{"id":70650,"date":"2022-02-22T12:30:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T01:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=70650"},"modified":"2022-02-22T12:13:06","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T01:13:06","slug":"nixon-was-right-to-gamble-on-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nixon-was-right-to-gamble-on-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Nixon was right to gamble on China"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

With China currently the only country capable of unseating America as the leading global power, many in Washington may wish that US President Richard Nixon had never made his historic trip<\/a> to China 50 years ago this week. In their revisionist narrative<\/a>, it was Nixon\u2019s meeting with Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, and the policy of engagement it initiated, that helped make China an economic superpower and a geopolitical threat to America. For these critics, the Nixon visit, far from being a stroke of diplomatic genius, was one of history\u2019s greatest strategic blunders.<\/p>\n

But such revisionist arguments discount the substantial benefits the United States gained from Nixon\u2019s gambit and the decades of US\u2013China engagement that followed. Although China didn\u2019t directly assist the US, Nixon\u2019s visit shifted the perceived Cold War balance of power and influenced the strategic calculations of both the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, resulting in immediate US gains. America and the Soviet Union signed<\/a> the first nuclear arms control treaty (SALT I) in May 1972, and the US extricated itself from Vietnam a year later.<\/p>\n

Engagement with China also yielded significant longer-term geopolitical and economic dividends for the US. Regional tensions in East Asia eased dramatically, mitigating the Chinese threat to vital US interests there, while the US\u2013China quasi-alliance against the Soviet Union in the 1980s contributed to America\u2019s victory in the Cold War.<\/p>\n

On the economic front, lower-priced imports from China helped to contain US inflation, while US exports to China grew rapidly and American corporations extended their reach into the country\u2019s domestic market. Although competition from Chinese imports led to the loss<\/a> of US manufacturing jobs, it\u2019s difficult to argue credibly that the US hasn\u2019t reaped economic benefits<\/a> from its engagement policy.<\/p>\n

To be sure, China has gained substantially more than the US in economic terms from the bilateral relationship. But that was mainly due to the process<\/a> of reform and opening launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. Nobody, least of all Nixon or Mao, could have foreseen the Chinese economic miracle that was to materialise in the decades after their fateful encounter. At the time of Nixon\u2019s visit, Deng was in the political wilderness, performing menial labour in Jiangxi province. It was Mao\u2019s death in 1976 and Deng\u2019s subsequent political rehabilitation and elevation that altered the course of Chinese history.<\/p>\n

If the Nixon\u2013Mao meeting made any difference in terms of China\u2019s rise, it was by saving Deng the trouble of having to start from scratch in normalising relations with the US. Without the Sino-American rapprochement that Nixon and Mao engineered (mainly to counter the shared Soviet threat), Deng would have needed more time and effort to persuade the West to embrace China, which had been a pariah state before 1972.<\/p>\n

Revisionists also seem to forget that the US\u2013China relationship forged by Nixon rested on fragile foundations, and that America\u2019s engagement policy was in constant danger of being derailed by actions or events in both countries. Deng himself nearly brought US\u2013China engagement to an end when he crushed the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Only the intervention of President George H.W. Bush, who had served as the second US envoy to China from 1974 to 1975, saved the policy, at the cost of being criticised<\/a> for kowtowing to the \u2018butchers of Beijing\u2019.<\/p>\n

Nixon\u2019s legacy was imperilled again in 2001, when the neo-conservatives who held sway in President George W. Bush\u2019s administration decided that a fast-growing China posed a geopolitical threat<\/a> and must be confronted. But 9\/11 intervened before they could implement a new policy of containment. For reasons that remain elusive, the same neo-cons switched strategic focus and invaded Iraq in 2003, trapping the US in the Middle East quagmire for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

Despite the volatility in US\u2013China relations, the engagement policy crafted<\/a> by Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, served the interests of both countries until about a decade ago. But China\u2019s assertiveness and expansionism under President Xi Jinping has made sustaining that approach impossible. Nonetheless, a policy that helped produce 40 years of peace, prosperity and stability between two former staunch foes must be considered a resounding success.<\/p>\n

With the US and its allies now facing an unfriendly China, it\u2019s tempting to imagine repeating Nixon\u2019s gambit, this time with an ironic twist. Specifically, some commentators in Washington think that the US should do a \u2018reverse Nixon\u2019 and try to pry Russian President Vladimir Putin from Xi\u2019s embrace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, those advocating such a strategy overlook a crucial difference with the Nixon era. The concession that Putin seems to be demanding, now with the threat of war in Ukraine, is a fundamental revision of the post\u2013Cold War settlement in Europe. Few Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, appear willing to accept such a price in return for weaker Sino-Russian ties.<\/p>\n

Likewise, revisionists appear to have forgotten that, other than risking a domestic political backlash (which never occurred), Nixon didn\u2019t have to make any real, let alone painful, concessions to China (the Taiwan issue was shelved<\/a> with the help of linguistic legerdemain). Fifty years on, his visit to Beijing remains, as Americans would say, a geopolitical no-brainer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With China currently the only country capable of unseating America as the leading global power, many in Washington may wish that US President Richard Nixon had never made his historic trip to China 50 years …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":584,"featured_media":70651,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[599,521,2070,2380],"class_list":["post-70650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-cold-war","tag-richard-nixon","tag-us-foreign-policy","tag-us-china-relations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNixon was right to gamble on China | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nixon-was-right-to-gamble-on-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nixon was right to gamble on China | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With China currently the only country capable of unseating America as the leading global power, many in Washington may wish that US President Richard Nixon had never made his historic trip to China 50 years ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nixon-was-right-to-gamble-on-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-02-22T01:30:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-22T01:13:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/GettyImages-113493601.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"703\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Minxin Pei\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Minxin Pei\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nixon-was-right-to-gamble-on-china\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/GettyImages-113493601.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/GettyImages-113493601.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":703,\"caption\":\"President Richard Nixon (USA) toasts Zhou Enlai the Chinese Prime Minister during a state banquet in Beijing in 1972. 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