Nixon's Coup: To Peking for Peace

It was a very moving occasion. It is not often one can say he has participated in turning a new page in history.

--Henry Kissinger

THE words seem slightly grandiloquent in a McLuhanesque age when all is known at once, the future long discounted, and uninformed options line up by the numbers. Yet the words were justified. In just 90 seconds of television time, President Richard Nixon last week made an announcement that altered many of the major assumptions and patterns of postwar diplomacy. The President would go to Peking to meet with China's Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou En-lai before next May. The arrangements had been made by his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, during a secret meeting with Chou in Peking the week before.

The aim of the meeting, said the President, "is to seek the normalization of relations between the two countries and also to exchange views on questions of concern to the two sides." The deceptively modest formulation brought an instant and exuberant response. "This is a turning point in world history--I cannot remember anything in my lifetime more exciting or more encouraging," declared England's Lord Caradon, former Ambassador to the United Nations. "This is one of the great moments in the world's history," echoed The Netherlands' Joseph Luns, new Secretary-General of NATO.

Nixon and Kissinger, who had helicoptered together from the Western White House at San Clemente to make the announcement in the same Burbank studio where the slapstick Laugh-In show is taped, knew that the understated declaration had startled the world. With four aides, they skipped off in high spirits to Perino's, a fashionable Los Angeles restaurant, where Nixon gleefully shook hands with bystanders on the sidewalk and his party celebrated inside with a $40 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild (1961) during dinner. Happy, too, was Kissinger; at the height of a brilliant career, he enjoys a global spotlight and an influence that most professors only read about in their libraries.

New Perspectives

Nixon's elation was appropriate. Unless some unforeseen and unlikely event aborts his trip, he will become the first Western head of state to visit Peking since Mao Tse-tung's revolutionaries drove Chiang Kai-shek's government out of power and off the mainland in 1949. He will thus dramatically shatter nearly a quarter-century of total official estrangement between the two powers. Certainly, that refusal to deal directly with each other has been blindly unrealistic, and in a sense Nixon's overture was only a move long overdue; it was high time for both nations to change their stance. Yet Nixon acted with determination and courage. The mere announcement of a summit meeting throws relationships among many nations, large and small, into wholly new perspectives.

Above all, the meeting could lead to a resolution of the long and bloody nightmare of the Viet Nam War. The meeting could help solve--however slowly --other specific problems that have kept China and the U.S. from dealing civilly with each other: the status of Chiang's government on Taiwan, the admission of Peking to the United Nations, the establishment of diplomatic relations. The unprecedented 16 hours of reasonable and unpolemic talks between Kissinger and Chou and the resulting invitation to Nixon suggested that some progress had already been made on most of those topics. Otherwise neither side could hold much expectation of achieving warmer relations at the summit level.

Far more personally for Richard Nixon, the embattled U.S. President stands a chance to emerge as a peacemaker --in time for a needed boost in popularity before he faces a tough re-election campaign in the fall of 1972. It would be ironic--and yet appropriate --if the man who launched a political career largely on the basis of his fervent anti-Communism were to cap it by establishing himself as a leader who helped move the capitalist and Communist worlds toward a historic rapprochement. The shift in Nixon's attitudes has been gradual but dazzling. During the Korean War, he urged the bombing of China; less than two years ago, Peking leaders assailed Nixon as "a cunning and crafty swindler and a murderer." Yet he soon may be applauded in the streets of Peking, walk through the Gate of Heavenly Peace and dine with Mao and Chou.

To be sure, much could still go wrong. There is no certainty that any of the high expectations will be achieved. Obviously, unforeseen events could prevent the meeting; Dwight Eisenhower's 1960 summit with Russia was thwarted when the Communists downed an American U-2 reconnaissance plane, and Lyndon Johnson's similar hopes were dashed in 1968 by the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. The biggest threat to Nixon's trip would seem to be the uncertain status of the Viet Nam War. If the U.S. troop withdrawal program lags or the U.S. finds it necessary to resume massive bombing of North Viet Nam, the Chinese may renege on their invitation.

If the trip does come off, there is always the possibility of a fundamental --or even temperamental--disagreement that could deliver a crushing blow to the world's newly aroused hopes. Warns Edwin O. Reischauer, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan: "The American people must not expect too much too fast. We are still too hung up on

China--either we hate her or we love her; we respond either with hostility or excitement."

Responding with more excitement than hostility, the rest of the world may take weeks or months to absorb the diplomatic turn and simmer down. Taiwan, of course, felt sorely threatened by the new U.S. coziness with Chinese Communism, fearing--with good reason --that its interests would be sacrificed. Ambassador James Shen, complaining publicly of "a shabby deal," lodged a strong private protest in Washington; a Taipei statement said that Nationalist China was still determined "to recover the Chinese mainland" and would never "yield to any pressure or violence." Japan, which sees itself as the dominant resident power in Asia, expressed public approval but private reservations about China's implicit challenge to its ties to the U.S. South Korea, still facing Communist troops to its north, also protested--and proclaimed a day of mourning for Taiwan. Obviously worried but gamely approving were South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu and Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam, who said: "We did not expect the [Nixon] visit, but one day we have to normalize relations even with our foes." Moscow, the power that stands to lose most from any collaboration between its two principal antagonists, so far has remained ominously quiet. Tass played the story straight, offering no comment.

Yet most world capitals were ecstatic. In Paris, France-Soir bannered the announcement LE COUP DE NIXON and declared that Nixon's decision "turns the international situation topsy-turvy" and "may soon bring peace without capitulation or humiliation for anyone." Rome's Italian state radio called the news clamoroso, while South Africa's Johannesburg Star hailed the development as "the most needed move forward in the world's painful crawl toward assured peace."

Worldwide speculation soared over the timing of the Nixon-Chou agreement, the amazing success in keeping all the arrangements so secret and the possible concessions each side may have made in order to make the Peking summit possible. U.S. officials declined to illuminate these shadows. Only a dozen men in the entire Administration had been aware of the plans to send Kissinger to Peking. They included Secretary of State William Rogers and several of his assistants, Kissinger and three of his aides, and Ellsworth Bunker, Ambassador to Saigon. Among those kept in the dark were Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Vice President Spiro Agnew.

Switching Signals

The planning for the Kissinger trip began, in a sense, during the opening weeks of Richard Nixon's presidency. Quietly and methodically, the President started a painstaking reversal of diplomatic signals in an effort to show Peking that the U.S. wanted to normalize relations. He was clearly prepared for this move; as long ago as one year before his election, he had indicated his departure from his earlier anti-Peking stand. In a Foreign Affairs article, he asserted: "Any American policy toward Asia must come urgently to grips with the reality of China." Now, in his overseas trips as President, Nixon made a point of telling national leaders that he wished to open a dialogue with the Chinese. At one time or another, he used the French and the Canadians as intermediaries. Most useful of all was Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, the only Communist chieftain who gets along with both Russia and China.

The Administration made significant changes in its public announcements. In the summer of 1969, Secretary of State Rogers gave a series of speeches in which he urged an easing of tensions with China. For the first time since the Communist takeover of China, a presidential document in 1970 referred to the "People's Republic of China" instead of "Communist" or "Red" China. The President used the phrase again in a toast to President Ceausescu. The Administration sought to make it clear that "we were not bound by previous history." That meant in Indochina too. Perhaps the most crucial message delivered to Peking was that Nixon wanted out of Viet Nam.

Sly Aside

At first China did not respond. But by late 1969, there were clear signs of Chinese interest. For one thing, China agreed to resume the Warsaw talks, which had opened in 1955 to explore avenues toward peaceful coexistence. Even when the U.S. invaded Cambodia, the talks, though suspended, were not cut off. Peking's response was exceptionally restrained, considering its past responses to American military moves. Nor did the invasion of Laos unduly upset the Chinese. By this time, it was the North Vietnamese who were disturbed, reacting with alarm to the mildness shown by their ally. Chou En-lai led a delegation to Hanoi to reassure them.

The pace of change picked up dramatically last April. The American Ping Pong team was invited to Peking; the U.S. relaxed trade barriers on nonstrategic goods. Old China Hand Edgar Snow returned from a trip to Peking with a piece of news that was published in a LIFE article: Chairman Mao wanted a visit by Nixon, who had said in an earlier press conference that he wished to go to China. In a sly aside to Snow, Mao suggested that, for political reasons, Nixon would probably want to come some time after May 1972. Actually, he hopes to go very early next year.

It was during last April that Nixon plunged into the intensive study culminating in the Kissinger trip. Total secrecy was imposed in order to give both sides ample room for maneuver and a chance to escape from the enterprise without embarrassment. For fear of possible leaks, Nixon and Kissinger did not work on the project in the Oval Office, where the President sees many visitors daily, but in the more secluded Lincoln Room. Though China experts were aware of a major policy review, they were kept in the dark. In fact, the community of Sinologists grumbled that Nixon was not properly following up his contacts with Peking.

Great Impact

Thus Kissinger was able to embark on his diplomatic adventure--a five-nation trip ostensibly related to the war in Viet Nam--and to fly into Peking from Pakistan without arousing suspicion, while pretending to be ill with a stomach ailment (see box, page 13). He arrived in Peking fully aware that Chou was more than willing to see Nixon. But just what the Kissinger-Chou talks produced that convinced both sides that they would benefit from a summit meeting remains one of the mysteries surrounding the affair. Uncertainty that matters would go smoothly was undoubtedly a reason for all of the secrecy; if they had not, the resulting publicity could have produced a disillusionment that would have prevented another attempt later.

The extraordinary Nixon-Kissinger diplomatic venture is certain to have a great impact on at least three specific issues:

THE WAR. In his announcement, the President did not mention Viet Nam, but it is inconceivable that his trip is not related to a potential settlement. To that end, the mere opening of direct communication with Peking could prove immensely helpful. Even if it wanted to, China could not force Hanoi to negotiate realistically toward a settlement that would be face-saving for both sides. Hanoi clings stubbornly to its independence and can always look toward Moscow to fill in military supplies that Peking might cut off. Yet China remains influential because of its current and past help to Hanoi in the war. China watchers are increasingly convinced that Peking's leaders are tired of this drain on their time, money and materiel and are eager to concentrate on building their economy--and confronting some 400,000 Soviet troops poised near their borders. Moreover, they no longer fear that the U.S. will emerge from the war in any position that would seriously embarrass the Communist forces.

It is likely Kissinger assured Chou that the U.S. would stick to its withdrawal plans and might well have ceased all active combat missions by the time Nixon goes to Peking. In return, Chou may have agreed to press Hanoi to seek a settlement short of a takeover of South Viet Nam--in the confidence that this would eventually happen anyway. Chou probably promised Kissinger that China would be willing to take part in a new Geneva-style conference to seek a negotiated settlement of the entire Southeast Asia conflict, thus taking the initiative away from the U.S.S.R. Chou conveyed such a willingness to a visiting Australian official last week.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, the peace talks were making little headway. Chief U.S. Negotiator David Bruce, who is to be replaced by Career Diplomat Wil liam Porter in August, argued that the seven-point Communist proposal was too vague, and asked for clarification of some of the points. Though no progress was yet evident at the conference table, North Vietnamese diplomats elsewhere dropped hints that they might be willing to tolerate for a number of years an independent if neutral government in South Viet Nam as part of a political settlement. So far, the U.S. is unwilling to sacrifice the duly elected Thieu. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong played down Peking's notion of a multination Geneva conference, insisting that the way to a settlement could be found in the Paris talks. Their attitude suggests that, just possibly, Hanoi might now come to terms more speedily in order to keep to a minimum China's influence on any outcome.

Not Found Wanting

One clue that new moves toward a negotiated end to the war are under way came from a high U.S. Administration official after the Nixon announcement. Said he: "I have insisted through all periods that in our judgment, the surest, most reliable and most desirable way of ending the war was through negotiations. I maintained this position when it was being ridiculed and when people said there was absolutely no possibility of negotiations. The President, who has been dedicated to this negotiating process from the beginning, against all odds, is not going to be found wanting when the whole record in pursuing avenues of peace is plain."

TAIWAN. President Nixon clearly indicated the U.S. treaty commitment to Taiwan in his TV announcement when he advised that "our action in seeking a new relationship with the People's Republic of China will not be at the expense of our old friends." Yet, while the U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan is legally binding and U.S. emotional ties are strong, the Chiang government's importance in world affairs is small. The pretense that Chiang is the leader of China has long been senseless. The U.S. cannot ignore the fact that Taiwan has a thriving free economy and one of the largest non-Communist armed forces in Asia. Nevertheless, America's practical military and political stake in the island is strictly limited. Recently the Defense Department suggested that nuclear weapons to be banned from Okinawa when it reverts to Japanese control might be transferred to Taiwan; other Washington officials dismissed this idea as politically impractical and militarily unnecessary. If required, these weapons could more readily be shifted to Guam.

But China considers Taiwan its highest-priority problem--so the basic conflict is serious. The most likely solution is that the U.S. will agree to withdraw its insignificant force of some 9,000 military personnel from Taiwan, as China insists. The U.S. has long since stopped any regular naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait. It will not renounce its treaty obligation, and Peking could quietly agree not to attack the island, at least for the near future. This would amount to what has been euphemistically called "a one-China policy--but not now." The Chinese are not likely to attack Taiwan anyway; any such attempt would be a bloody and costly venture. China hopes that Chiang's regime will simply wither after the Generalissimo's death. Whatever the tactic, the long-range future of a non-Communist Chinese government on Taiwan is not bright. U.S. ADMISSION AND RECOGNITION. Bluntly,

Washington now considers Taiwan's position in the U.N. expendable and untenable. The U.S. is unlikely to vote for the admission of mainland China to the United Nations or the expulsion of Taiwan from the Security Council. But it can reasonably drop its insistence that China's admission is an important question requiring approval by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. As a merely procedural question, admission would require only a majority vote. Since a majority (51 to 49) voted last year to admit China and that sentiment is clearly growing, the outcome seems certain. Taiwan has threatened to leave the U.N. should that happen. If it were clear that Taiwan would not do so, the U.S. could vote against--but not fight--an alternative Albanian resolution that calls for a simple majority vote on substituting Peking for Taiwan. Under these circumstances, it would likely carry. The U.S. decision on what it will do is expected to be announced this week--and was undoubtedly revealed to Chou by Kissinger.

The U.S. is one of 63 nations that still recognize Taiwan as the legal government of China. When Nixon meets Chou and Mao, he will--in effect, if not technically--be recognizing the Peking government. Some continuing diplomatic tie seems inevitable if the talks go well. It could begin below the ambassadorial level--but with skilled diplomats in the posts--to avoid immediate protocol problems. The difference between this and full-scale recognition would be mainly illusory.

How Others See It

As difficult and significant as those issues may be--and any one of them could conceivably disrupt a Nixon-Chou dialogue and negate the long and patient maneuvering to achieve a working relationship--a more important and less fathomable question looms. What of the Soviet Union? It is a far more formidable force in world affairs than China, and it must distrust any degree of Sino-American cooperation. The main motivation for China's new outward diplomatic push seems to be its desire to join the big-power chess game and check its glowering Communist neighbor, which last week made its naval presence known in the Indian Ocean by sending a warship into Singapore's harbor. The most evident thing that the U.S. is giving China is big-power status --well before it has developed the economy, technology or political muscle to merit it.

Kremlinologists are certain that Moscow factions are at odds over how to respond to Nixon's long reach toward the East. The hardliners, it is felt, are arguing that the U.S. has shown its true colors, cannot be trusted, so why seek Soviet-American agreements on strategic arms or accommodations with the West on Berlin or mutual troop reductions in Europe? With Chou scheduled to visit several Balkan countries, including Rumania, Yugoslavia and Albania, this fall, Moscow is expected to demand more discipline from its Eastern satellites so as to discourage any new drift toward China. The U.S. move may thus inadvertently make life tougher for some of the most independent-minded Communist leaders.

Yet in the main arena, the Kremlin's more practical and progressive leaders are expected to win out. Rather than withdraw and isolate itself as China did, the U.S.S.R. will probably resume its peace offensive and compete for influence in the West. These Soviet leaders consider arms limitations too advantageous to pass up. Besides, they have no desire to antagonize both China and the U.S. For them, the possibility of an eventual two-front war is unthinkable. The first real sign of which way the U.S.S.R. will go may come in the resumed SALT talks. An intriguing side issue is how long Peking can continue to accuse Moscow of cozying up to the U.S., while claiming for itself the role of the only pure Marxist foe of American imperialism. The Washington-Peking rapprochement may well disillusion the New Left everywhere; this could benefit Moscow in its ideological competition with Peking.

The impact on Japan is also a weighty U.S. consideration. While Japan's largest daily, Asahi Shimbun, called the Nixon trip "the diplomatic coup of the century," the Sato government was stunned that it had not been consulted by its friends on a matter so vital to its own backyard. Japan is still wary of its huge neighbor--and, in part, held back from more contacts with China by U.S. pressure. The Japanese government will only be able to look wistfully at the sight of a U.S. President in Peking, when leftist agitation makes it almost impossible for one to visit otherwise far friendlier Tokyo.

What does China gain from all this? A great deal, at little cost to itself. Certainly, Peking acquires a new aura as a skillful operator in world affairs, new strength and leverage in dealing with the Soviet Union. Chairman Mao, at 77 an aging revolutionary with limited years of power remaining, may be on the verge of a final ambition: to unite Taiwan and the mainland once more.

And what does Nixon stand to gain? At least an additional passage in the history books of this century. Conceivably a lasting reputation as the man who managed to help establish "a generation of peace." For the present, he has restored a sense of diplomatic initiative to the U.S. and won for himself greater freedom of maneuver by making it far harder for domestic war critics to attack him before the Peking trip. It could all blow up in disillusionment; the drastic shifting of international prisms could lead to a world even more out of balance and prone to conflict. But barring that possibility, Nixon has clearly improved his re-election chances. If he ends the war, as he promises--and scores even wider success in foreign affairs --he will have largely offset a generally poor performance in attacking the less spectacular problems of day-by-day life at home.

The View at Home

Most of the domestic response to Nixon's announcement last week was highly favorable. "I'm astounded, delighted and happy," said unusually ebullient Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield. "I applaud the President's imagination and judgment," declared one of Nixon's most persistent critics, Democratic Presidential Contender George McGovern. Republicans generally were just as enthusiastic. Senate Republican Whip Robert P. Griffin called the plan "a stunning and hopeful development." Only a few conservatives raised any initial protest. Colorado Republican Peter Dominick termed it a "disaster" and attacked summitry: "Roosevelt did it and we had Yalta; Kennedy did it and we had the Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crisis." Columnist William Buckley Jr. complained that "F.D.R. would have hesitated to go to Berlin to wine and dine with Adolf Hitler--but we are about to do that, and all the liberals who can't stand the Greek colonels are jumping for joy." The Rev. Carl McIntire, far-right chairman of the Viet Nam "March for Victory" committee, charged that Nixon "has abandoned all moral principles--it is like God and the devil having a high-level meeting."

Obviously some U.S. conservatives will fight a vocal rear-guard action for Chiang Kaishek. Ironically, the announcement of the Nixon-Chou meeting came during what Chiang's supporters in the U.S. had designated "Free China Week." But Nixon's anti-Communist credentials make him far less vulnerable than a liberal Democratic President would be. Besides, conservative critics of Nixon's move will probably have no practical outlet for their political frustrations. Apart from their total inexperience on the international scene, neither Ronald Reagan nor George Wallace could hope to challenge a Nixon who has settled or seems about to settle the war--and has in the past befriended countless conservatives on the issues of school integration and law-and-order. Some politicians do believe, however, that Vice President Spiro Agnew has been strengthened by Nixon's move. He tends to protect Nixon's right flank; he spoke out bluntly against Ping Pong diplomacy in April. Dumping him could hurt Nixon still more on the right, causing some in that constituency to sit out the election.

Why Nixon Acted

Nixon, the old Communist baiter, may yet do more than any other U.S. leader to rid the U.S. of an obsessive and restrictive fear of Communism. His motive was unassailable, whatever the personal political benefits. He perhaps expressed it best in a recent briefing of newspaper editors in Kansas City. China, Nixon argued, will one day be "an enormous economic power," and its continued isolation from international dialogue must be ended before it becomes a threat to peace. The Soviet Union cannot reach out to China now, Nixon said, "because of differences that at the present time seem to be irreconcilable; we were the only other power that could take those steps." Nixon also looked 15 or 20 years into the future: "Mainland China, outside the world community, completely isolated, with its leaders not in communication with world leaders, would be a danger to the whole world that would be unacceptable to us and unacceptable to others as well."

More personally, Nixon has recently talked often to his staff about how Chinese-American communities on the West Coast of the U.S. lifted themselves from poverty and were law-abiding. He speaks of the Chinese as the most "creative, industrious" people of Asia, and claims that those in mainland China will one day furnish a huge "reservoir of talent" for an "era of peace." Yes, they are Communists and therefore still adversaries--but that no longer seems an overriding or irredeemable fault to Richard Nixon. One of the lasting benefits of his imaginative odyssey to the Orient could be the assertion of an urgent truth: ideology is becoming less important than the need of the world's billions to live peaceably in an age when so many could die so swiftly.

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