Nixon and Mao Read Free

Nixon felt like an explorer: “We were embarking,” he said in his memoirs, “upon a voyage of philosophical discovery as uncertain, and in some respects as perilous, as the voyages of geographical discovery of a much earlier time period.” 4
    He was taking a considerable gamble: that conservatives at home would not attack him and that liberals would not be disappointed in the results of his trip. He was pleased by the many fervent messages he had received wishing him well—but also concerned. “I told Henry that I thought it really was a question of the American people being hopelessly and almost naïvely for peace, even at any price,” he recalled. Kissinger was, as always, reassuring. Americans were excited by the boldness of Nixon’s move. 5
    Nixon also did not know whether the Chinese themselves would overcome their decades of hostility to the United States and make his visit a success. Although every detail of his trip had been negotiated with the Chinese, Nixon did not know, when he clambered aboard his plane, whether he would have a meeting with Chairman Mao Tsetung, who, from his seclusion in Beijing, still controlled China. If Nixon came back to the United States without having met Mao, his trip would be regarded as a failure and, worse, a humiliation for the United States.
    After the trip was over, the Nixon people always maintained that they’d felt quite confident about a meeting. “Well, we knew in our gut,” said Winston Lord, “that Mao would meet Nixon.” The Americans had no firm promise, though, only vague assurances from the Chinese. “I know,” Lord remembered, “that we made unilateral statements that Nixon would, of course, be seeing Mao. We said that we would like to know when this would be, but we knew that this was going to happen. It would have been unthinkable if it didn’t.” 6
    It was a gamble that Nixon was prepared to take because he felt that it was crucial for the United States. He had always taken risks—as a young officer in the navy, when he passed the time (and made a lot of money) playing poker, and, later, as a politician. He had not spent those long and often difficult years making his way to the presidency to be a caretaker. And the United States needed some good news. The war in Vietnam had cost the country much, in lives, in money, and in reputation. It had led to deep divisions at home and a loss of influence and prestige abroad. The failure of the United States to finish, much less win, the war had contributed to a decline in American power. But it had only contributed; the extraordinary military and economic dominance that the United States had possessed from the end of the Second World War to the start of the 1960s could not last forever.
    That dominance had been, in part, the product of the times. In 1945, other world powers lay defeated or, like Britain, so weakened by the huge costs of victory that they could no longer play a world role. The Soviet Union had great military strength and, by 1949, its own atomic bomb, but it had to make good the hideous costs of Hitler’s invasion and of the war. By the end of the 1960s, though, western Europe and Japan had revived. The Soviet Union, although it would never be an economic power to match the United States, was investing heavily in its military. Newly independent countries such as India were playing their parts in the world. China’s potential remained a question mark; the Communists had brought unity, but for much of the time since 1949 Mao’s policies had sent the country down wasteful and destructive paths. Nevertheless, the Chinese revolution had become a model and an inspiration in many Third World countries.
    Throughout the 1960s, Nixon worked on a political career that most people thought was over after his defeat by John F. Kennedy in the presidential race of 1960 and his even more humiliating failure to win the governorship of California in 1962. And he continued to develop his ideas on his favorite