Nixon landed in Beijing on a gray winter morning 50 years ago on Monday. But the relationship has never - and will never - be easy.” Now they are mainly in the security realm. “Perhaps 50 years ago the reasons were mainly economic. “The U.S.-China relationship has always been contentious but one of necessity,” said Oriana Skylar Mastro, a China expert at Stanford University. Despite repeated Chinese disavowals, America worries that the democratic-led world that triumphed over the Soviet Union could be challenged by the authoritarian model of a powerful and still-rising China. The Cold War is long over, but on both sides there are fears a new one could be beginning. The relationship between China and the United States was always going to be a challenge, and after half a century of ups and downs, is more fraught than ever. President Richard Nixon flew into communist China’s center of power for a visit that, over time, would transform U.S.-China relations and China’s position in the world in ways that were unimaginable at the time. Print.īEIJING (AP) - At the height of the Cold War, U.S. Business & Finance Click to expand menu.presidents to apply the principle of realpolitik to their own international dealings. But, Nixon’s visit did prove to be a watershed moment in American foreign policy–it paved the way for future U.S. Further, the budding U.S.-China alliance had no measurable impact on U.S.-Soviet relations. The Chinese seemed to have little influence on North Vietnam’s negotiating stance, and the Vietnam War continued to drag on until U.S. Though this move helped revive Nixon’s sagging popularity, and contributed to his win in the 1972 election, it did not produce the short-term results for which Kissinger had hoped. Nixon undertook his historic “journey for peace” in 1972, beginning a long and gradual process of normalizing relations between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Kissinger called such foreign policy ‘realpolitik,’ or politics that favored dealing with other powerful nations in a practical manner rather than on the basis of political doctrine or ethics. Also, more importantly in the long run, Kissinger thought the Chinese might become a powerful ally against the Soviet Union, America’s Cold War enemy. Kissinger aimed to use the promise of closer relations and increased trade possibilities with China as a way to put increased pressure on North Vietnam-a Chinese ally-to reach an acceptable peace settlement. His national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, saw a way out: Since China’s break with the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, the Chinese were desperate for new allies and trade partners. Two years after promising the American people “peace with honor,” Nixon was as entrenched in Vietnam as ever. government launched massive investigations into possible communist subversion in America.īy 1971, a number of factors pushed Nixon to reverse his stance on China. His political reputation was built on being strongly anti-communist, and he was a major figure in the post- World War II Red Scare, during which the U.S. Since the Communists came to power in China in 1949, Nixon had been one of the most vociferous critics of American efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese. Nixon was not always so eager to reach out to China. The statement marked a dramatic turning point in U.S.-China relations, as well as a major shift in American foreign policy. During a live television and radio broadcast, President Richard Nixon stuns the nation by announcing that he will visit communist China the following year.
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