China Redux

Although purely coincidental, it’s somewhat fitting that ChinaRedux’s last post explored the role of neoconservatism in building the gospel of the “China Threat” at the same time as a major work on Richard Nixon’s fateful trip to China in 1972 has been released. Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed by World, by acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan (author of Paris 1919) , shows how Nixon’s and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s daring and unexpected diplomatic foray “dazzled their domestic critics, rattled the Soviet Union, impressed allies (despite their exasperation at not having been consulted) and set up an exit strategy for a war [Vietnam] that had become unwinnable,” according to John Lewis Gaddis in his NYT review of the book.

Despite winning acclaim from both side of the aisle for his bold maneuver, a number of conservatives were deeply stung by Nixon’s outreach to Chairman Mao. The famed handshake between the two leaders, in which Mao seemingly held on tight and wouldn’t let go, disgusted conservatives like William F. Buckley, who considered it unbecoming (or worse) for the US to engage with a leader such as Mao.

This was a pivotal moment in the intellectual formulation of neoconservatism, a moment at which some renegade conservatives chose to take up the mantle of idealism over political realism (the latter having reaped tremendous gains for the US in China). America should not deal with tyrants, no matter the security gains.

In many ways, these breakaway conservatives never forgave Nixon and the Republican Party that supported him for rapprochement with China (and still have not). Some of these people went on to coalesce into a loose school known as neoconservatism, which virulently opposed closer relations with China (including WTO accession, among other things). And they are many of the same folks who harp on China’s military “build-up” in their search for another Cold War foe. Cue Dick Cheney.

MacMillan’s book itself looks fascinating and I can’t wait to pick it up. Here are a few less dramatic but no less interesting tidbits culled from the NYT review:

• During Nixon’s trip to Beijing, the Chinese were puzzled that the cigarette packages Nixon’s aides passed out had both the presidential seal and the surgeon-general’s health warning.
• The Americans could not discard paper clips, razor blades and empty toothpaste tubes without having them retrieved and returned.

And a great quote from Nixon’s 1967 Foreign Affairs article, courtesy of the WaPo review:

Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.

Can you imagine President Bush publishing an article in Foreign Affairs? Or a world without that fateful meeting between Nixon and Mao?