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202 11 T he Spirit of ’76 arrived in Washington at Andrews Air Force Base on February 28. Vice President Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s daughters, and even Dobrynin (but not Shen) led the enthusiastic crowd of 15,000 who greeted the party. One onlooker said, “It’s sort of like seeing the astronauts coming back from the moon.” Nixon thanked Agnew, the other dignitaries, the “hard-working members of the press,” and the American people for their support of his China policies. He noted that he had left a planted sapling of an American redwood tree as a gift, because its growing process took centuries. He hoped that like the redwood, “the seeds planted on this journey for peace will grow and prosper into a more enduring structure of peace and security in the Western Pacific.” Nixon and Kissinger spent much of their first night back basking in the glow of their foreign policy success, although this was tempered by their anger about some harsh media coverage and their worry about how the conservatives would react. Haldeman called the reception “great television” and said that the White House would benefit from all the “enthusiasm” and “color” of the crowd. Nixon agreed, but he was furious about the Washington Post’s headline. Nixon called it “really disgraceful: ‘Nixon Pledges Pullout of Taiwan.’ Well for Christsakes it’s not true. We’ll pull out when there’s peace!” Haldeman advised him to ignore the story. Just as Nixon signed off with Haldeman, the operator informed him that Kissinger had just spoken to Reagan, who said he had “never doubted” that the administration would remain loyal to Taiwan. “Reagan congratulated you,” Kissinger continued, and “said it was one of the greatest weeks of the American presidency.” The president was pleasantly surprised and remarked, “Of course Reagan can see it in terms of the political impact, the television impact.” Kissinger said that Goldwater, however, “was a little more difficult,” but he expected him to be a good soldier and support, or at least not publicly CONCLUSION conclusion 203 condemn, the administration. Unfortunately, Nixon said that Buckley had been “supercilious and nasty and hard to deal with” and he confessed “I don’t know how to handle him except to have nothing to do with him.” Meanwhile, in China, the CCP Central Committee distributed the communiqu é throughout the country and said the summit had “shaken the international community.” Once again, Mao’s willingness to use his own brand of revolutionary diplomacy through his “brilliant decision to invite Nixon to China” had not only created “a new beginning in Sino-American relations,” but had “played a very important role” in using “contradictions, dividing up enemies, and enhancing ourselves.” The communiqué had “broken up the slanders of the Soviet revisionists, and has inspired the people of the world.” Still, China would have to tread carefully and “not provide any excuse for our enemy” to “sabotage the achievements” of the summit. “We should not make excessive statements,” nor proclaim the communiqué as a victory for China and a defeat for the United States. This study shows that the road to Sino-U.S. rapprochement, although seemingly a long and winding one, actually only took a few years. This did not mean that the two enemies suddenly became friends. As recently declassified sources from American, Chinese, European, and Soviet archives show, shifting perceptions and conceptions of national security impacted rapprochement . Each side had determined that its security required better relations. The Nixon administration believed that America’s relative decline, its overextension overseas, and its desire to create a more realistic international framework demanded rapprochement with China. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, on the other hand, wanted to end China’s self-isolation and join the international order. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the border fights, Mao believed, had fundamentally altered the Sino-Soviet split. The rhetorical and ideological competition for leadership within the communist bloc had become a fight for China’s national survival. This mutual evolution in policy led to an important turning point in the cold war. The United States recognized the reality that the People’s Republic of China controlled the mainland and spoke for the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. While the Nixon administration did not completely abandon Taiwan—after all, a “realist” assessment of Asian policy in 1972 demanded that the United States also recognize Jiang Jieshi’s hold on Taiwan— [18.119.255.94] Project MUSE (2024...

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