CHAPTER IX

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The Nixon Doctrine and
the Sino-American Détente

THE AMERICAN presidential election of 1968 was fought out in the shadow of Vietnam, although not quite to the extent that the election of 1952 had been dominated by Korea. Vietnam had become a major, perhaps the major, issue of American politics and foreign policy and had acquired a symbolic significance going far beyond its actual relevance.

The American Predicament

The power with which Vietnam made itself felt on the American scene and in American foreign relations after 1965 resulted from the convergence of two processes. One was the emergence of a new generation born since the Second World War, much of it scornful of the logic under which the elite of the older generation had been rationalizing the employment of American military power abroad and committed to quite different values and behavior patterns. The other was a predictable (because typically American) pendulum swing, on the part of much of the population and of Congress, away from acceptance of the executive branch’s domination of foreign policy and its overinvolvement of the United States, not only militarily but politically and economically as well, in far-flung operations in many parts of the world.

The first of these processes reflected, in addition to inevitable generational change, the increasing urbanization of the population and a rising educational level—in short, greater sophistication, although not necessarily greater wisdom. The resurgence of radicalism among American intellectuals and on American campuses that began about 1960 owed much to the civil rights movement that had begun several years earlier, to the coming to power of Fidel Castro, to ferment in the Third World and Africa in particular, to the stimulating atmosphere of the Kennedy years, and to a sense of alienation from an increasingly technological and supposedly impersonal society.

The second process reflected a belief, at the elite level at any rate, that a succession of presidents had overstrained the country’s resources and relations with its friends by committing it to too many “police actions,” confrontations, aid programs, etc. Congress, which tended to be less interventionist and had once been regarded by most American intellectuals as unenlightened and obstructionist, came to be looked on as the best available counterweight to an overambitious and overextended executive. A more thoroughgoing remedy, the adoption of a parliamentary system under which executive and legislature would be in closer harmony rather than in balanced opposition, was favored in principle by some academic political scientists but was advocated by no major public figure.

To both these ways of thinking, the American escalation in Vietnam came as the last straw, or pile of bricks. It was a predominantly unpopular war from the beginning. The enemy and the objective were never defined by the executive for the public in a way that commanded assent and support on a nation-wide scale. Among the major reasons for this were Vietnam’s geographic remoteness and the fact that the other side’s efforts bore just enough of the character of an insurgency to make its forces difficult to identify and hate and to give its cause the image of a revolution. These effects were reinforced by the media (especially television), which were irked by the administration’s and the military’s efforts at managing the news on Vietnam and unavoidably conveyed to the public a more vivid sense of the violence committed by the South Vietnamese and American side. The perception of excessive costs and casualties expended on an unwinnable war grew to almost overwhelming proportions after the Tet offensive of 1968.

The better informed segment of the educated public was also troubled by the knowledge that the country’s foreign relations were being adversely affected in many quarters by its involvement in Vietnam. If some of the French criticism could be attributed to sour grapes at the thought that the United States might possibly succeed where France had failed, the objections from other NATO countries could not be so easily dismissed; some West Germans, for example, believed that the United States was permitting itself to be distracted to a dangerous degree from the defense of Western interests in Berlin and Germany. The Japanese right believed to some extent, and with some measure of correctness, that the United States was contributing to international stability in Asia through its role in Vietnam, but this view was less articulate than that of the left (including the press), which was to the effect that the United States was waging a counterrevolutionary war in Vietnam with inhuman methods. The American involvement in Vietnam was clearly helping to push the Soviet Union ahead faster in its strategic weapons build-up and to make it more difficult to deal with in a variety of ways. Peking was perceived, plausibly although incorrectly, as perhaps being goaded into some massive act of irrationality outside its borders by the insult it was suffering by proxy in Vietnam.

The Johnsonian Turnaround

The shock of the Tet offensive convinced a critical grouping within the United States government that it would be senseless to continue pumping troops into Vietnam, and that a process of deescalation and disengagement must be initiated. Accordingly, President Johnson rejected a proposal by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for sending another 200,000 men to Vietnam. For some time, furthermore, he had had personal reasons, including a realization that his political stock was declining, for not wanting to run for re-election. In a speech on March 31, 1968, therefore, he coupled an announcement of his decision not to be a candidate again with a statement that he was denying the request for more troops, was suspending bombing operations against North Vietnam north of the 20th parallel, and was renewing his invitation of three years’ standing to Hanoi to come to the conference table.

For reasons already indicated (in Chapter VII), Hanoi proved unprecedentedly willing to do exactly that even though the two conditions for negotiations that it had been posing, a prompt and complete bombing cessation and a prompt and complete American military withdrawal from South Vietnam, were being met to only a very limited extent, and even though Peking, not yet recovered from the militant mood engendered by the Cultural Revolution, clearly disapproved. In mid-May, accordingly, negotiations began at Paris between high-level American and North Vietnamese delegations, and in October they were joined by delegations from the Saigon government and the National Liberation Front. Just before the American presidential election, and presumably in an effort-unsuccessful, of course—to influence its outcome, President Johnson suspended the bombing of North Vietnam entirely, something that Vice President Humphrey had promised to do if elected. The talks at Paris were making a little progress, but not much. The Vietnamese quagmire bedeviled the Johnson administration until its last day in office.

The Nixonian View of Asia

After returning from an extended trip to Asia in the spring of 1967, Richard Nixon, who was not then an avowed presidential candidate, published an article in Foreign Affairs giving his findings. In retrospect at least, the most important of these was that the United States had overinvolved itself in Vietnam and in Asia as a whole and must cut its liabilities judiciously. He portrayed China as still a serious threat to non-Communist Asia. He advocated involving China increasingly in peaceful international contacts (a process he described as “dynamic detoxification”) and continuing to contain it through “creative counter-pressure” exerted mainly by the Asian nations themselves, “backed by the ultimate power of the United States.” For this role he especially favored a substantially rearmed Japan and the rather somnolent anti-Communist regional organization ASPAC (the Asian and Pacific Council). He praised Indonesia for having coped with a major Communist coup in 1965, partly under the inspiration (as he said erroneously) of the American role in Vietnam, but by implication without the help of an American military presence.

His actual views went somewhat beyond his published ones. On the basis of the Indonesian case, he had become convinced, or claimed to have been convinced, that other Asian countries could also cope with Communist subversion without the help of American combat forces, or at any rate ground forces. This proposition was clearly sound when applied to a large self-confident country not threatened from abroad, like Indonesia, but had the defect of all generalizations: there were significant exceptions, the most obvious of which were the relatively small and vulnerable countries of Indochina. In addition, Mr. Nixon’s views on the People’s Republic of China were, or soon became, much more conciliatory than suggested in his article. He wanted to go to Peking and make a major contribution to improved Sino-American relations. One of his motives undoubtedly was to give Peking an effective incentive not to try to expand in Asia as the United States disengaged, American disengagement to one degree or another being obviously inevitable. Another flowed from his longstanding and well-known aversion to the Soviet Union, now enhanced by concern over Moscow’s strategic weapons build-up and its growing role in the Middle East; as he said to the correspondent Howard K. Smith on July 1, 1970, a closer Sino-American relationship could render these problems more nearly manageable.

The main early byproduct of this line of thinking was the Nixon (or Guam) Doctrine, announced in July 1969. It proclaimed in general terms that the United States would honor its treaty commitments, which it seemed to imply were too well known to require elaboration. The United States would provide a “shield” (not otherwise defined, but presumably referring mainly to air cover) to any ally (although the frame of reference was Asian), and to any country regarded by the United States as vital to its own security or to that of the region, if threatened by a nuclear power (a term evidently meant to cover the People’s Republic of China). Military and economic aid could be provided on its government’s request to a country threatened by a non-nuclear power, but the threatened country was to “assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower [i.e., essentially, ground forces] for its defense.”

Some leftist critics have maintained that the Nixon Doctrine rationalizes a strategy of reliance on nuclear weapons, presumably tactical. A more reasonable criticism would be that in reality it implies a genuine and probably irreversible American military disengagement from Asia and the Western Pacific, and that this process has been proceeding too rapidly for the stability of the region and the survival of American influence in it. Another relevant comment is that the trend toward disengagement did not cancel out President Nixon’s long-standing tendency to react vigorously—many would say overreact—to real or imagined crises.

Before taking office as the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger had relatively little knowledge of or contact with Asian affairs, apart from some experience as a consultant on the Vietnamese problem. His unquestionably brilliant mind had wrestled mainly with European questions. He strongly favored a multilateral balance of power, such as had existed in Europe between the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) and the formation of the two hostile alliance systems toward the end of the nineteenth century. He evidently hoped to see the same situation emerge in contemporary Europe, in lieu of a Soviet-American confrontation, and in Asia, in lieu of a Sino-American confrontation. In general, he tended to take his lead in Asian matters from the President. Soon after coming into office, he formed from contacts with American “China-watchers,” official and unofficial, the essentially correct impression that previous administrations had considerably exaggerated China’s propensity to expand, and that Peking would probably not try to take significant advantage of American disengagement from Asia; a major reason for the latter conclusion was the limitations on China’s freedom of action imposed by its confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Approaches to Peking

As early as March 1969, President Nixon began to convey to Peking through French channels his genuine interest in improving Sino-American relations, as well as in ending direct American military involvement in Indochina. He had sensibly refused to be unduly discouraged by Peking’s withdrawal on February 19 of its invitation to resume the Sino-American ambassadorial talks at Warsaw. He almost certainly counted on the crisis of that period in Sino-Soviet relations to soften Peking’s attitude toward the United States, and it is probably significant that the Nixon Doctrine was not announced until the seriousness of that crisis had become clear. Subsequently intermediaries from other third countries, including Presidents Ceausescu of Romania and Yahya Kahn of Pakistan, and other channels as well, were used by both sides to transmit messages between Washington and Peking.

There were encouraging signs in early 1970, when two Sino-American ambassadorial conversations were held at Stockholm (January 20, February 20); at the second of these the Chinese expressed some interest in the idea of a visit by President Nixon to China. This promising trend was interrupted by the Cambodian crisis in the spring of 1970, which caused Peking to cancel a Sino-American ambassadorial conversation scheduled for May 20 and to issue a statement in Mao’s name loudly denouncing the United States on the same day. For reasons already indicated (in Chapter VIII), however, the interruption proved to be short-lived. Progress was resumed in July and became increasingly rapid after October. On December 18, in an interview with Edgar Snow (published on April 30, 1971, in Life), Mao himself issued a seemingly casual invitation to President Nixon to visit China.

Meanwhile, the President had been withdrawing American forces from Vietnam fairly rapidly and had been taking steps aimed directly at conciliating Peking, as well as Americans eager for contact with it, by progressively reducing the restrictions on travel to and trade with the People’s Republic of China by Americans. By April 1971, the trade restrictions were nearly gone, and the travel restrictions entirely so. Peking, which had always regarded these restrictions as insulting even though it had seldom wanted such contact until recently, was sufficiently impressed, and sufficiently anxious for improved relations with the United States, so that in that month it invited an American table tennis team then in Japan to visit China, which it did. Soon a trickle of teams and unofficial delegations began to flow in both directions, and American travelers (mainly individuals of Chinese descent and leftists, at first), journalists, and businessmen began to be given visas to China in limited numbers. Apart from their obvious value at the “people to people” level, these contacts helped Chou En-lai to defend his policy of “tilting” toward the United States by enabling his more radical colleagues to believe that American public opinion was being encouraged by the contacts to press the government for a still more conciliatory China policy.

In reality, Washington needed no such pressure. The desirability of the approach to Peking was rated so high in the White House that other government agencies, including the State Department and the Pentagon, were largely excluded from the planning of it so as to minimize bureaucratic objections and preserve secrecy. The nongovernmental China-watching community was almost totally excluded. Accordingly, it was with the greatest possible secrecy that Dr. Kissinger flew to Peking from Pakistan on July 9, 1971, for two days of talks with Chou En-lai. Secrecy was earnestly desired by Chou, who wanted to tip his hand neither to the domestic opponents of his opening to the United States nor to Moscow, whose reaction was bound to be a strong one. On the American side, secrecy was desired for the reasons already indicated and because advance notification to the ally most directly affected (apart from the Republic of China), Japan, would be risky since Tokyo was notoriously leaky where interesting secrets were concerned. On the American side, there may have been an additional incentive to secrecy, as a result of the recent publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, which were classified documents on American Vietnam policy released to The New York Times without authorization by Dr. Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation; after that Washington was on its mettle to prove that it could maintain security at least on occasion. Consequently, the world was startled to learn on July 15, from announcements made in both capitals, that Kissinger had visited Peking, and that his hosts had invited President Nixon to do the same at some time in 1972. The presidential visit was still in some doubt owing to objections by Lin Piao and other radicals, and Washington did not breathe easy on this score until it was announced on October 5, after Lin’s fall, that Kissinger would visit Peking again later that month. The main purpose and result of his trip were to develop the planning for the Nixon visit.

“Partnership” and Conflict with Japan

There was a tendency on the part of Americans, the Nixon administration included, to expect gratitude from Japan for American aid and protection, and compensation in the form of a contribution through aid to the economic development of Asia. As already indicated the Nixon administration initially hoped for an increased Japanese contribution to Asian security, an idea that clearly implied a measure of Japanese rearmament. The fact that such a policy would produce very serious repercussions both in Japan and in the rest of Asia seems to have been largely overlooked, perhaps because the White House staff never included an authentic Japan specialist of high rank.

The first major Nixonian effort to give effect to the administration’s slogan of “partnership” with Japan was an important meeting between President Nixon and Premier Sato in November 1969. The resulting Nixon-Sato Declaration stated (at American, not Japanese initiative) that Japan had an interest in the security of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and of Taiwan; the real meaning of this was that Japan would not interfere with the use of existing American bases in Japan to defend these areas if they should be attacked, but the Communist powers concluded or at least claimed that Japan was admitting to predatory designs on South Korea and Taiwan. It was agreed that civil jurisdiction in Okinawa, and responsibility for its external security, should revert to Japan in 1972; there was a clear implication that after that the United States would not base nuclear weapons on the island any more than in Japan proper (apart from brief transiting of airfields and ports by weapons aboard American aircraft or naval vessels). The Japanese government agreed to liberalize its restrictions on American investment and reduce its tariffs on American goods.

In spite of the implicit prohibition on American nuclear weapons in Okinawa after “reversion,” Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, during an important visit to Tokyo in July 1971, refused a Japanese request for procedures designed to verify the removal of nuclear weapons from the island prior to reversion. Laird also appears to have urged the Japanese to increase their conventional forces somewhat beyond the level envisaged in the Fourth Five-Year Defense Build-up Plan (published in the spring of 1970), but probably not to acquire nuclear weapons. By that time, however, Japanese-American “partnership” was already little more than a myth.

President Nixon’s Southern strategy had created a partial dependence on the support of some Southern Senators, certain of whom were seriously concerned about the damage inflicted by competing imports from Japan on the textile industries of their states. The President thought that he had gotten an informal pledge from Premier Sato in November 1969 to do something about this problem and was incensed by what he interpreted as Sato’s failure to make good on this promise. In the spring of 1971, President Nixon began to support legislation to impose quotas on imports of Japanese textiles and rejected some more conciliatory alternatives, notably one proposed by Congressman Wilbur Mills. For a time it appeared that the textile issue might prevent Senate approval of the Japanese-American treaty on the reversion of Okinawa, but it was ultimately approved in November.

The tension in Japanese-American relations created by the textile issue, which was very great, was vastly increased by the White House’s decision not to inform Tokyo in advance of the impending Kissinger visit to Peking even though a pledge had been given privately to the Japanese government a few years earlier that it would be notified in advance of any major change in American China policy. It is possible that the Nixon administration was not aware that this promise had been made. In any case, the announcement of July 15 hit Tokyo like a thunderbolt. At about the same time, the United States rubbed salt in the wound by working out a new approach to the problem of China’s representation in the United Nations—the idea was that Peking should be admitted but Taipei should not be expelled—and blandly assuming that Tokyo would cosponsor the proposal when the time came. This actually happened without success (Peking was admitted and Taipei expelled on October 25), even though the Japanese government deeply resented not having been consulted in advance on this departure any more than on the other.

Although the textile issue was extremely. irritating to the Nixon administration, an even more serious problem was the massive deficit ($3-4 billion per year) in the American balance of payments with Japan. To help eliminate it, as well as for other reasons, President Nixon announced on August 15 a program of wage and price controls, suspension of the convertibility of the dollar, and a ten percent surcharge on import duties. The atmosphere in Japanese-American relations created by this move, coming as it did on the heels of the China initiatives, was sometimes compared in Japan to the atmosphere preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor. Later in the year, the August 15 restrictions were eased, and in mid-October an agreement was reached with Tokyo under which the United States removed the surcharge and Japan agreed to limit the growth in the export of man-made fibers to the United States for three years to five percent a year and of wool to one percent a year. The crisis in Japanese-American relations was over, but the effects lingered on both sides. The White House had paid a high price in its relations with a major ally for the sake of its domestic political and economic concerns and its anxiety to improve relations with a major former adversary.

The Peking Summit

The motives on the Chinese side for wishing a Sino-American summit conference have already been discussed (in Chapter VIII). On the American side, the most urgent motive, as the White House’s insistence on maximum television coverage indicated, was the greatest possible impact on the American public and on the coming presidential election campaign. Second, and related, was a strong desire for some Chinese help, or at least an absence of obstruction, with a Vietnam settlement, something that would obviously help the President’s domestic political position in addition to serving other ends as well. Third was the hope of rendering Moscow more manageable through the approach to Peking. The White House’s thinking on this score was heavily influenced by its conviction, or at least its repeated statements off the record, that fear of the Soviet Union was the sole sufficient cause for Peking’s diplomatic opening to the United States; this was a seriously oversimplified but conveniently self-serving theory, since it relieved the architects of American China policy of any imputation that they were being used by the Chinese, whereas in fact they were. Fourth, the White House hoped that the summit conference would help Chou En-lai to stabilize and institutionalize his essentially pragmatic domestic and foreign policies in the teeth of opposition from Maoist radicals. Fifth, the White House was necessarily influenced somewhat by the eagerness of substantial numbers of Americans for easier access to China, and of many American firms for a clearer shot at the China market. There was furthermore a belief that the United States had pressed too hard on the People’s Republic of China in the past and owed it restitution in the form of a friendlier general policy and some concessions, short of an abandonment of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

The week-long summit (February 22-28, 1972) was marked by good chemistry on both sides. Each was eager to get to know the other better and regarded the success of the talks as highly desirable; failure would have been a domestic political disaster for both sides. Sino-American relations at the personal level tend to be good, and they certainly were on this occasion. Superb Chinese hospitality, much of it visible on television, made a major contribution to the success of the occasion. The Chinese welcome for President Nixon was subdued at first, because of the controversial nature of his visit in the eyes of the Chinese radicals, but he performed with sufficient effect to justify Chou En-lai in asking Mao Tse-tung to receive him on the first day, rather than on the last day as had been anticipated. This audience predictably quieted any remaining radical objections and gave Chou a freer hand to proceed with the negotiations. No American interpreters were present during the Mao-Nixon talks; in fact, Chinese-speaking foreigners have generally not attended Mao’s audiences for visiting dignitaries since the one for Emperor Haile Selassie in October 1971, when the Chairman made the embarrassing mistake, in the presence of a Chinese-speaking Ethopian, of confusing his guest with ex-President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.

Much of the negotiations consisted in mutual probing and reflected the usual Chinese interest in reaching agreement on things regarded by Peking as matters of principle, questions of detail being left for later discussion. The widespread expectations of a Taiwan-for-Vietnam deal, in which the United States would make major concessions on Taiwan in return for Chinese help with a Vietnam settlement, proved to be oversimplified. Peking gave a private and implicit pledge not to use force to “liberate” Taiwan, and the United States agreed in effect not to obstruct a peaceful or political “liberation:” The Chinese side would not agree to give active help toward a Vietnam settlement, for example, by putting pressure on Hanoi; on the other hand, it did not make much of an issue of American policy on Vietnam and did not press for further American military withdrawals from it, or for that matter from anywhere else except Taiwan.

The Shanghai Communiqué

The most tangible diplomatic result of the visit was the joint communiqué (the so-called Shanghai Communiqué) issued at its close. Like all such documents, it contained statements on which both sides agreed. It was unusual, however, in that it also contained a statement of positions held by each side with which the other did not necessarily agree, although it was a statement in a moderate form relatively unoffensive to the other; offensive propositions, such as the American commitment to recognize and defend the Republic of China, were omitted or vetoed by the other side.

The agreed portion of the communiqué included a restatement of the (Chinese) Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, without use of that term. The United States had previously rejected these as propaganda, and acceptance of them now obviously represented an American concession. This was especially true since the third principle is “noninterference in the internal affairs of other states,” a proposition that the United States knows Peking considers to rule out the American relationship to Taiwan, even though the United States government holds that its Taiwan policy does not constitute such interference. The agreed portion also pledged the two parties to work toward “normalization” (not necessarily including full diplomatic relations) of their relations with one another, not to seek “hegemony” in Asia and the Pacific, to oppose “the efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony,” and not to negotiate on behalf of any third party (for example, Peking on behalf of Hanoi). The two sides agreed to increase cultural exchange and trade between them and to “stay in contact through various channels, including the sending of a senior U.S. representative to Peking from time to time.”

The unilateral American statement stressed the desirability of peace and improved international communications. The “peoples of Indochina should be allowed to determine their destiny without outside interference.” Provided this outcome was not threatened, the United States envisaged the “ultimate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from the region” even in the absence of a negotiated settlement. The United States expressed support for its allies the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), although not the Republic of China. The United States said that it “places the highest value on its friendly relations with Japan.” On the crucial question (in the context of Sino-American relations) of Taiwan, the United States stated that it did not “challenge” the proposition, which it attributed to “all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait” (thereby ignoring the Taiwan independence movement) that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.” As long as the Taiwan question was approached peacefully by the parties concerned, the United States would ultimately withdraw its military personnel from Taiwan (about 8,500 in number), who were concerned mainly with logistical support for the effort in Vietnam rather than the defense of Taiwan and were therefore redundant in proportion as disengagement from Vietnam progressed. Meanwhile, the United States would “progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.” (The United States has interpreted “the area” as referring to the three traditional trouble spots—Korea, the Taiwan Strait, and Indochina—whereas Peking has insisted that it covers only Indochina.)

The unilateral Chinese statement stressed revolution and liberation from oppression (rather than international stability), the equality of all nations regardless of size, and China’s determination never to be a superpower (in Peking’s definition of that term, of course). “All foreign troops should be withdrawn to their own countries,” a demand that Peking intends to cover Soviet forces in the Mongolian People’s Republic as well as American forces abroad (which in fact, as distinct from propaganda, Peking is not eager to see withdrawn, as will be shown later). The Chinese statement expressed support (again mainly for the record) of the Communist revolutionary movements in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The political demands of North Korea, the Japanese left, and Pakistan received a brief endorsement. Taiwan was reaffirmed to be a “province of China” and the “crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between China and the United States”; American military installations must be withdrawn from the island, and there must be no more American interference with the “liberation” of Taiwan and the unification of China under Peking.

The communiqué of course did not reflect the full content of the negotiations, which brought out a rather more conciliatory Chinese attitude than Peking was willing, for reasons of “face” and domestic politics, to display in public. The Chinese gave a virtual pledge, although an informal one, not to use force with respect to Taiwan as long as the United States did not try to obstruct “liberation” by peaceful (i. e., political) means, a condition accepted by the American side. American military withdrawal from Taiwan was evidently expected by Peking to contribute to “liberation” by enhancing Taipei’s sense of isolation and helplessness. The United States in turn apparently hoped that the prospect of withdrawal would encourage peaceful Chinese behavior not only toward Taiwan but toward Korea and Indochina as well, and this expectation was subsequently borne out. Peking appeared satisfied with the American position on Taiwan elaborated at the summit conference, at least as a transitional situation, even though the United States stopped short of endorsing Peking’s claim that Taiwan is part of China. The Chinese side did not press for American military withdrawals (except from Taiwan) and even indicated a preference that the United States not withdraw further from Indochina, presumably because of concern that a vacuum might be created that would benefit or be filled by the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Peking declined to give any direct help in working out a settlement for Indochina.

All in all, both sides had good reason to be satisfied with the Peking summit, even if the relations of each with its allies were somewhat strained as a result of it. For the Chinese side, difficulties with North Vietnam, and to a lesser extent with North Korea, were more than offset by considerably increased leverage on Moscow, by encouraging if not spectacular progress on the Taiwan question, by the laying of the foundations for the importation of badly needed high technology equipment and food and fibre from the United States, and most of all perhaps by the establishment of the foundations for a positive relationship that could be built upon in the future. Furthermore, Chou En-lai’s policies and political position were significantly enhanced, and he received some rare and valuable personal publicity in China as a result of the conference.

The American side gained at least some benefit to the President’s re-election campaign, an essentially nonobstructive (if not necessarily actively helpful) Chinese attitude toward American efforts at making peace in Indochina, and somewhat more reasonable Soviet behavior as a result of Moscow’s unwillingness to be odd man out with respect to a developing Sino-American relationship. The impact of the Peking summit on the United States’ Asian’allies was fairly serious, and in the case of the Republic of China highly traumatic, because it cast doubt on the continuing validity of the American commitment to them; in an effort to convey reassurance, an American mission under Assistant Secretary of State Marshall Green visited them shortly after the conference.

Sino-American Relations after the Summit

Probably the most striking testimonial to the vitality of the Sino-American relationship and to the importance attached to it by both sides came from the direction of Indochina. It became clear that Peking had decided that its new relationship with the United States was more important to it than its established but troublesome relationship with Hanoi. On the other hand, Peking’s ability in practice to ignore or flaunt Hanoi’s wishes was limited by an unwillingness to drive it into the arms of the Soviet Union. The American bombing campaign against North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong harbor in early May 1972, in retaliation for Hanoi’s invasion of South Vietnam at the end of March, produced a predictable round of propaganda attacks by Peking and a limited increase in Chinese (and Soviet) military aid to Hanoi, but no serious disruption of Sino-American relations. Such disruption was not a realistic option for Peking in view of the Soviet refusal to break off the Moscow summit conference (in May) and thereby endanger its own improving relations with the United States on account of Vietnam. Later in the year, when Hanoi first made concessions to the United States (in October) and then withdrew some of them (in December), and the United States resumed bombing, Peking evidently applied pressure in private to Hanoi, probably in the form of a threat to cut off aid, in order to push it toward a settlement, and this pressure appears to have had a great deal to do with the emergence of an agreement, at last, in January 1973. At that point, Peking expressed strong public approval for Hanoi’s behavior in signing the agreement and began to reduce the level of its military aid to North Vietnam; this reduction became particularly pronounced after the signing of the supplementary agreement of June 13, 1973, by the United States and North Vietnam (see below).

At the intergovernmental level, the relationship established at the Peking summit was initially kept alive through two main channels. One was the American and Chinese embassies in Paris, which handled relatively routine matters. Questions of greater sensitivity and importance were dealt with during further visits to Peking by Dr. Kissinger.

Kissinger’s visit to Peking of February 15-19, 1973 was his first after the signing of the Paris Agreement on Vietnam, and was made in an appropriately cordial atmosphere; he was received by Mao Tse-tung, and his photograph appeared on the front page of the People’s Daily on three consecutive days. Indochina was discussed, evidently in a friendly spirit even though no observable progress was made toward a settlement for the only one of the Indochina countries for which none was in sight, Cambodia. Peking agreed to release two American prisoners and review the sentence of a third. It was decided to negotiate on the questions of blocked pre-1949 assets in the United States and American claims for pre-1949 property nationalized in China after 1949. There was to be an expansion of trade and cultural exchange. The most important form of progress toward the mutually desired “normalization” of relations made at that time was probably an agreement to establish liaison offices in both capitals. These were to be embassies in everything but name and diplomatic protocol; the reason why they could not be raised to embassies, at least for the time being, was that the United States for both domestic and external reasons was unwilling to transfer its formal diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China, and neither of the Chinas would tolerate simultaneous diplomatic representation of the United States or any other country in both their capitals.

The liaison offices began to be set up in March. They were headed by very senior men as chiefs: in the American case, by David Bruce, a diplomat of ambassadorial rank; in the Chinese case, by Huang Chen, a former ambassador to France and a member of the Communist Party Central Committee (since 1969). Although neither mission was given full diplomatic standing, each was treated with great consideration. Huang Chen was received by President Nixon soon after his arrival, for example, and the Chinese built a new building for the American liaison office in only a few weeks.

Another Kissinger visit to Peking was scheduled for early August 1973, mainly in order to discuss Cambodia, but in late July it was postponed until some time after the August 15 deadline for the halting of American bombing in Cambodia. Another consideration was the stated unwillingness of Prince Sihanouk, who although in Peking was not entirely controlled by his Chinese hosts, and whose cooperation appeared important if not necessarily indispensable to an agreement on Cambodia, to talk with Kissinger. The visit was postponed again on account of the Middle Eastern War that began on October 6. Since this postponement was predictable, and since the Soviet Union clearly had something to do with starting the war, it seems reasonable to assume that one of the benefits to Moscow, if not one of its actual purposes, was the postponement of the Kissinger visit, to Peking, and a demonstration to the Chinese that in the last analysis the Soviet Union had more leverage on the United States than they did. The American strategic alert, in response to the apparent Soviet threat (of October 24) to send troops to the Middle East, may have been warranted, or it may have been intended mainly to distract the attention of the American public from the administration’s domestic predicament (Watergate, the Agnew resignation, etc.), but in either case it probably helped after a shaky start to revive Peking’s confidence in the United States’ ability to confront the Soviet Union when necessary.

The postponed Kissinger visit took place on November 10-14; it was his first to China as Secretary of State. The two sides naturally exchanged views on the Middle East. The American side gave assurances that its current China policy was a more or less permanent one that would not be adversely affected by domestic problems, by future changes of administration, or by Soviet-American relations (such as the recent Brezhnev visit to the United States and Soviet-American cooperation in clamping a lid on the dangerous situation in the Middle East). The American side tried, with what success is not clear, to persuade Peking to try to restrain Hanoi, whose violations of the cease-fire agreement were assuming alarming proportions. Korea was discussed; Peking may have given assurances that neither it nor North Korea would take direct advantage of the troop withdrawals from South Korea that the United States was contemplating. There was apparently an agreement to de-emphasize the Taiwan problem, and in effect to find ways around it, rather than allowing it to obstruct the progress in Sino-American relations that both sides desired. One sign of this was that the United States almost immediately began to reduce its troop strength on Taiwan; apparently the United States was satisfied with Peking’s contribution to date to diminishing the “tension in the area.” Both sides placed great stress on their desire for further “normalization” of their mutual relations. Since this was evidently not intended to imply full diplomatic relations in the near future, it seemed likely that intermediate measures were being contemplated: trade offices and perhaps consulates and a trade agreement, possibly most-favored-nation treatment for Chinese exports to the United States, information offices and perhaps American news bureaus in Peking, and the like. The Chinese side was clearly pleased by the visit; Kissinger was received by Mao Tse-tung for two and three-quarters hours, and the Chinese press continued to avoid making very much of the Nixon administration’s domestic difficulties.

Quantitatively at least, Sino-American trade registered an even more spectacular growth than Sino-American political relations. From almost nothing two years earlier, it shot up to nearly $900 million (both ways) in 1973. The United States had become the People’s Republic of China’s third largest trading partner (after Japan and Hong Kong). The reasons were only partly political. The United States suited Peking well as a trading partner, since China’s major import requirements fell at the opposite ends of the spectrum of technological sophistication, and at the extremes (but not in between) the United States was in a strong competitive position as an exporter. Accordingly, Peking began to import from the United States, at a level roughly ten times as high as that of its exports to the United States, high technology items (satellite communications equipment, long-range aircraft, etc.), grain, and fibre (mainly cotton).

Clearly Sino-American relations had registered an astonishing improvement. The causes lay not merely with American or Chinese diplomacy but with other factors as well, and above all with the concern of both parties to render their relations with the Soviet Union more manageable. This was a very powerful consideration, and one not likely to evaporate in the near future.

Hesitant Relaxation in Korea

A strong American commitment to the survival of South Korea in the face of the challenge from the Communist North was forged during the Korean War and took on a formal existence in a mutual security treaty (or defensive alliance) signed at the end of the war. American forces remained in South Korea after the war, not only as a deterrent to further attacks from the North, but in order to ensure the continuation of a series of American generals at the head of the United Nations Command, which formally speaking included the South Korean forces. American economic and military aid flowed to South Korea in massive amounts, although the economy limped badly on account of the after-effects of the war and the autocratic and incompetent rule of President Syngman Rhee. In these ways the United States not only protected South Korea but gave itself a veto over Rhee’s occasionally proclaimed intention to “march north” (in other words, to attack North Korea).

In April 1960 Rhee was ousted by the combined action of student demonstrators and his own Army. There followed a free but rather chaotic interlude during which the idea of negotiations with North Korea on unification grew more popular in intellectual and political circles. Alarmed by this trend, the Army leadership seized power in May 1961, re-established tight political and social controls, and installed its leading figure, Park Chung Hee, as president. Since then, in spite of the existence of certain civilian and parliamentary trappings, the South Korean political system has been controlled by Park through the Army and the powerful Korean Central Intelligence Agency. This regime shortly began to do what many authoritarian regimes do in an effort to strengthen the state and distract public attention from the absence of political freedom: devote itself to economic development, an objective whose desirability few would deny. The keys to the program were incentives to Korean private enterprise to produce and export, and the establishment of diplomatic and commercial relations with Japan (in 1965) as a means of promoting trade and investment from that quarter, disliked though it was by most Koreans. These measures worked remarkably well, and the economy began to grow rapidly, but without extinguishing the desire for freedom on the part of many Koreans outside the establishment.

From wartime devastation North Korea emerged as an extraordinarily tightly controlled Communist dictatorship under the increasingly personal rule of Kim II Song, who had been picked for this role by the Soviet occupation authorities in 1945. Far from remaining a Soviet puppet, Kim gradually purged his opponents, including some who were pro-Soviet and some who were pro-Chinese, played off Moscow against Peking while enlarging his own freedom of action with respect to both of them, and secured substantial industrial and military aid from both. He evidently feared, or pretended to fear, that the military takeover of 1961 in South Korea might be followed by a “march north,” and within a few weeks of the coup he extracted military alliances from the Soviet Union and China. He was even more startled by the establishment of relations between South Korea and Japan and the sending of South Korean troops to Vietnam (at American insistence) in 1965, both of which seemed likely to enhance the strength and international stature of his hated rival, while possibly making it in the long run—in his eyes—a Japanese as well as an American puppet.

About the end of that year, accordingly, he launched a strategy of infiltrating small bodies of North Korean troops into South Korea by land and sea, evidently in the hope of touching off a “people’s war” such as was going on in South Vietnam, without a recurrence of full-scale war. The people of the South, with lively memories of North Korean aggressiveness and atrocities during the war, did not respond, except negatively. In 1968-69 the North Koreans raised the level of pressure by trying an unsuccessful commando raid on President Park’s residence, by seizing the American “spy ship” Pueblo (the crew was released after a year of captivity), and by shooting down an American reconnaissance aircraft over the Sea of Japan. The American response to this overeagerness was an impressive although temporary air and naval build-up in the region, probably made all the more menacing in Kim II Song’s eyes because the United States was beginning to disengage from Vietnam, and the construction of an electrified barrier across the peninsula below the Demilitarized Zone. He may also have feared that he might be driving South Korea into the arms of Japan, the traditional enemy and oppressor, especially since the Nixon-Sato Declaration (November 1969) stated that Japan considered itself to have an interest in the security of South Korea. He was undoubtedly troubled and puzzled by the Sino-Soviet confrontation.

For some such reasons as these, North Korean infiltration attempts fell off sharply after 1969 and gave way to a strategy designed to exploit presumed weaknesses in South Korea by political means. In the spring of 1970, Kim renewed his longstanding offer of negotiations on unification, in a somewhat more conciliatory tone than before. It is not certain whether Peking encouraged him in this shift from the beginning, as it was to do later, but there were certainly no objections from that direction, since the Chinese had been wooing him since late 1969 on account of the Sino-Soviet confrontation. Later in 1970 there came a cautious, but positive, response from Park, who apparently thought it best to begin negotiations while an American military presence and American political support were still available. The South Korean mood was, and remained, one of great uncertainty, since it was becoming clear that the Nixon Doctrine and congressional enthusiasm for reducing overseas expenditures would lead to sizable American troop withdrawals from Korea during the next several years. This prospect inevitably raised questions about the reliability and usefulness of the American security guarantee to South Korea, which had no desire to be liberated for a third time by American troops but preferred deterrence of the North through a substantial American military presence and felt itself inferior to North Korea in the air and in armor.

During 1971 the warming of Sino-American relations, quietly at first, led both parties to take steps toward removing Korea as an issue between them and to encourage their respective Korean partners to negotiate with one another. Peking continued to support the North Korean demand for the removal of the United Nations label from the American military presence in the South, if only to avoid pushing Kim II Song too close to Moscow, but at the time of the first Kissinger visit (July 1971) it sent a delegate to take part in the proceedings of the Korean Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom for the first time in five years. Parallel with this trend, secret contacts got under way at a high level between North and South Korea. These were announced in a remarkable joint statement dated July 4, 1972, stressing the idea of a “great national unity . . . transcending differences in ideas, ideologies, and systems.” Subsequent, public, contacts quickly and predictably showed, however, that each side was still more interested in scoring points off the other than in reaching agreement. The North’s program was highly political and if accepted would have spread Northern representatives throughout the South under the guise of promoting contacts between members of families divided by the Demilitarized Zone. The South rejected this approach and opted for a much more gradual and less political one. Despite the poor progress of these contacts, their mere occurrence promoted a tendency for a growing number of governments to establish and maintain diplomatic relations with both Koreas. Unlike the two Chinas, Pyongyang and Seoul tolerated this recognition of the existence of two de facto states.

President Park made skillful use of the exaggerated, although not entirely absurd, argument that the successful conduct of negotiations with the North and the weathering of the new international situation created by American military disengagement from the region required an increase of his personal power. In December 1971 he engineered a coup in order to assume virtually dictatorial powers, but since these had no constitutional basis beyond the end of his third presidential term (1971-75) he executed another coup in October 1972, proclaimed martial law, and extended his powers indefinitely. South Korea had the most tightly controlled political system in non-Communist Asia; North Korea had the most tightly controlled system in Communist Asia. President Park, even more than Kim II Song, tolerated no heir apparent. Late in 1973, he purged the head of the Korean CIA, Lee Hu Rak, who had been in charge of the faltering talks with the North and whose agents had created an international scandal by kidnapping Kim Dae Jung, a prominent opposition politician, and bringing him from Japan to Korea.

The admission of North Korea to the World Health Organization in mid-1973 tended to create increased interest in the United Nations’ relationship to the Korean question. Park then proposed the admission of both Koreas to the United Nations but was turned down by Pyongyang. Supporters of North Korea, notably Peking, made some progress at the fall session in 1973 toward abolishing the United Nations Command (in Korea), but Peking was noticeably less enthusiastic than Pyongyang about getting the 42,000 remaining American troops withdrawn from South Korea. The main reason was the Chinese interest in detente with the United States and in the nonappearance of a vacuum that might tempt’ Japan or the Soviet Union. The American plan was to modernize the Republic of Korea’s armed forces over a five-year period (1971-75), within limits imposed by congressional appropriations, to withdraw the remaining American troops by the end of that period, and apparently to organize at some period an international conference that would guarantee South Korea’s security. Meanwhile, the prospect of the abolition of the United Nations Command posed no serious problem, since the bilateral ties between the United States and the Republic of Korea would not be affected and it was these that were the real external support for South Korean security.