Presidential Doctrines by Joseph M. Siracusa Aiden Warren

Author:Joseph M. Siracusa,Aiden Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

The U.S., the PRC, and Doctrinal Adjustments

Although there was considerable evidence of the Sino-Soviet rift after 1960, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made few attempts to reexamine their previous assumptions and policies regarding China. This was partly due, according to Kochavi, to Washington’s preoccupation with Mao Zedong’s aggressive and fundamentalist Chinese Communist Party, an image Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson shared.[44] Throughout the terms of the three aforementioned presidents doctrinal containment was still fresh, international communism was a big issue, and memories of the Korean War were still warm. Despite the beginnings of a Sino-Soviet break in the late 1950s and early 1960s, officials in Washington continued to see a dangerous Moscow-Beijing axis. In practice, their anti-Beijing attitudes resulted in charges of misbehavior, non-recognition, and trade restrictions. Richard Nixon, however, had early identified with the critics’ arguments that the United States’ China policies—to isolate 700 million Chinese diplomatically and economically—served no useful purpose and antagonized much of the world. Indeed, Nixon wrote in the October 1967 issue of Foreign Affairs that “any American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China.” As president, his doctrine established the need to improve relations with China as one essential component of a new American foreign policy. “I was fully aware,” he recalled, “of the profound ideological and political differences between our countries. . . . But I believed also that in this era we could not afford to be cut off from a quarter of the world’s population. We had an obligation to try to establish contact . . . and perhaps move on to greater understanding.” Nixon understood that China posed a lesser danger than two decades of apocalyptic rhetoric had suggested.[45]

In 1969, the Nixon administration, working through third states, opened some discussion with Beijing, but its initial efforts were largely unilateral—allowing Americans to purchase Chinese goods; validating passports after March 1970 for travel in China; and licensing, after April 1970, of certain non-strategic American goods for export to China. During a visit to Rumania in October 1970, Nixon, for the first time, deliberately used Beijing’s official title, the People’s Republic of China. No American initiatives toward China would succeed unless they were received with some graciousness. When, in October 1970, President Yahya Khan of Pakistan carried a Nixon overture to Beijing, the Beijing government responded: “We welcome the proposal from Washington for face-to-face discussions. We would be glad to receive a high-level person for this purpose, to discuss withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan.” Nixon welcomed the invitation, but could not accept the Chinese objective. During April 1971, in Nagoya, Japan, the Chinese ping-pong team invited the American team, competing for the world championships, to visit the Chinese mainland. Prime Minister Chou En-lai addressed the American team: “[W]ith your acceptance of our invitation, you have opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American people.” Then, on July 15, the president announced that earlier Kissinger and Chou had held secret talks in Beijing. The premier invited the president to visit China, and Nixon accepted the invitation.

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