An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy

11. THE TILT TOWARD CHINA

119 11 THE TILT TOWARD CHINA On Friday, December 15, 1978, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski invited Anatoly Dobrynin,Soviet Ambassador to the United States,to the White House for a visit.He had Press Secretary Jody Powell alert the media so they would be outside photographing him. Brzezinski chatted amiably with a cheery Dobrynin for a while, then“out of the blue” informed him that the United States would announce that evening the full-scale resumption of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Dobrynin looked absolutely stunned. His face turned“kind of gray.”1 It was a very short meeting, and at the time of his departure reporters quizzed Dobrynin about what he and Brzezinski had discussed.“Christmas,” he said. When pressed for a better answer, he replied,“Chess.”2 Seated at his desk in the Oval Office at 9:00 p.m., President Jimmy Carter announced that the United States and the People’s Republic of China would establish normal diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979, and exchange ambassadors on March l. Reading from a joint communiqué, he noted that both countries agreed that there was but one China, and Taiwan was part of China. Notable in that communiqué was the pledge that neither nation“should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region or in any other region of the world and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.” The agreement, Carter went on to note, would“not jeopardize the well-being of the people of Taiwan. The people of our country will maintain our current commercial, cultural, trade and other relation with Taiwan through nongovernmental [channels].”He concluded his speech by noting that Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping had accepted his invitation to visit Washington, D.C., in late January, that normalization was the result of a bipartisan U.S. effort and that its goal was“the advancement of peace.” Simultaneously, Chinese premier and Communist Party chairman Hua Guofeng read the same joint communiqué statement in Beijing and offered his own side statements . It was the first press conference ever held by the chairman.3 After finishing his brief speech Carter reclined in his chair and, unaware that the microphone remained on, remarked, “Massive applause...throughout the nation .” Time lauded this foreign policy statement the most significant announcement of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and one of the most important in recent U.S. history. Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon supported him, as did most of the Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress.4 Still, the president overestimated the positive public response to his“breakthrough.” Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) dismissed the Carter administration’s actions as “cowardly,” and said that it stabbed Taiwan in the back. Even New York’s moderate 120 MIDTERM ACHIEVEMENTS Republican Senator Jacob Javits refused to endorse the idea fully.5 In New York’s Chinatown, police mediated between two thousand Beijing supporters and about six thousand Taiwanese sympathizers. One placard read, “Carter Sells Peanuts and Friends.” The American public, too, failed to fully approve the result. Pieces of mail to the president’s office ran four to one against the normalization process. Taiwan was cited as the main reason for opposition.6 Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had barely made it to the White House in time for the presidential speech. Assured that the announcement would not be made before January 1, he had been in Jerusalem at Carter’s behest, attempting to keep the Middle East peace talks on track. Only forty-eight hours before the announcement was to be made, the president called him about the new date. Concerned that an announcement at this time would make it more difficult for him to tie up loose ends in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) negotiations scheduled for late December, Vance tried to talk the president out of such an early announcement. But Carter, thinking that the agreement with the PRC might unravel, resisted Vance’s plea to keep the statement as originally scheduled.7 Upon his returnVance put the best possible face on the event, telling a reporter from Time that the goal was to treat the Soviet Union and China equally, not create a competition between them.8 But using China as a counter to the USSR was exactly what Brzezinski had in mind.The normalization process he was working on would go beyond Nixon’s goal of restoring diplomatic relationships...