Can Nixon’s 1971 analysis of China be helpful today? The country is very different from 55 years ago, but the American challenges could be just as important.
On June 9, 1971, Henry Kissinger arrived in Pakistan with a delegation. Something he had eaten must have disagreed with him for he retired to his room with an upset stomach. Or so his absence was explained to the delegates. In fact, he had slipped away to the airport for a flight to Beijing to meet Zhou Enlai and hammer out the basis for a new relationship with the People’s Republic of China, after 22 years of outright hostility, combat in Korea, confrontation in Vietnam.
Three days earlier on June 6 the president whom Kissinger served, Richard Nixon, delivered a speech in Kansas City to a group of Midwestern news media executives. In his remarks he outlined a five-power multipolar world that only now half a century later seems to be coming into existence.
Most commentary about the current multipolar global distribution of state power starts with the demise of the Soviet Union two decades later in the period 1990-1991, an event that left the United States to reign supreme and unilaterally – or so it seemed to the Neocon faction in Washington that produced the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) founded in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. The officially stated goal of the PNAC was to “promote American global leadership” now that Russia was out of the way. History soon revealed the extent of their misjudgment.
The PNAC think tank, which may be thought of as a well-endowed place of great minds where thinking tanks, lasted until 2006. It advocated using military force to overthrow governments (regime change) and primarily targeted the Middle East, Iraq and Iran (the main enemy) in particular in order “to shape new century favorable to American principles and interests” and to increase defense spending to promote “political and economic freedom abroad.” Rebuilding America’s Defenses [sic] was at the heart of the Project. Caution about plunging into military adventures, what HW Bush called the Vietnam syndrome, had to be “kicked.”
In 2009 Kristol and Kagan, having closed the PNAC, formed a new think tank called Foreign Policy Initiative which tacked on some fashionable verbiage like democracy and human rights. If they were embarrassed by the failure of the Iraq invasion they didn’t say. The Initiative was closed in 2017.
In contrast, in a famous article, Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War, [The Atlantic Monthly; August 1990; Volume 266, No. 2; pages 35-50.] John Meirsheimer of the University of Chicago argued that the Soviet presence had acted as a counterbalancing force, if not an equal one, that had imposed a degree of restraint on Washington’s ambitions.
Current analysts, including Professor Mearsheimer, who spoke of multipolarity himself, seem to have overlooked the remarkable predictions that President Nixon had made two decades before the fall of the Soviet Union. So let’s take a look at the (occasionally imperfect) transcript of some of those remarks that he made back in 1971, knowing full well the secret mission that his national security deputy was about to undertake.
[After World War Two] “we were number one in the world, military, with no one who even challenged us because we had a monopoly on atomic weapons. We also at that point, of course, were number one economically by all odds…
“Now 25 years having passed, let’s look at the situation today and what it may be five years from now or 10 years from now … in the next decade, we are going to see changes that may be even greater than what have occurred in the last 25 years… Instead of just America, being number one in the world from an economic standpoint, the preeminent world power, and instead of it being just two superpowers, when we think in economic terms and economic potentiality there are five great power centers in the world today… There is of course the United States of America. There is second western Europe – Western Europe with Britain in the common market. That means 300 million of the most advanced people in the world … that is a new factor in the world scene…
“Then in the Pacific, looking also at free world countries, we have a resurgent Japan… Just 20 years ago Japan produced 5,000,000 tons of steel a year; this year they will produce 100,000,000 tons; 2 years from now, Japan will produce more steel than the United States of America.
“Now we return to the other two superpowers, economic super powers I will say for the moment. The Soviet Union of course first comes to mind. Looking at the Soviet Union. We are entering a period, which only time will tell may be successful in terms of creating a very new relationship or a very different relationship than we had previously.
“I referred to the need for negotiation rather than confrontation when I made my inaugural speech, we have been negotiating; we have made some progress in negotiating. The important thing is that we are negotiating rather than confronting in many areas of the world where confrontation could lead to explosion. Whether it is on the limitation nuclear arms, whether it is on the central issue of Europe, or whether it is on the mid east, negotiations are going on… we must recognize that the Soviet Union will continue to be a very potent, powerful, and aggressive competitor of the USA. . . and ironically, and this is also true of Mainland China I will point out in a moment – as we have more and more success on the negotiation, front, as for example with the Soviet Union…
“Mainland China is of course a very different situation first in terms of the economic capacity of the present time, a pretty good indication of where it is, is that Japan with 100 million people, produces more than Mainland China with 800 million people. But that should not mislead us, and it gives us and should give none of the potential competitors in world markets of Mainland China any sense of satisfaction that it will always be that way. Because when we see the Chinese people – and I have seen them all over the world and some of you have too, whether in Hong Kong or Taiwan Singapore Bangkok, any of the great cities, Manila, where Chinese are – they are creative. They are productive. They are one of the most capable people in the world. And 800 million Chinese are going to be, inevitably, an enormous economic power with all of that means in terms of what they could be in other areas if they move in that direction.
“That is why I felt that it was essential that this administration take the first steps toward ending the isolation of Mainland China from the world community. We had to take those steps because the Soviet Union could not because of differences that they have had at the present time seem to be irreconcilable, we are the only other power that could take those steps.…
“What we have done is simply open the door – open the door for travel, open the door for trade. Now the question is whether there will be other doors open on their part, but at least the doors must be open . . .and the goal of US policy must be, in the long-term ending the isolation of Mainland China, and a normalization of our relations with Mainland China because, looking down the road – and let’s just look ahead 15 to 20 years – the United States could have a perfectly effective agreement with the Soviet Union for limitation of arms; and the danger of any confrontation there might’ve been almost totally removed,
“But Mainland China outside the world community, completely isolated, with the leaders not in communication with the world leaders, would be a danger to the whole world that would be unacceptable, unacceptable to us and to others as well. . . .This step must be taken now . . .as there is reciprocation on the other side.
“I again come back to the fundamental point: 800, million Chinese, open to the world, with all the communication and interchange of ideas and inevitably will occur, will become an economic force in the world of enormous potential.”
Note that Nixon uses only the term Mainland China, because officially it was Taiwan that Washington and the UN recognized as China under the name Republic of China. Thus, the correct name of China, People’s Republic of China (PRC), could not be spoken lest it allow the elite media audience to make inferences. Other terms like Red China go back to the civil war still officially ongoing; while using Communist China might have sounded too cold war, a concept the president was trying to avoid.
Media personnel though supposedly not on government tether, rarely used the correct name of China, though plain old “China” was safe enough after all. China is the name Nixon used in his October 1968 Foreign Affairs piece, Asia After Vietnam, which foreshadowed his 1971 talk with its key phrase “Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations.” [https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v01/d3]
Note further that when Nixon announces Kissinger’s visit to the nation he does use the correct name, The people’s Republic of China, and again when he reads the agreement of the two sides about his coming visit to China.
Of course these are not the first times. The name PRC was used in James Thompson’s 1966 testimony before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee; PRC was also occasionally even earlier in intelligence reports.
