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Richard Nixon's journey to China, February 17, 1972 changed the intellectual and the practical construct of the Cold War. American foreign policy had steadfastly opposed communism even before the fall of China to Mao in l948. Outrage at the loss of China led the United States to adopt the containment strategy of George F. Kennan, a senior State Department officer, whose policy recommendation on containment would remain in place until the Presidency of Richard Nixon.
Containment meant in its essence that the United States would oppose the spread of the communism by whatever means necessary, including the use of military measures. And beginning with the fall of China there was ample evidence that communism's spread was accelerating in many parts of the world in the l950's and l960's. Korea, Cuba, Mozambique, Algeria, the former Belgian Congo, the Philippines, and the Indo-China peninsula either experienced communist insurgency or installed Marxist leaders. Fears mounted on the home front when the junior United States senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy claimed proof that the US State Department had been infiltrated by communists and ushered in blacklisting, rumor mongering, and the personal upheavals and national tribulations of "McCarthyism."
Kennan's containment policy rested on several assumptions that over time became obsolete or were wrong. The first most crucial belief was the idea that communism was a monolithic movement directed and controlled by the Soviet Union. This misconception caused the forcible labeling of some insurgencies as communist when in fact they were, in reality, nationalistic. The Hukbalahap movement in the Philippines is an illustration of a guerilla movement most historians would agree was non-communist at its roots.
By dividing the world only into communist and non-communist alone, post WWII containment caused the United States to support several corrupt regimes that were avowedly non-communist. President Lyndon Johnson's sending US Marines to the Dominican Republic in l965 to support Rafael Trujillo's government is an illustration of the old cliché: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." It was an inevitable outcome of believing in Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" between free and communist nations. And the Berlin Wall joined with the 38th Parallel as the iron curtain's most visible symbols.
Central to containment was also the belief that the Soviet Union directed the spread of communism and controlled events, large and small, in all communist nations. Anticommunist upheavals after the post-war Yalta agreement in the Soviet sphere in Eastern Europe, notably Hungary and Czechoslovakia, engendered US sympathy but not its intervention. Communist or Communist-inspired upheavals elsewhere produced a different response. Containment was the policy base from which the US chose to fight "the domino effect" it feared, first in Korea and then Indo-China. Not learning from the French disaster at Dienbienphu in l954, by l965, the US had bogged down in the quagmire of Vietnam. By 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned successfully by announcing that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. China was crucial to his plan.
Even before he was elected to the Presidency, Richard Nixon had begun seeing the possibilities of a different world than the one defined by the Cold War and containment strategy. He first heard the word "détente" in l963 in a Paris meeting with French President Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle posed to Nixon that thawing relations with the Soviet Union would better serve America: "Well, what are you Americans going to do? Are you going to break down the Berlin Wall? If you are not ready to make war, make peace, but make it on a very strong basis, from strength, rather than weakness." (Aiken, Nixon, A Life, 318-319)
Détente was only the first new foreign policy lesson for Richard Nixon that De Gaulle taught. The second was the seedbed of what would become known as the "China Card." President de Gaulle taught Nixon in l963 that China needed American friendship. Outcast, denied diplomatic recognition by the United States and its allies, and engaged in growing hostilities with the Soviet Union, the communist Chinese sought entry to the United Nations, long opposed by the United States, as the legitimate sovereign representative of their country. US containment policy, on the other hand, accounted for two Chinas: the mainland held hostage by Mao's illegitimate communist government and the off-shore islands and the legitimate government of China, then reduced to Taiwan. The US had pledged to defend Taiwan against attack and, during the years in which Richard Nixon had been vice-president, the Eisenhower administration had come precariously close to armed conflict over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, claimed by both Chinas.
In her book Nixon in Winter, Monica Crowley recorded Richard Nixon's later life view of his historic trip. His recollected explanation bolsters the importance of that lunch discussion with de Gaulle. The French President significantly impacted his thinking: "We, of course, needed a good relationship with the Chinese regardless of the Soviet threat. I would have gone to China even if there had been no threat from the Soviets. It was essential to develop a new relationship with the Chinese then, you know, when they were weak and still open to it, rather than waiting until they were strong and didn't need us anymore. That's why I did it, and it was the right thing to do." (Crowley, Nixon in Winter, p.161)
Educating Richard Nixon to new ideas concerning the importance of China was accompanied by de Gaulle's faith that someday Nixon would be president. But in l963, in terms of domestic politics, nothing seemed further from possible reality. In l962, Richard Nixon had sought the governorship of California. Most California polls showed voters, however, distrusted his motivation: the majority assumed he meant only to use the l962 state election as a stepping stone to run again for the Presidency in l964. And, with the Cuban missile crisis absorbing the nation's attention and strengthening Democratic President John Kennedy in the last days of the campaign, Richard Nixon lost another election. "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" (Memoirs, 244-245) seemed more realistic than de Gaulle's 1963 toast at their lunch: "I realize you have been checked in the pursuit of your goals. But I have a great sense that some time in the future, without doubt, you will serve your country again in an even higher capacity." (Aiken, 319)
By l965, Richard Nixon publicly had not yet addressed de Gaulle's views. Containment and the domino effect were still his main themes for dealing with Vietnam. On January 26, l 965, speaking before the Sales Executive Club in New York City, he said: "It is dangerous and foolhardy to try to gloss over the truth as to what the war in Vietnam really involves. . . . The war in Vietnam is not about Vietnam but about Southeast Asia." But he also recognized that his idea to "quarantine" South Vietnam from Laos and North Vietnam through blockades and air power "is one that is not popular in America and would probably not get a vote of confidence in Congress or by a Gallup or Harris poll." (Memoirs, 270-271)
Early in l966, Richard Nixon held a private discussion in the White House with President Lyndon Johnson that centered on Vietnam. According to Nixon himself, President Johnson linked China to Vietnam classically within the containment theory but with the realization that it wasn't working in Vietnam.. "China's the problem there, he said. We can bomb the hell out of Hanoi and the rest of that damned country, but they have China right behind them and that's a different story." Johnson added "When I leave this office, Bobby [Kennedy], Hubert [Humphrey] or you will have the problem of China on your hands." Richard Nixon also claimed that he urged President Johnson to "confront" China on the diplomatic front. (Memoirs, 272-273)
Although he proclaimed his support for the efforts by Johnson throughout his 1968 campaign, there is some evidence of a more secretive effort by Richard Nixon, for his own political campaign reasons, to thwart the Paris Peace talks that Johnson was trying to start. Summarized by Anthony Summers in The Arrogance Of Power, it is seems that Richard Nixon, using Anna Chennault as his intermediary, persuaded President Thieu of South Vietnam to refuse to go to the Paris and wait until Nixon won the Presidency for a "a better deal." (Summers, The Arrogance of Power, ch 23.)
New approaches to China for private citizen Richard Nixon lay dormant until his next campaign for the Presidency took shape while he was still in his law firm. John Erlichman alluded to discussions Richard Nixon held with law partners John Mitchell and Len Garment about China in his novelized version of the events (Erlichman, China Card) and his long time and later presidential secretary Rose Woods also confirmed those pre-campaign discussions about China took place. (Colodny Interview with Rose Woods, December 8, 1989, 4-5) It is important is to recognize that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon had not yet met when Richard Nixon was shaping his thoughts about China. (Woods interview, 5) On China, at least, the future secretary of state was a follower of President Nixon's plans, not the other way around.
There were multiple reasons why China mattered a great deal to President Nixon, enough so for him to make China a priority for his Administration from its first days. First was China's economic potential as the entrepot to a vast Asian marketplace for American trade. Also, its nuclear weapons potential and border disputes with the Soviet Union seemed hazardous enough to require a new diplomacy to make the world safer. But most importantly China wanted the US out of Vietnam and Richard Nixon, representing the majority of Americans, wanted the US out of Vietnam. Above all else, they had that in common. Interest in getting out of Vietnam would lead Nixon to China. If Lyndon Johnson could define the problem, he had been unable to find a solution. Richard Nixon did. To get to China, he had to get out of Vietnam. To get out of Vietnam, he had to eliminate containment as a policy.
In l968, Richard Nixon was not the only presidential hopeful believing it was time for rapprochement with China. Nelson Rockefeller and Hubert Humphrey each expressed varying degrees of support for better relations. (See Nixon's China Game Timeline, PBS On-line) But only the incoming President had designed his plan to link the loss of Vietnam in order to gain entrée to China. Nixon's path to accomplishing both was Vietnamization. The year was one of increasing tensions: communism seemingly continued its march despite the containment policy in force. In January, the Tet Offensive unmasked the weakness of the US and ARVNmilitary. In August the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and in November the USSR laid down its Brezhnev Doctrine, claiming the Soviet Union's right and obligation to intervene to "protect communism from non-communist threats. Inside China, the Cultural Revolution intensified as did the border hostilities with the USSR. Most ominously, China already had exploded its first hydrogen bomb two years earlier.
In the wake of these successes by communist forces, American conservatives and the military opposed Nixon's plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam and to improve relations with China. In his first year in office, perhaps because he overestimated the strength of his support base to end the war and perhaps because he underestimated the strength of his opposition among military and civilian right wing conservatives, Richard Nixon's actions were decidedly inconsistent. After telling South Vietnamese President Thieu just days before the l968 presidential elections to expect military support and a "better deal" (Summers, Ch23), after his election, the President promptly proceeded to weaken the US military in Vietnam. That produced by extension the weakening of the ARVN and the government. In July 1969 at a meeting with Thieu and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, President Nixon announced his "Nixon Doctrine," decidedly less confrontational than Brezhnev's. The United States would honor its treaties but would not any longer commit US troops to allies. Vietnamization had begun.
At the same time, however, the president had already ordered the secret bombing of Cambodia, beginning in March. It would continue until l973. This bombing order, which would result in one of the impeachment articles arrayed against him had he not resigned, may have been as important a signal to the Chinese just as the first troop withdrawals from Vietnam three months was an important signal to the North Vietnamese. The Cambodia bombing and the troop withdrawals fit Nixon's previous positions which incorporated both carrot and stick strategies and his future plans. He had wanted to "quarantine" Vietnam. Vietnamization was a two-track approach for the American President. He wanted Saigon and the Viet Cong to work out their political solutions to ending the conflict while Washington and Hanoi worked out the military solutions. And, although the Paris Peace talks stalled, at least the government and the communists were at the table.
At the same time, the secret bombing in Cambodia also indicated to China that the president meant to negotiate from strength much as de Gaulle had suggested, despite appearances of weakening US involvement in South Vietnam. And, with 400 skirmishes with Russian troops in l969 alone, if China was thinking about a war with the Soviet Union, the Cambodia bombing signaled the possibility of a "two front" war. But if China did need American friendship, especially in light of its anti-Soviet posture, also as de Gaulle had suggested, Nixon's more peaceful and public overtures, including his "two Chinas" policy that recognized Mainland China as a communist state, might have been seriously received. 1969 ended with US and China beginning talks on trade and the US removal of naval forces in the Taiwan Straits. The "China Card" was being played.
Vietnamization continued in 1970. President Nixon, however, continues accelerating his strategy. On April 30, he orders US troops into Cambodia. Designed to weaken North Vietnam by destroying their supplies inside Cambodia, it was also another step by which he was able to quarantine South Vietnam's military and government into dealing with their enemies internally. It was also consistent with his notion that the US and North Vietnam deal with military conflicts between them, without the South Vietnamese. But widening the war played disastrously at home, and the president continued to pressure South Vietnam's government into negotiations. At the same time, widening the war played disastrously in Cambodia as well. Prince Sihanouk, the de facto neutralist, was removed and replaced by the Khymer Rouge government of Pol Pot. A million and one –half Cambodians would lose their lives because of Nixon's decision to widen the war.
But, movement toward China was occurring. In March the State Department eased travel and trade restrictions. In October, Nixon was quoted in a Time magazine interview as saying: "If there is anything I want to do before I die, it is to go to China." The next year, 1971, the President in February announced to Congress that "The United States is prepared to see the People's Republic of China play a constructive role in the family of nations." It was also the first time he had referred to communist China by its formal name. The American Ping-Pong team arrived in China at the invitation of the Chinese government in April, opening, as Premier Chou En-Lai called it, "a new chapter " between the countries. In June, the US embargo against China, in place for two decades, ended. Finally, on July 9, Kissinger's secret trip to China, under the cover of a feigned illness while in Pakistan, occurred. Less than a week later, July 15, President Nixon announced on national television his intent to travel to China in early 1972. Containment had come to its end.
In its place was the "One China" policy for which the communist Chinese on the mainland desperately wanted to achieve diplomatic legitimacy and the nationalist Chinese on Taiwan wanted to prevent with equal desperation. When the Shanghai Communiqué was released on February 28, 1972 the world's future changed, perhaps for the better. But just as certain, Richard Nixon's presidential and personal future also changed, clearly for the worse. The Shanghai communiqué was not nor meant to be a joint vision of China and the United States. It did, however, contain major new decision points that would ignite an anti-Nixon fire among hard-line anti-Communists and the US military in Vietnam. To those forces arrayed against him, with the Shanghai communiqué, Richard Nixon had surrendered to the communist Chinese all that US policy under containment had held dear for nearly three decades.
Two points in the communiqué fueled much of the anti-Nixon combustion and contempt by conservative anti-Communists. First was the statement about Vietnam: "In the absence of a negotiated settlement the United States envisages the ultimate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the region consistent with the aim of self-determination for each country of Indochina." To the right wing of the Republican Party, as to the military, this was tantamount to declaring defeat in Vietnam. No longer was the President requiring even a settlement before withdrawal; he was simply quitting the war. By his own doing, he had trashed his own pledge for "peace with honor" in Vietnam.
Second, and of equal or greater offense to the supporters of containment was the U.S. declaration about China and Taiwan: "The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations as the tension in the area diminishes." Like Vietnam, the hard-liners read that as another unilateral U.S. defeat engineered by Richard Nixon.
Opposition to both his actions in China and in Vietnam was virulent, perhaps far more than even Richard Nixon could calculate. As an illustration, William Buckley, editor of the conservative National Review, believed President Nixon was abandoning his role as the leading anti-Communist: "We felt he had been overcome by the delirium of the event." Buckley briefly would support John Ashbrook's bid in 1972 to take the Republican nomination from Nixon, but supported the President in the general election. However, Buckley knew "conservatives were gonna raise holy hell if indeed this evolved into a dismissal of Taiwan." He would resign his post at the US Information Agency in protest and would continue publishing his strong opposition to Nixon's new foreign policy. (Buckley interview, Nixon's China Game, PBS On-line)
Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. in his memoirs, On Watch, was far more vitriolic in his view of Nixon's efforts. Zumwalt described the Nixon position as "ignoble," a "perversion of the policy-making process," and contemptuous "for the patriotism and intelligence of the American people." Zumwalt's description, too,which likely extended to others in the military, indicates that Richard Nixon may well have miscalculated the damage to his political base from the conservative elements of the Republican Party. (Elmo Zumwalt, On Watch, See Nixon Era Center)
The events and issues leading to Richard Nixon's historic trip to, and from, his China policy and the Shanghai communiqué have meanings on many levels and in many different corners. One can focus on John Erlichman's idea that Richard Nixon was playing his "China Card" against the Soviet Union. One can as easily see that China was playing its own "US Card" against the Soviet Union as well. De Gaulle had been correct; the Chinese did want an American relationship to strengthen its own hand in confronting the Russians. And, much as Nixon wanted out of South Vietnam, after the trip the Chinese could not have wanted North Vietnam continuing to widen the war and create a potential for more, not less US involvement or, even more threatening, a Soviet-American partnership through détente. China had enough on its hands with the threat of a nuclear war with Russia. Thus, the clear answer for both sides – China and the US – was to find a way toward their common ground. From Richard Nixon's point of view, that meant "Vietnamizing" the Vietnam War and moving away from the old establishment theory of containment.
In a certain sense, Richard Nixon was playing two or three different "card" games at the same time. One was with South Vietnam. He had reneged on his "better deal" pledge; Vietnamization was clearly not that. In l972, when the peace talks finally produced an agreement with North Vietnam, Thieu of South Vietnam rejected it until threatened by the President of the United States with no support at all. Nixon was also playing poker with the Soviets; Nixon and Brezhnev signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in l972. And, of course, he was playing poker also with the Chinese.
But Richard Nixon was also playing an entirely different game at home, and it was closer to solitaire than poker. It would be this last game that President would ultimately lose. Because of the right wing commitment to containment and because of the military's belief that Vietnamization was to lose a war they could have won, Richard Nixon developed his policies in conjunction with only a few close advisors. Neither the Secretaries of State or Defense, not even the Joint Chiefs, were invited to consult with the President. And to John Mitchell, that was Richard Nixon's core problem – a secretive style that did in his Presidency. (Len Colodny with John Mitchell)
That secretiveness led to his final demise. The Moorer Radford Spy Ring (Seven Days in December, Nixon Era Times) was the result of the President's refusal to share information or to conduct a more open diplomacy. So, too, perhaps directly or perhaps indirectly was Watergate. The spy ring's leaks to the press caused the President to form his ill-fated Plumbers Unit, the name given to the group that broke into the Democratic Committee Headquarters only a few months after Nixon returned from China. Finally, when impeachment was clearly to be the result of Watergate, Richard Nixon, in the end, was alone. He had gone from the most lop-sided of victories in the l972 re-election against Sen. George McGovern to a president unable to withstand a possible trial and conviction in the Senate of the United States.
Richard Nixon came very late in his life to the conclusion that he lost his Presidency over his China policy, not the politics of Watergate. (Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter) The politics of Watergate, he would state, was merely the excuse, not the reason. China was the reason. Thus would it be that normalizing relations with China while abandoning Vietnam and containment marked Richard Nixon forever, not only because he may have created a safer world, but also as his lowest place in history – the only president forced to resign his office.
Dr. Peter Klingman is the owner of National Education Opertunities Group of Tampa, Florida and is a member of the extended learning faculty of Mountain State University.
Read Fred Graboske's Response to Dr. Klingman's article.
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