Professionals Hour At The White House

November 24, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Richard Nixon 

RN and HAK: “partners in reliability, precision, and finesse.”

In yesterday’s edition of The Daily Beast, Leslie Gelb undresses the Obama White House, exposing the President’s recent Asian trip as “clumsy,” “displaying amateurishness,” and failing “to carve out America’s new leadership role” in “one of the world’s most dynamic regions.”

For Gelb,  such amateurishness can be attributed to the failure to  gauge the pulse of the region and prepare suitably for potential breakthroughs:

Presidents take trips like this one only when they need breakthroughs and accomplishments on certain issues that can’t be agreed on without the pressure of an impending presidential visit. In fact, most presidents wouldn’t even commit to trips abroad without knowing that key deals would be finally agreed on and announced during the visit itself. The prospective visit is the power jackhammer to nail down the deals. Just take a gander at trips planned for Richard Nixon by Henry Kissinger or for George H. W. Bush by James Baker.

RN was adept in understanding America’s moment of truth. In an October 1967 Foreign Affairs article titled “Asia After Vietnam,” he signaled a future — and substantive — shift in U.S. policy in the region, especially towards China:

For the short run, then this means a policy of firm restraint, of no reward, of a creative counterpressure designed to persuade Peking that its interests can be serbed only by accepting the basic rules of international civility. For the long run, it means pulling China back into the world community — but as a great and progressing nation, not as the epicenter of world revolution.

In his memoirs, Dr. Kissinger described the process of engaging China as an “intricate minuet (Horne 68),” RN said he and his foreign policy team proceeded “carefully and cautiously” to establish “a sufficiently strong foundation.” RN in his own words:

Messages and signals had been going back and forth for more than two years. We had proceeded carefully and cautiously through the Yahya and Romanian channels. Now Kissinger and I agreed that we had reached a point at which we had to take the chance of making a proposal, or risk slipping back into another long round of tentative probing. I decided that the time had come to take the big step and propose a presidential visit.

On May 10, therefore, Kissinger called in Ambassador Hilaly and gave him a message for Chou En-lai via President Yahya. It stated that because of the importance I attached to the normalizing of relations between the two countries, I was prepared to accept Chou’s invitation to visit Peking. I proposed Kissinger undertake a secret visit in advance of my trip in order to arrange an agenda and begin a preliminary exchange of views.

The die was cast. There was nothing left to do but wait for Chou’s reply. If we had acted too soon, if we had not established a sufficiently strong foundation, or if we had overestimated the ability of Mao and Chou to deal with their internal opposition to such a visit, then all our long careful efforts would be wasted. I might even have to be prepared for serious international embarrassment if the Chinese decided to reject my proposal and then publicize it. (page 550-551)

Extensive preparation assuaged the wost of fears. On June 2, 1971, a message arrived from the White House through the Pakistani Embassy from the PRC: Chairman Mao had accepted RN to Peking for direct talks.

Less than a year later, RN and Mao were ready “to turn a page in history,” said Dr. Kissinger.

But he warned not to rest easy as our  dealings would “require reliability, precision, and finesse.”

Comments