Margaret MacMillan talks "Nixon and Mao" at the Nixon Library

thank you very much I think that was a much too kind introduction but I've come to learn that California hospitality is always much too generous to those who come here so thank you indeed I'm an historian and I'm fascinated by history and and my new book is going to be on why we think in historical terms even when we don't realize it and how we all most of us without realizing use history and how we look back often to try and get some sort of guidance from the past we look back at events we look back at the deeds of people who are considered great people and try to see how those events and how knowing something about the people of the past can help us as we come to make decisions in the present one of the things I've always been fascinated by when I write history is the intersection between the great forces of history and the individuals who sometimes push those forces in one direction or another and it's always very difficult to get the balance very difficult to say history is made entirely by individuals and ignore the forces but very difficult I think also to say that history is made entirely by economic forces social forces political forces ideological or religious forces and ignore the individuals and so I've always tried to look for moments in history where you see this this balance being played out the individual at the heart of things who has to make a decision I'm also interested in the moments in history which seem to me really to make a difference there are times in history when we say before that it was different before 1914 before the first world war broke out the world was a different place after that war broke out it became a very different place it was really I think a watershed before and after September the 11th the world was a different sort of place and I think we're all conscious of that and I would argue that the opening to China and in particular President Nixon's historic trip there in February 1972 was another of those moments the world didn't look quite the same after he had gone there I'm also interested I said in the individuals and our Nixon is someone that I had a very strong view of because I grew up in the 1960's and 1970's and was very much like a lot of Canadians for very much critical of the American involvement in Vietnam when Nixon became president felt that he was a disappointment because he promised to get the United States out of Vietnam it did not appear to be doing so and in any case I felt that Nixon was old he was younger than I am now but in those days he seemed like a throwback to another era and someone out of tune with with the time this was partly the egoism of the young when you think everyone should be just like you and then of course came Watergate and that game gave me again I think a very very black-and-white photograph in my mind of President Nixon and so when I started to do this book what I went through was a process of discovery and I learned a great deal more about Nixon and I had to of course throw out many of the stereotypes I had about him I think I hadn't realized how well I hadn't realized how extraordinary complicated and complex he was as a person and I hadn't realized how intelligent and I hadn't realized what a great foreign policy president he was how much he knew the world how really he'd been preparing himself ever since he was a young congressman in the nineteen late late 1940s early 1950s to become a president who would really make his mark not just on domestic affairs which he certainly did but very much I think on foreign policy in my view he was really one of the best prepared presidents ever to come into office in the United States particularly in terms of foreign policy and so as I wrote this book I became more and more interested in Nixon the person and I got I'd like to think a much more nuanced and a much more complex complex understanding of someone who was as I say a very complicated character I also was fascinated by his decision and I think it was his decision to go to China because I think it really did make a difference not just in the relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China but it also made a great difference in the general balance of power and the general stability of the world to open up a relationship between those two very large countries the United States the greatest military and economic power of its time and the People's Republic of China a country in those days with potential for power which it hadn't yet really begun to realize was in fact an enormous ly important moment and I think without Nixon it may well not have happened I mean we all look back now and we said it's bound to happen you could not go on in a situation with those two great powers and those two great people's didn't recognize each other didn't talk to each other but in fact such situations have gone on they have gone on between Cuba and the United States they have gone on for much longer than the cold spell between the United States and the People's Republic of China between the United States and Iran and you can say there all sorts of reasons why Iran in the United States need to talk to each other they don't have to like each other they don't have to see eye-to-eye on everything but there are very good reasons why in fact they should be talking to each other but they're not doing it and it seems to me that there are moments when it takes someone to say look we're going to do it and someone that someone is prepared to put the necessary political capital and has to have the necessary political capital behind it and I think the decision to have an opening to the People's Republic of China was Nixon's and he had the political capital and I think without him it might not have happened it certainly would not have happened for at least another 10 years and I think that really does make a difference now I've always argued and by the time I can finish my book I think that I changed my mind on a lot of things when this I think I was right that it was Nixon's idea now other people have argued that in fact well there were lots of people who thought it was a good idea a lot of people who thought it was a very bad idea but it was really Nixon I think who had been thinking about it when he was out of office in the 1960s he had been traveling a lot he'd been talking to diplomats in places like the Philippines and places like Hong Kong about the need at some stage he wasn't specific when that stage would be at some stage however to bring China into the community of nations he had this wonderful phrase that it does no one any good including the Chinese for China to be left in angry isolation and of course I think in that he was right he wrote that very famous article in foreign affairs in 1967 which was published before he had decided to run for the presidency or announced his decision in which again he repeated that that sooner or later China would have to be brought back into the community of nations it was necessary for stability in Asia it was necessary for the sake of the Chinese themselves but also necessary for the relationship between China and the United States and so I think this was something that had been brewing in his mind for some time he'd been formulating these ideas and I think he was also of course immensely concerned as many Americans were about how to get the United States out of Vietnam and he thought and I think in the end it turned out wrongly that the key to getting the United States out of Vietnam was to get the North Vietnamese to talk seriously to negotiate in a way seriously in a way that they hadn't been negotiating up to that point then he felt the key was through Beijing that the Chinese Communists would tell the North Vietnamese communists what to do in the North Vietnamese communists would do it now that was a common assumption made in the West about the way the Communist world worked that the big communists told the little Communists what to do and it was like an army and everything went along it was partly because of communist rhetoric the Communists themselves talked about a worldwide movement in which everyone played a part and everyone obeyed the dictates of the more powerful communists in fact it didn't work like that at all and one of the fascinating things we've discovered since the end of the Cold War is the Chinese Communists like the Russian communists were often driven absolutely to fury by the North Vietnamese who were very stubborn very willful and would not do what they were told but that that was something Nixon and others couldn't have known at the time and I think it was a very common assumption that if you could only get the Chinese to start leaning on the North Vietnamese communists the north of him North Vietnamese would negotiate in good faith and the United States would be able to withdraw with honor from Vietnam and so I think Nixon had already formulated his views very very clearly before he came into office I don't think he knew how he's going to do it how he was going to get in touch with the People's Republic of China and how precisely relations would be re-established but it was something that he very much wanted to do now mr. Henry Kissinger has argued that in fact it was both of their ideas that he and Nixon were very much on the same wavelength on on this and I think the contemporary evidence just doesn't bear this out there are accounts in HR Haldeman Diaries for example of Kissinger coming down the whitehouse corridor very early in 1969 saying the president wants to go to Red China I think he's off his head Kissinger zoom interests where in Europe his training was in Europe his preoccupation was with how to deal with the Soviet Union and so I think initially he thought this was a distraction and perhaps a very dangerous distraction in fact however once Kissinger realized that Nixon was very very serious about an opening to China then he came on board very very quickly and it was really the partnership between those two men that helped to make the opening take place now it's one thing for the United States or at least key people in the United States President Nixon his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to decide that the time has come to begin to talk to the People's Republic of China of course it's another thing to do it there were huge obstacles in the way domestically there was still a China Lobby in the United States it had been very powerful in the 1950s gained tremendous power and influence particularly course as a result of the Korean War and the China Lobby argued vociferously and very firmly that there should be no dealings with what they called Red China that Lobby however was passing from the scene its members were getting older many of them had died it was no longer as effective as it had been and what you had by the end of the 1960s was a new generation a younger generation that had grown up without the same visceral anti Chinese Communists feelings an older generation it would have had they had a fought in Korea they hadn't seen firsthand and some of the things that the Chinese Communists had done I think you should also remember that by this point the United States had been dealing with other communist nations United States had developed a working relationship with the Soviet Union was able to negotiate with it didn't have to like them in fact didn't like their regime at all but nevertheless had developed a working relationship and when you had developed a working relationship with one great communist power it's less unthinkable it's more thinkable in fact it's more credible that you would begin to talk to another great communist power the the taboo in a sense had already been weakened if not completely broken and so within the United States I think there was less opposition to any overtures to the People's Republic of China then there might have been say twenty or thirty years ago the problems I think in actually moving towards a relationship with China we're really twofold not so much domestic opposition but partly the history the history of the relationship between China and the United States was a very unhappy one it had not always been unhappy I mean it's a long relationship it goes back into the end back at least until the end of the 18th century and at times had been actually quite a warm relationship and many young Chinese as their own society went through really fearful turmoil in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries looked to the United States as a model of the sort of society they would like to build in China there was a young Chinese student in south central China for example the 1980s going to school who had as his two great foreign heroes George Washington Abraham Lincoln now he grew up to me mouths a tongue and grew up to be the leader of China and grew up to be very hostile towards the United States but there was within that relationship between China and the United States there was both a negative side and a positive side and the positive side was that a lot of Chinese had actually looked to the United States as a friendly power and as a model but since 1949 there had basically been no relationship between the two countries their rhetoric had been hostile to each other they had of course fought each other in Korea in the early 1950s and they had maneuvered throughout Asia to gain friends and influence people one against the other and the history itself became an obstacle in suddenly saying look we want to forget the past you can't just forget the past like that that relationship had plunged into a deep freeze between 1949 and the end of the 1960s and that had built up its own set of memories and it's its own momentum I mean just to give you and you probably all know this but just to to underline how profound that deep freeze was there were of course no diplomatic representative exchanged in that period between the United States and the People's Republic of China there was no trade no journalists from the United States went to China to report on China for the American public no Chinese journalists came to the United States to do the same thing no academics visited each other's universities no tourists went to each other's country no people in business came to each other's countries to invest to trade to learn to to have discussions if American citizens went to the People's Republic of China in this period they ran the risk of losing their passports the State Department made it quite clear that there were certain countries that American holders of American passports couldn't travel to occasionally the two had to talk to each other because occasionally there were issues but they talked to each other in Warsaw where each had embassies and those talks were pretty much low-key and very much out of the public eye and dealt very we dealt with very specific issues prisoners of war left over from the Korean War American yachtsman who had foolishly ignored warnings and gone sailing too close to the China coast and had been picked up by the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong there was a huge American consulate Hong Kong at that point was it was a British colony and so the United States had relations with it was a huge huge American consulate part of whose job it was was to try and figure out what on earth was going on in China because the United States really had very few sources of information they couldn't well they could read the Chinese press and did but the Chinese press in those days was not very informative and they had no one there who could tell them what was going on and so what they would do is they would look at things coming in from China I met an American diplomat who said as a young diplomat part of my job was to go down to the railway station and look at the boxcars coming in from China and you could tell from the characters on the side which province of China they came from and if the pigs in those boxcars because livestock would be sent live literally into Hong Kong if the pigs looked thin we knew that particular province had been having a rough time if the pigs look fat we figured harvests were good the other story I loved and I forgive me for telling it cuz I did put it in my book but I think it's such a great story what they also had to do apart from trying to figure out what was going on in China through whatever means they could was to make sure that no Chinese goods exported which was legal from the People's Republic of China into Hong Kong could then or were then being reported to the United States which was not legal and so that I remember I remember it as a child that was a great concern about wigs was it was a fashion in the 50s for very elaborate wigs and you could buy very good cheap wigs in Hong Kong and so a lot of American tourists are buying their wigs in Hong Kong or they were being shipped from Hong Kong and suddenly there's a great for roar in the press were these Chinese communist hair and what did that mean for the heads of Americans good Americans who were putting those wigs on their heads the other one I loved was was the great chicken and egg conundrum which actually had to go back to Washington because live chickens we brought in from the People's Republic of China to Hong Kong I was quite clear those were communist chickens and so if they were killed or their feathers were turned into pillows those could not go to the United States but the tricky question was the eggs if a communist chicken came into Hong Kong and laid an egg was the egg because it was laid in Hong Kong free democratic egg or was it a communist egg now we laugh and I like the story because it is funny but it does say something about the profound freeze into which that relationship had been plunged that you know there was this concern that there should be no contact and indeed there almost was no contact so that was one of the obstacles just the history the past the the memories of places like Korea the memories of hostility the memories of the rhetoric I mean whatever the Chinese press referred to American presidents they tended to put blood sucking vampires in front of the names whenever the Americans referred American officials referred to China they tended to call it Red China and they didn't call it the People's Republic of China and they tended to say pretty rude things about Chinese leaders that was one problem another problem of course was the attitude of the Chinese themselves the Chinese had made it perfectly clear the Communists when they took over in 1949 that they didn't want to talk to the United States might say Tung said in 49 China leans to one side and he meant in the Cold War and the side he was leaning and China was leading to was the Soviet Union and so it wasn't just on the side of the United States that there was suspicion hostility fear towards the People's Republic of China you've got exactly the same thing on the part of China so what began to make it possible for Nixon to begin to rethink American policy and what began to make it possible for Mao to rethink well in the case of the United States it was partly as I said domestic off to any such thinking was was dying out and there lots of people beginning to say this is a bit odd why don't we even talk to them but I think Vietnam was enormous Lee important here Vietnam was a trauma for the United States it damaged the American armed forces it damaged American credibility if one of the most powerful countries in the world or perhaps the most powerful country could not deal with a small backward Asian power what did that say for its capacity to lead the Western alliance in the Cold War it damaged American relations with its allies in many ways Nixon was very conscious of this it really hurt American prestige and prestige is very important in international relations I mean your hardware is important but how people think of you and whether they believe you're gonna do what you say you're going to do is also very very important and so I think President Nixon and and others Kissinger too were very worried about what Vietnam had done to the United States both internally and in the first year of Washington's presidency and in Washington there was a massive march of war protestors on Washington and Haldeman writes in his diaries it was a bit odd as the smell of tear gas came into the windows of the White House and some of them were violent protesters put up the North Vietnamese flag he said it was very odd to see right in the middle of Washington I think there was real concern that Vietnam was damaging the United States at home and damaging it abroad and so what Nixon very much wanted to do was get giant States out of Vietnam and as I say he thought the route to that was through Beijing the Americans were also and again I think this is very much reflected in Nixon's and kissinger's words and ratings at the time they were very concerned about the relationship with the Soviet Union so the union of course was rather enjoying the spectacle of the United States being bogged down in Vietnam and was being difficult on what both President Nixon and Henry Kissinger felt were very very important negotiations arms control negotiations and other sorts of agreements and the Soviet Union was quite frankly dragging its feet and so I think there were a number of factors that made talking to China look very very important and I mean his memoirs Henry Kissinger says you know when we talk to the opening to China we never had anything so crude in mind as playing a China card against the Soviet Union now I would disagree with him I think that's exactly what they had in mind I don't think it was crude at all I think it was a very sensible thing to do because the other side of the world and the other part of the equation of course is China and factors were pushing China also towards a feeling that maybe they needed to begin looking for friends and maybe they begin they needed to begin looking at the United States the Chinese had fallen out with the Soviet Union the beginning of the 1960s and that had been a very public falling-out and a very bitter one as disputes within a family will be I mean in a way the Chinese I think hated and resented the Soviet communists more than they had hated and resented the American Democrats because I think they felt that the Soviets were part of the same family and they'd really family disputes can be like that China had also through Mao's policies through its own doing had really weakened itself in the 1960s Mao had launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966 which was a monumental folly and horror inflicted on the Chinese people which weakened the capacity of China to feed its own people produce enough goods for its own people and also weakened its capacity to defend itself and so the whole course of the Cultural Revolution had really I would argue damaged China very much indeed what is more by the end of the 1960s China and this was partly partly as a result of the Cultural Revolution but other factors as well had very few friends it had fought a war with India the other great Asian power it had no relationship at all with China it was on very bad terms with Indonesia after 1965 it was on very bad terms with the Soviet Union its main and most loyal friend in the world was Albania which is a charming little country in the Adriatic but really not a counterbalance for all the enemies that China was busy accumulating in 1969 the extent of China's vulnerability was brought home very sharply because there were armed clashes on the borders between China and the Soviet Union and in the fall of 1969 there were rumors that the Soviets were planning a pre-emptive attack on China Soviet diplomats would go around at diplomatic receptions and they would sidle up often to an American I didn't say I have a hypothetical question for you and the American diplomat would say oh what's that and the Soviet diplomat would say what would your government do if we were to drop a few nuclear bombs on China and just a few and the Americans of course said our government will be horrified and this would be very dangerous and very destabilizing to the world and furthermore the fall light would probably fall on us rather than you so for all sorts of reasons we don't approve of it and of course word of this got back to the Chinese and we now know thanks to the documents that have been coming out from the Chinese side that there was a real panic in Beijing in in September and early October 1969 when sections of the leadership including Mao himself became absolutely convinced that the Soviets were about to attack and so by the end of 1969 you had a new administration in the United States which was rethinking its position in the world trying to think of how to repair the damage done by Vietnam and rethinking its approach to China and you had in China and the key person here was Mao but you had others in the top Chinese leadership thinking we need friends and sometime in October Mao is reported to have said to his doctor you know he said what would you say if I made friends with the United States and his doctor of course nearly fell over and said well that you know you have to be careful what you said tomorrow he said that would be interesting and Mao said you know I remember the advice that someone gave I think it was the Duke of Joe in the 3rd century AD who said if you have two enemies on your two enemies or to potential enemies it is safer to make friends with the one farthest away rather than the one close at hand the one furthest away will be a counterbalance the one furthest at hand will try and take you over and so said ma I am thinking of talking to the United States and so by the beginning of 1970 you had this congruence which you hadn't had before both sides wanting to talk to the other great except how could they signal it to the other side they had no direct contacts they had this whole legacy of fear and mistrust and so the next two years the next year-and-a-half really were a very painful process and fits by fits and starts of the two sides inching towards each other and neither side wanted to go too fast because the other side not being honest and neither side for very obvious reasons wanted to be public because if anything went wrong it would look bad and so what you've got were really two things happening one both sides began sending signals it's like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean and hoping it would get there and so Nixon stopped referring to the people that the Red China he started talking about the People's Republic of China he eased up some of the many restrictions on trading with China those began to be eased up and the Chinese began to make their own gestures they sent back a couple of American sailors who had strayed into Chinese water and then in the fall of 1970 matza Tung invited Edgar snow who was an old left-leaning journalist who knew the Communists very well he'd written a book on them in the 1930s he invited him to visit China and come and sit on the reviewing stand of China's great National Day which celebrates the Communist victory in October and gave Edgar's snow a very very extensive interview in which he said you know I'd like to meet President Nixon if he wants to come to China let him come unfortunately some of these messages got through and some didn't and this was one that didn't edgar snow was not very well he didn't come directly back to the US he went to Switzerland and nobody from the State Department went to talk to him people just said he's you know lefty who no point in talking to him and so that message from our never got through so it was a very difficult process the other way in which they finally made contact and this is the one that worked was through secret channels Nixon and Kissinger Nixon in particular said to the leaders of countries which he knew had relations with the People's Republic would you tell him we're really serious about talking and he said this to Charles de Gaulle in France the French had a relationship he said it to the dictator of Romania Nicolae Ceausescu and he said it finally with success to Yahya Khan who was the dictator of Pakistan and it was Yahya Khan who went to Beijing in the fall of 1970 and said to the Chinese look the Americans really are serious I know them Nixon has told me personally that they want to talk to you and so very very elaborate sort of back and forth started it was diplomacy which would have been recognizable to the ancient Greeks or the Venetians because it was all deniable no direct bit of paper ever came with a presidential seal and Nixon's handwriting and Nixon's signature to China and nothing from China ever came back directly to Washington all went through the people in Pakistan and so message would come in to Pakistan Chinese ambassador would tell either the foreign minister or the head of state yeah Khan and they would make notes but they wouldn't get the bit of paper which would come from Beijing and then those notes would be transmitted to Washington and so in the spring in December 1970 an invitation the Chinese said it might be worth sending someone to China to talk about matters of common interest what they tried to do the Chinese was impose a condition that we will only accept an emissary we will only consider a visit from President Nixon if you agree that Taiwan is ours and the Americans were not prepared to accept that so that was back and forth through the secret channels but finally in April 1971 two things happened first of all the famous table tennis team went to Beijing and that was a public signal from the Chinese you probably all know the story I gather you had an event here to commemorate it where the table tennis teams were all playing at a tournament no Chinese teams or athletes had been allowed during the Cultural Revolution to go out and play in international tournaments Mao felt that was all capitalist nonsense but gradually teams were being sent again and a Chinese table tennis team went to a tournament in in Japan where was also an American team and a number of other teams and the Chinese one of the players said to the Americans why don't you come and play table tennis with us in Beijing and the American table tennis players quite rightly had no idea of what this meant and so they said to the State Department you know that we've had this sort of invitation we don't really want to go and the State Department said you are going I mean this was you know a tremendous sort of gesture and so off went the table tennis team to China they played against the various other teams they played against the Chinese who were much better the Chinese players apparently were told to lose a few games as a gesture politeness and then on the last day there was a big reception in the Great Hall of people in Beijing and Joe and I greeted all the teams greeted the Americans last because they were all lined up in alphabetical order so I think Canada was there so it came first it was a Mexican team a Nigerian team and then came the United States and Joe and I races that I drink to the continuing friendship between our two peoples very very important public declaration I mean these this was really the first official official American delegation to China since 1949 table tennis players the other thing that happened is a letter came in via or message came in via the the Pakistan channel to Washington saying look we will accept an emissary coming to talk about issues including Taiwan and otherwise was recognition of time Taiwan being part of China was no longer a precondition and so Nixon sent back a message saying terrific I will I will send a high-level emissary and I you know I want to come myself and then there was this wonderful moment and it's in the in the transcripts I think some with with President Nixon slightly plays with Henry Kissinger because clearly Kissinger was the person to go he's being in on it now he's been enthusiastically supporting it Nixon is getting a little bit fed up with Kissinger by this point I mean they always had a funny relationship and he's but Kissinger is being portrayed and all the press is this glamorous bachelor dashing about Washington and and you know he's on the cover of this magazine in that magazine and I think Nixon is just a bit fed up with this and so Nexus are slightly plays me so Henry who shall we send who do you think and what about Rockefeller Oh mr. president mr. president brilliant idea but Rockefeller I don't you know he wouldn't do what you tell him okay what about what about George Bush this is George Bush Senior who was then ambassador at the UN mr. president i he's too soft too soft i would well you're probably right Henry I know said Nixon what about Thomas Dewey elder statesman great idea mr. president but he's been dead for three months so at this point you can see what's happening s'en says okay Henry I think you better go well off Kissinger goes his famous secret trip all kept very very secret and I think rightly I mean sometimes the parshat of the enthusiasm for secrecy that both President Nixon and Henry Kissinger had I think sometimes acted against them but I think in this case they were absolutely right to keep it secret because if the press had got wind of it the Chinese would have been spooked it might well not have happened so off Kissinger goes he's in Pakistan on what is meant to be a ordinary fact-finding trip it is said that he has got sick he'd picked up something in Delhi it is said which incidentally infuriated the Indians who already thought that the United States was too favorable to Pakistan and he was going to cancel all engagements and go away to the hills for the weekend and that night at rope India put three in the morning car drives up a shortish man wearing a floppy hat and dark glasses jumps out and runs up the steps of a Pakistan International Airlines there happened to be a correspondent for Reuters there the big news agency and he called over policemen said the correspond was seeing his mother off on a trip and he called the police went over and said what's going on here and the policeman pulled himself up and said oh that's mr. Kissinger going on a secret trip to China sir and really one of the scoops of the century I think and so the Reuters correspondent - to the teletype I think they still use teletype in those days sent back to London Kissinger has gone to China and in London apparently they've gotten a bit of paper and they said Oh Lord he's been drinking again and so they didn't publish it anyway you know the rest of the story Kissinger went it was agreed that Nixon would be invited they tried to hammer out the communique they were finally going to - - they would have at the end of the Nixon visit very tough negotiations over Taiwan and in the end what they were going to decide to do was agree that each saw it differently and the Chinese never made a firm commitment but they gave I think at least the sense that they wouldn't use force to try and reunite Taiwan with China we've waited said Joe and wife of 50 years we can wait a few more years you know for this to happen they talked about Vietnam but the Chinese were very non-committal both during Kissinger's visit and then when Nixon was there saying really this is between you two people and we suggest you sorted out with them and they talked around the Soviet Union the Chinese didn't really want to talk to directly about it but every soften they said our northern neighbor or people who are difficult and there was a sense the Americans certainly tried to give the reassurance that they would support the Chinese if they got into difficulties with the with the Soviet Union Nixon himself went as you all know in February 1972 and I think some of us some of the two young to remember but some of us will remember that trip because it was extraordinary it was extraordinary to even see China because it was a mysterious world it was a world that we hadn't seen it was a world that was closed off to us Canada had just the year before established relations with China and we had one correspondent event so we had some sort of sense but I think for most of us in Canada but certain the United States this was still an unknown country I mean the image that a lot of the American journalists use and Nixon himself used was going to the other side of the Moon and I think that was what it was like to see the pictures of Tiananmen Square to see the pictures of Nixon on the great wall to see pictures of Nixon in the Forbidden City to see Joanne Y and Nixon toasting each other's peoples I mean this was absolutely extraordinary what came out of that visit I think was nothing terribly concrete at the time but what came out of it was was the tremendous symbolism I mean I think everybody knew that a new era had opened in the relationship between China and the United States that things weren't gonna fall smoothly but they were not going to go back to what they had been things was somehow different I mean I think symbols can often be very important in international relations and I think this was a hugely important visit what it did was open the door and that that that was it not yet lead to full relations not lead to the extraordinary trading and other sorts of relationships that we see today but it opened a door that door remained only partly open for about five years five to six years after the visit partly because of Watergate Nixon was not able to consolidate what he had done and the ensuing turmoil in the United States because of that the court that the crisis over that but partly also cos Maya was sick and no longer able really to take control of things and there was a very complicated power struggle around him before and after his death and so it really wasn't until the late 1970s that things calmed down in both countries enough for momentum to be picked up again and in in in the People's Republic of China but Deng Xiaoping reimagine as the key power after 1978 and he was committed to opening China up to trying to undo the damages of isolation and the Cultural Revolution and you had in the United States Jimmy Carter President Jimmy Carter coming into office who was also committed to trying to build on that first opening and so it wasn't until 1979 you got full diplomatic relations being established but then of course things really took off with the results that we see today I mean I forget how many American tourists and other visitors now visit China every year I think it's something like 800,000 and I have no idea how many Chinese come to the United States but I mentioned it's very high indeed it's a trading relationship it's an economic relationship it's it's it's a strategic relationship and I would argue that really it was Nixon who made it possible in the famous words of the Star Trek who says that someone says there is an ancient proverb only Nixon could go to China thank you dr. Spock yeah thank you thanks very much a professional mcmillan would enjoy taking your questions please raise your hand and I'll bring the microphone to you I'll begin by a swatch you know you are in person very much like the book a wonderful storyteller well thank you not only it's the content but your style is wonderful if only President Nixon could have gone to China could anyone other than Henry Kissinger been his emissary ah good question could entering anyone other than Henry Kissinger I think Kissinger was absolutely ideal for it I don't think the Secretary of State William Rogers could have done it I think he was he was an extremely good lawyer but by all accounts a thoroughly decent person but not the sort of negotiator that Kissinger was I mean when I read that the transcripts are all there pretty much of their discussions and what struck me as I read through them was the sheer stamina that you need to be a really good negotiator you can never let anything go because of course this he in negotiations is when you're absolutely exhausted at 2:00 in the morning and these often went on the Chinese love to negotiate late at night and they'd love to throw things in just at the last minute when they knew the American plane was ready to go yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a good technique but you know that's the ability not to miss a little detail you know when Joe and I would say oh there's just one little thing you know we wanted to mention Kissinger was extraordinary I mean I really had such admiration for his his skill as a negotiator his intelligent he could hold all this stuff in his mind I he is amazing because he came out of the academic world really with very little grounding no training as a diplomat I talked to someone who was Canadian ambassador in Washington and he who knew Kissinger Ono's Kissinger very well and he said he's the only person I've ever known who became a diplomat so on the go he said you know to be a diplomat takes a lot of training and you spend years of learning how to do it I don't mean the sort of formal stuff about how to you know present your credentials and stuff but how actually to really do hard negotiations I mean you think of how long it takes Labor lawyers to become good negotiators you know it is not something you can just pick up and you can't just read a manual on it Kissinger was extraordinary and of course he was also and is very very bright and once he decided and as he did early on that Nixon was in fact very serious about the opening to China he educated himself I mean he borrowed books he had in people he talked to people and he really learned a lot so I I would have trouble thinking of anyone else who could have done it with the right combination of skill toughness when it was needed ability doesn't see what the other side were thinking I mean I don't say everything he did was was was above reproach I think there are real question marks about the extent to which he went to reassure the Chinese handing over top secret intelligence about what the Soviets were up to you know this this may have been a mistake it's it's certainly debatable but I find it very hard to think of anyone else who could have done it I must say hello greetings University of Toronto graduate here oh nice to meet you question about Moscow you mentioned the Machiavelli and I certainly thought at the time that Nixon was using divide and conquer against the Chinese and the Russians almost every American Air Base has captured Russian equipment from Vietnam is there any evidence that while Beijing couldn't lean on a Hanoi that maybe Moscow had something to do with it because the Paris conference came the next year I'm sorry the the Soviets of course when what Nixon and Kissinger both had this idea which I think is is really debatable that you could link things so that if the Soviets wanted say more trade with one to buy American wheat for example or they wanted access to American technology Soviets want us would understand that what the Americans wanted as a quid pro quo was Soviets to use their influence with North Vietnam and the Soviets never saw it like that I mean the Soviets put things into different boxes if we can cause trouble for the US and Vietnam fine we'll talk to them about things without linking them the Soviets weren't prepared to put pressure on North Vietnam you know from their point of view it's rather like the Americans later felt about Afghanistan you know Vietnam was tying down the United States it was weakening the United States so much the better for the Soviet Union and so the Soviet Union continued to send huge shipments of weapons down there's an interesting sidelight here they sent them down by ah they sent them by boat of course into Haiphong her but they often sent that by train through China and the North Vietnamese used to collect complain bitterly that when the boxcars came the Chinese had taken a tithe they'd usually taken about ten percent of all the weapons and kept them so there's very real complaints but the Soviet the Soviets were not prepared to put pressure on and the Chinese weren't either in fact the Chinese stepped up their aid to the two of the North Vietnamese after Nixon's visit I mean they want to make it quite clear they weren't reneging on their their obligations to a fellow communist power even though they couldn't stand the North Vietnamese they nevertheless felt obliged to support them I in kissinger's memoirs white house years he gives an account of their relationship that developed with China do you agree that it's his account is accurate or did he give his role more prominence and undermine Nixon's contribution and what was accurate about what was it's hard to tell my sense is that he did give his role more prominence you know that happens I mean we all do that you know we're part of something great in the past and we want to say that yes we were right in there you know we were very important my own sense it's not just the memoirs it's the interviews he's given since and of course he has the advantage over Nixon and having lived longer no I seriously I mean in in terms of history he goes on talking about this and he takes credit I think for the China initiative he certainly supported it once he realized Nixon was serious but I really think if you're going to give credit it goes to Nixon and Kissinger I think doesn't he doesn't lie in his memoirs but he gives a particular interpretation to things and he certainly I interviewed him once and it was just art might have been reading about it and I just read this whole thing you know what makes Kissinger comes down the hall and says I think the president's lost his mind and won't you know once go to Red China and I said mr. Kissinger we you and Nixon always on the same wavelength and he said absolutely absolutely well perhaps he was right but it seems to me that if you're looking at initiation I really think it's Nixon because you can see Nixon sinking in the 1960s Kissinger says almost nothing I mean I've looked at what he was writing in the sixties he says almost nothing about China I mean I think he just wasn't looking at it he was very much focused and you think of his training in his own background you know he was very much looking at the balance of power in Europe and I think he just wasn't interested I don't think he went to Taiwan until after his trip to China in 71 he hadn't traveled much in Asia he didn't have a Nixon it traveled widely everyone but had traveled a lot in Asia he knew a lot of the Asian leaders personally and Kissinger didn't at that stage have that relationship so I would my own sense without wanting to be I don't want to suggest that he's telling lies but that he is perhaps playing up his own role and perhaps downplaying Nixon's role in this hey man I'm user-centered Daly in Las Sendas Maria Potter and I have one question that you mentioned in the early time the China look the China Lobby lobbying are very powerful I want to know who are doing China Lobby at that time and why they do that thank you the China Lobby when China during the Civil War after the first second world war the United States was very keen if possible to broker a ceasefire between the Guam and dong the Nationalists and the Chinese Communists didn't work general Marshall went out that tried to get a ceasefire it lasted for a very short period of time and the United States although it didn't support the Kuomintang wholeheartedly clearly would have preferred that they had won the Civil War rather than the Chinese Communists and there were a number of people in the United States who argued that the Truman administration had essentially committed a fact of folly if not treason and not throwing huge amounts of support into the globe min dong in fact the United States didn't have the support to throw at that time and the US military were very you know did not want to get involved in a ground war in Asia and American attention was much more concerned with Europe where things were very very tense with the Soviets in the late 1940s so what you had with people United States who argued that the mistakes have been made in China that the United States should have prevented the Communist from winning I don't think it was actually within the capacity of the United States to prevent the Gorman Dunn from losing in the Communist from winning I think that was something the Chinese have settled for themselves and I think it wasn't it was beyond the capacity of any outside power to have made a difference one way or the other that's my view but there were people Henry Luce who was the publisher of what in those days was sort of hugely important print media in those days was really the main way it was really this was before television news became so important so oh of course no internet Henry Luce was the publisher and owner of tie of Time magazine Life magazine Fortune magazine hugely influential there were people like a national who was the widow of an American Air Force general who'd been involved in working for for Chiang kai-shek the nationalist leader there were various Republican tent attended they tended to be Republicans more than Democrats of a various Republican Congressmen kau Mundt I think who came from Nebraska if I'm not mistaken and someone else South Dakota sorry I apologize to anyone who comes from South Dakota and there was another one Walter sorry my mind is going but these were the people of influence both in Congress and in the media and in sort of business circles and elsewhere and so they'll call collectively the China Lobby they didn't call themselves that I think they called themselves the committee of 1 million they had they had another name but they would they were organized they acted effectively as a lobby and so if there was suggestions which you know from time to time someone would say you know perhaps we need to move beyond this deep freeze and actually talked to the People's Republic of China and the lobbying would be very vociferous and they're big questions in Congress and there'd be complaints but by the late 1960s a lot of the guiding lights had had died and had disappeared from the scene in the lobby itself was had pretty much fizzled out and so the the impetus behind it had gone and there wasn't a younger generation coming along to to fill the shoes of those who'd founded it so that's what the China Lobby was here with the table tennis and then his visit and he said 73 certainly mouths health and then the Vietnam War and then his Watergate and all that yeah we're distractions from what would Nixon based on the record and what you found what would what was on his agenda a to accomplish that he finished his term I think had he finished it to him with China I mean I think he was very keen he didn't go back himself in 73 Kissinger did and because I think he may have gone twice but I think the Nexen was very keen to move towards a more formal relationship if fully full diplomatic recognition I mean what they had was what was called an office allegation in each capital but I think Nixon was very keen to move further on it and it simply didn't happen I think he would like to have had perhaps more of a military and strategic relationship directed of course against the Soviet Union I don't think he was going to get that I think the Chinese were very cautious on that one and you can understand why they would be cautious I don't think he was that interested in at that stage in trade and commerce in fact Nixon Kissinger at one point said he because he Kissinger liked to cut the State Department out of serious negotiations and he said we'll leave the State Department people to talk about boring things like trade and cultural exchanges which is ironic when you think of it considering how important the the trade relationship is now but I think what Nixon would have done was try to deepen the relationship at a political and strategic level and and of course he was enabled I mean once Watergate started you know he became very seriously distracted by that and so a whole range of things that he wanted to do in foreign policy I mean he he continued to work with the Soviets but I think his capacity and his attention was serious and of mind in 76 I lived in Singapore when Mao died and I was talking with one of the members of Lee Kuan Yew's government at that time and he said that in his understanding and working with the Chinese government that Chou Enlai was really the brains behind it all that Mao Zedong was definitely the face the moving face of the communist movement since the long march in 27 and the the the civil war in 49 but that in his opinion in dealing with the two men that Jo and I was really the person who had the the structure the mentality the the diplomacy to do everything behind the scenes he was a great number-two man but really the brains behind everything what would be your response to that Jo and I was certainly very clever he did carry out the negotiations but really I think the historical record shows that he didn't do anything without my say-so he was subordinate and dependence warden it too independent on Mao to the extent that when he was sick with prostate cancer he could not have an operation till Mao said he could you know he had survived and in the brutal internal politics of the Chinese Communist Party basically by throwing his lot in with Milan supporting him and so Joe and I would never have taken the initiative in doing anything without my say-so and so although Mao didn't mob did in fact get involved with the details I mean it was Mao who said invite the table tennis team to come to China it had to go to Mao and he made the decision very late at night it was Mao who said okay we will push this ahead and we will have Kissinger come to China will have Nixon come to China so Mao set I would say miles set the policy and he set the great strategic policy but sometimes also dealt with the details but Jo and I carried it out Jo and I was was extremely intelligent and a great negotiator I mean he and Kissinger were a real match for each other but he would not have done a thing without my say-so yeah you just didn't do it if you wanted to survive

Channel: Richard Nixon Foundation

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Keywords: Richard, Nixon, Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda, Orange County, President, United States, America, USA, CA, OC, Travel, Education, Learn, History, Government, School, Library, NARA, Milhouse, Vote, Washington DC, West Coast, POW, Lecture, Book, Keynote, Presentation, Margaret MacMillan, National Archives

Id: ECd_fNnZDjI

Length: 51min 46sec (3106 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2012