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1 1 N ixon first began pushing for rapprochement with the PRC during a 1967 world tour and polished up his foreign policy credentials for his expected run for president. Most important, he talked to two leaders whom he expected to help him work with the PRC. In March in Bucharest , he told Ceausescu—in what became a common theme for him over the next five years—that “China had some 700 million people and was inevitably an important factor in the world.” If it remained isolated, he warned, in twenty years the country “could represent a threat to the peace of the world.” The Romanian leader at first sidestepped the issue and instead emphasized his pursuit of a foreign policy “independent” from the Soviet Union, but Nixon pressed on. “Until the China issue was resolved,” he warned, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union “could reduce their nuclear capabilities for fear of what they might face in the future.” Nixon then asked “what we should do about China.” Ceausescu said that he had visited China in 1964 and found that because “people did not understand China,” they had given up trying “to establish effective relations” with it. Beijing, he argued, was actually “quite careful and wise in solving international questions,” and he said the United States should change its “unrealistic” policy toward the PRC. China, he said, “should occupy the place that it deserves” in the international order, be seated at the UN, and assume sovereignty over Taiwan. Nixon predicted that after the United States withdrew from Vietnam “he could foresee the possibility of U.S.-Chinese relations being normalized.” During the Asian portion of his world tour, Nixon visited Pakistan and met with Pakistani leader Ayub Khan, who also enjoyed a strong relationship with the PRC. Ayub told Nixon that China wanted to be accepted as a “world power” on par with the United States and the Soviet Union. Moreover, when he last spoke to Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier had shown “utter contempt for Russians but respect for Americans.” Nixon also talked to InNIXON PUSHES RAPPROCHEMENT 2 a cold war turning point donesian President Suharto about the possibility of better relations between the United States and China. Marshall Green, the U.S. ambassador to Jakarta, called Nixon “the best informed on foreign affairs of all the luminaries who visited Jakarta during my four years there.” Nixon first publicly advocated for a change in U.S. policy toward the PRC in an October 1967 article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs. The article , entitled “Asia after Vietnam,” identified the PRC’s support for wars of national liberation as Asia’s “common danger.” Washington’s Asian allies, he contended, must “move quickly to establish an indigenous Asian framework for their own future security” because the United States could no longer play the role of “world policeman.” Containment, he argued, had broken down over Washington’s involvement in the Vietnam War, and its domestic, budgetary, military, and other constraints could no longer support a worldwide anticommunist campaign or even a program limited to Asia. Only Asian nations, therefore, could restore, and then strengthen, regional vitality and stability. Complementing this new policy, the United States and the world, he contended, must also “urgently come to grips with the reality of China.” China, he said, could become a partner for stability if the world took the “long view,” engaged Beijing, and pulled it into the international order. “The world,” he warned, “cannot be safe until China changes” its behavior. Nixon also explained that “to go it alone in containing China would not only place an unconscionable burden on our own country but also would heighten the chances of a nuclear war while undercutting the individual development of the nations of Asia. The primary restraint on China’s Asian ambitions should be exercised by the Asian nations in the path of those ambitions, backed by the ultimate power of the United States. This is sound strategically, sound psychologically and sound in terms of the dynamics of Asian development.” In his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican Party convention, Nixon said that “after an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation . Where the world’s super powers are concerned, there is no acceptable alternative to peaceful negotiation.” The United States, he said, does “not seek domination over any other country. We shall never be belligerent but we shall be as firm in defending...

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