China mission had a clearly practical side as well, that is dismantling the

Chinese-Soviet alliance and driving a wedge between the two most powerful communist

countries in the world, and thereby guaranteeing that the US would never have to fight a

two-front war against the Soviets and the Chinese. Dean P. Chen writes that, “Nixon and

Kissinger believed that Washington could exploit the rift between Beijing and Moscow

by playing against the other and enjoying better relations with each than either had with

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the other.”(Chen, 225)

Agreeing with William Bundy’s assessment that Nixon was a rank self-

aggrandizer, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker decries the China policy as providing too many

concessions to the Chinese, bad faith in the way negotiations were conducted with both

Taiwan and China, and ultimately a reduction of stature for United States diplomatic

negotiations. She viewed records of the frantic negotiations and concluded, “indeed, the

record that can be assembled today shows that Nixon and Kissinger rarely reflected on

Taiwan at all.” (110, Tucker) Tucker frames Nixon’s work as opportunistic rather than

enlightened. She writes, “the oft-repeated claim that only Nixon could have gone to

China exaggerates the courage required for his change in policy and obscures the near

certainty that, building on preceding trends, others would have made the journey if

Kissinger and Nixon had not.” (Tucker, 115) Tucker further argues that Nixon was not

the lone gunman trying to secure better relations with China. In fact she reports that

Eisenhower had wanted to improve relations with China and initiate trade with the

country back in 1954, but he feared hawks within his own party. Despite her own

dismissal of Nixon, she documents a series of statements including a 1967 article for

Foreign Affairs in which Nixon advocates ending, “China’s angry isolation.” (Tucker,

116) Tucker comments that Nixon’s views of China evolved during the sixties realizing

that Chaing Kai Shek was never going to retake main land China, and that the communist

government in Beijing was a large reality that the United States would have to confront

eventually in some diplomatic manner. Again it is hard to see Tucker as anything but a

critic of both Kissinger and Nixon since she doesn’t perceive Kissinger as having much

interest in the idea of China until it appeared useful to his work and career. She writes,

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“Kissinger apparently became interested in China only as he realized how seriously the

president took efforts to improve relations with China and how useful a U.S. relationship

with China could be in providing Washington with strategic leverage against the Soviet

Union.” (117, Tucker)

Evelyn Goh’s view is more charitable, quoting Kissinger as saying, “the utility of

triangular politics was derived from the expectation, according to Kissinger, that “in a

subtle triangle of relations between Washington, Beijing and Moscow, we improve the

possibilities of accommodations with each as we increase our options toward both.”(475)

Many scholars have argued that it was the intervention and new progressive ideas

presented by the younger, fresher Henry Kissinger that spurred Nixon to action in China,

but Goh disputes that notion. She writes, “in the case of China, Nixon’s thinking about

the policy change predated Kissinger’s; and in the run- up to and around the February

1972 visit to China, Nixon exerted as much control over policy as his national security

adviser did.”(501)

Perhaps the sixth and possibly key factor in the evolving China and United States

relations was the character of Henry Kissinger. Mario Del Pero in his text on Kissinger

entitled, Eccentric Realist described Kissinger, “as the last great adept of a realist

tradition that adapted to the changed structure of the world system but was careful to

respect the basic rules of international politics.” (43) Del Pero seems to credit Kissinger

with a real sense that the statesman is responsible for successful foreign policies that

promote peace and trade, that value international solutions over local ones, and conform

to the realities of realpolitik and power. Del Pero shows respect for Kissinger’s awareness

of the international scene and his sense that he was meant to guide the United States to a

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deeper understanding of the global condition and to situate American foreign policy in a

larger sphere of international issues and thus to bring the United States in line with the

thinking of Europe and world governments. In essence, Del Pero credits him with an

effective cold war transformation of American foreign policy from a strongly realist

stance to something more akin to an evolving Neo-liberalist stand. Glenn Hastedt posits

that neoliberalism explains the world political order as, “an arena in which all participants

(states and non-state actors) can advance their own interest peacefully without

threatening others.” (33) Thus, Del Pero sees Kissinger as someone who, “incessantly

promoted himself as the sophisticated, historically cultured, and intellectual European

guiding a naïve, optimistic, and superficial America.” (44) Certainly, Kissinger was never

without personal ego, but his keenness to make approaches to the Chinese and to broker a

real and binding peace with the Chinese government seems a genuine and sincere

approach to his position and to statecraft in general.

At the same time, for Kissinger, the China gambit was more of a game of chess

than an idealized move to produce greater peace and stability across the globe. Kissinger

saw China as a counter measure against Soviet expansionism. Jussi Hanhimaki in his

Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, postulates that under

any China policy, “ultimately it was the Soviet Union that represented the primary

concern of Kissinger’s foreign policy against which all other issues were weighed.” (55-

56) Kissinger understood that the ability to play a triangular game with Russia was

dependent on navigating China to a negotiating position.

However overcoming Chinese reticence to deal with the United States was

formidable. The United States had had strained relations with Beijing for over 20 years

22
exacerbated by the Korean conflict and the continuing Vietnam conflict. Mao had

Nixon’s inaugural address posted in Chinese papers with a description attached that

identified Nixon and former President Johnson as being, “jackals of the same lair.”

(Hanhimaki, 56) However within Mao’s administration there was an optimist who

searched for peace. Premier Zhou En Lai was an enlightened diplomat and according to

Hanhimiki, “emerged as the clearest advocate (and architect) of Sino-American

rapprochement, and urged the group of four marshals to continue their efforts (to find

evidence of peaceful motives) and pay specific attention (to) the policies of the United

States and the Soviet Union.” (57) What these marshals and other analysts discovered in

their research was that the United States did not pose an eminent threat to the PRC and

that the Soviet Union, once China’s fiercest ally against the West was more likely to

attack the Chinese.

Incidents and friends can often be the component in winning a peace. Perhaps a

final key component to creating a real rapprochement was the use of effective back

channels. One such method was using visits into Asia and particularly the Pakistani

government. When Nixon visited Pakistan for a scant 22 hours, he left what were called

calling cards to the Chinese in Pakistan. Using informal ambassadors like Pakistani Air

Marshal Sher Ali Khan who spoke candidly and freely with Zhou En Lai, the US learned

that the Chinese had heightened fears of Russian aggression. Nixon, himself, met with

Pakistani President Yahya Khan and discovered that Zhou En Lai was willing to meet

with the Americans and entertain the idea of direct talks. This was a major breakthrough,

itself and energized Nixon and Kissinger’s efforts to eventually broker a deal for a face-

to-face meeting between Nixon and Mao.

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 In today’s climate of accepting emerging countries and economies and non-state

actors as key players, we forget the pessimism of the sixties when it seemed the world

would be locked in a diametrically opposing war of ideologies forever. Jeremi Suni’s

Henry Kissinger and the American Century reports that Kissinger was consumed with

doubt about events following the 1968 election and saw nothing but trouble ahead for

whoever became president. Suni writes that Kissinger saw, “the next Presidency is likely

to be tragic,” Kissinger predicted, ‘nothing suggests that any of the prospective

candidates can unify the country or restore America’s position in the world. The next four

years are likely to witness mounting crises—disorder at home, (and) increasing tension

abroad.’” Despite Nixon and Kissinger’s breakthrough negotiations with Mao and Zhou

En Lai, he was soon replaced for the sins of Watergate, and his aggressive and pungent

efforts in foreign policy were later regarded as a distraction away from the president’s

domestic woes. However, his and Kissinger’s work in foreign policy did transform the

shape and content of foreign policy, and gave us a somewhat more prosperous and

harmonious world than the United States encountered in 1972.

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