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6. Entering a New Era: Toward Higher-level Talks, January 1969–June 1971
- Indiana University Press
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135 chapter six Entering a New Era Toward Higher-level Talks, January 1969–June 1971 The election of Richard Nixon as president in 1968 marked a new era in U.S. Cold War strategy—the coming of “détente.” Departing from the old bipolar system, the Nixon administration expected to recon¤gure the great power structure by pushing for a ¤ve-part global order involving the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, China, and Japan. Proclaiming the arrival of an “era of negotiation” upon entering of¤ce,1 Nixon was able to achieve a “rapprochement” with the People’s Republic of China in his ¤rst term. This was a great breakthrough to the twenty-odd years of the “mutual containment” between “Free World” and “Communist bloc.” The road to higher-level direct talks, however, was tortuous. It took almost two and half years in of¤ce before the Nixon White House was able to receive a secret message via the Pakistani channel in late May 1971 that the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai invited Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, to visit Beijing for high-level talks. What had Washington done that led to such an invitation from Beijing? What persuaded Beijing, still in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, to take a leap toward opening up with the United States, still cursed as the number-one imperialist in Chinese propaganda? More speci¤cally, it is essential to examine how the two antagonists had communicated with each other since 1969, what moved the PRC and the U.S. to engage in secret diplomacy, and how and why Richard Nixon, a cold warrior, and Mao 136 negotiating with the enemy Zedong, a staunch revolutionary, would decide to undertake such a historically signi¤cant course of action. I The Nixon administration’s new China policy originated from its reconsideration of overall Cold War strategy. Recognizing the existence of a multi-polar world order, the Nixon administration “set out quite deliberately to eliminate ideology as the chief criterion by which to identify threats.” As the Soviet Union “was approaching parity with the United States in long-range missile capability,” the Nixon administration identi¤ed Moscow as more threatening.2 With the deepening of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, the Sino-Soviet alliance was no longer a threat to U.S. interests in Asia. As China was becoming a nuclear power in the 1960s and gained in¶uence among the Third World countries, China’s strategic asset increased. The Nixon administration came to appreciate China’s importance in overall U.S. global strategy. As the United States was trapped in the Vietnam quagmire, with the federal budget in huge de¤cit, the Nixon administration was forced to make a strategic adjustment in its China policy. The Nixon administration’s China policy was an outgrowth of the efforts of the Johnson years. Nelson Rockefeller, Nixon’s rival for the Republican nomination in the 1968 campaign, called for more “contact and communication” with China. Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee, also proposed “the building of bridges to the people of Mainland China” and advocated a partial lifting of the American trade embargo against China.3 A change in American policy toward China was clearly felt throughout the academic community. The day after Nixon’s election on 6 November 1968, eight prominent China scholars , including law professor Jerome A. Cohen from Harvard University, political scientist A. Doak Barnett from Columbia University, and political scientist Lucian W. Pye from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drafted a memorandum for the president-elect. The memorandum urged the Nixon administration to “move more positively toward the relaxation of tensions” between China and the United States and toward “the eventual achievement of reconciliation .” The group, chaired by Professor Cohen, suggested, among other initiatives , sending an emissary to meet in secret with the Chinese to discuss prospects for a normal relationship between the two countries.4 While public opinion in the U.S. favored a fundamental change in China policy, by early 1969, China seemed to have a more urgent need to improve its relationship with Washington. The tension over Vietnam between China and the United States in 1968–69 seemed more intense than ever before. Beijing, in response to the escalation of the Vietnam War, dispatched large numbers of engineering and anti-aircraft artillery forces to North Vietnam while providing the Vietnamese Communists with other substantial military and economic sup- [3.141.47.221] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:09...