Fire and Rain by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg

Author:Carolyn Woods Eisenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

As he summed up the visit, Kissinger assured Nixon that he had dealt with the Chinese prime minister in a firm way. In fact, he had made secret promises to betray a long-standing ally and offered the possibility of other tempting concessions on key issues.7 But he rightly assumed that Chinese agreement to a Nixon visit would eclipse other presidential concerns.

Indeed, as news of Kissinger’s success reached San Clemente, the vacationing president was jubilant. In a rare display of excitement, he was standing by the helipad in California as Kissinger exited the plane at 7:00 am on July 13. For more than two hours they met privately, reviewing the details of the trip and the character of the negotiations. Kissinger conceded that it was doubtful that the Chinese government would give them any immediate assistance with Hanoi.8 But he thought that once news of their meeting surfaced, it would create enormous anxiety for the North Vietnamese. Moreover, it would highlight the administration’s willingness to make bold moves for peace.

It was finally time to inform the Secretary of State.9 Nixon instructed Kissinger to present a “sanitized” version of his meeting with Zhou Enlai. Before Kissinger left on his trip, Rogers had been told that he was going to Islamabad to meet a Chinese emissary who had important news to discuss. Once Kissinger was in Beijing, Rogers was informed that at the last minute he had been invited to the Chinese capital. For Nixon, the duplicity seemed advisable because it was a safe assumption that State Department personnel would have been concerned about how such a meeting would impact relations with Japan and Taiwan. Had they known the content of Kissinger’s conversations they would likely have been furious. To make “the big play,” Nixon thought it necessary to disregard traditional lines of communication, even if it meant forfeiting access to expert opinion within the government.

When Rogers arrived for the meeting, Kissinger showered him with details and flattered him with the suggestion that the mission was the realization of the Rogers’ own ideas. For the moment, the Secretary of State seemed satisfied. In an effusive follow-up phone call, Nixon congratulated Kissinger on his deft handling of Rogers. Yet both men were aware that once Nixon announced the news of the Beijing talks, they would face a much tougher response from Republican conservatives in Congress and elsewhere, who would be appalled by this betrayal of Taiwan.

Over the next 24 hours the China news was kept shrouded in secrecy as arrangements were put into place for what Nixon intended to be a dramatic television appearance. On the night of July 15, Nixon informed a surprised nationwide audience that he had sent Henry Kissinger to China to begin the process of normalizing relations between the two countries. China’s prime minister Zhou Enlai had responded to this gesture by extending an invitation to the president to visit China before May 1972, which he had accepted with pleasure.

The president was quick to emphasize that this action would not come “at the expense of our old friends,” nor was it directed against any other nation.

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