2021 also marks the 10th anniversary of Kissinger’s publication of On China (2011) – a bible for understanding US-China relations, and the first ten years of the US “pivot to Asia”, Obama’s signature China policy that has continued into the Trump and Biden administrations. The anniversary also takes place during the same month the Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its 100th anniversary, almost to remind that the US’ and China’s destinies are entwined together now more than ever.
In 1971, there were significant factors behind Kissinger’s 1971 visit that were unique to the Cold War environment of the time. The Sino-Soviet Alliance had collapsed, and during the spring and summer of 1969 escalating border clashes between the USSR and China brought the two Communist powers close to war.
President Nixon and Kissinger concluded that the bipolar confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union was being superseded by ‘triangular diplomacy’, and a rapprochement between Washington DC and Beijing would not only force concessions from Moscow in superpower negotiations over arms control, but also enable the USA to extract itself from the Vietnam War with Chinese assistance, with Beijing exerting its influence on Hanoi to achieve a peace settlement that could be sold to the American people as an honourable one.
For his part, Former President Mao was alarmed by the 1969 border clashes and believed that the USSR was replacing the USA and other Western powers as the People’s Republic’s main enemy. Nixon’s National Security Advisor was therefore pushing at an open door when he paid his visit to China in 1971.
Both sides wanted to overcome long-standing issues. To give an example, on July 9, 1971, Kissinger told Zhou Enlai, former Vice President of the Chinese Communist Party, that “we are not advocating a ‘two Chinas’ solution or a ‘one China, one Taiwan’ solution”, to which Zhou replied “the prospect for a solution and the establishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries is hopeful”. In the official report on the meeting, the US promised to withdraw “two-thirds” of its forces from Taiwan. At a later meeting, the former National Security Advisor went as far as stating that “we thought all socialist/communist states were the same phenomenon. We didn’t understand until the President [Nixon] came into office the different nature of revolution in China”.
Fast forward to 2021, the US geostrategic rebalance towards Asia – a form of containment of China, among other things – is real and growing in numbers through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), the diplomatic-military alliance of maritime powers between Australia, Indian, Japan, and the US. In just 50 years, we appear to have gone from attempting to resolve one Cold War to the emergence a potential new cold war?
From a geostrategic viewpoint, in this period much has changed, China and the Russian Federation have settled their border disputes and are – if not outright allies – then closely aligned in foreign and defence policy, and are also rivals, if not adversaries challenging US influence in East Asia, the Middle East and Europe respectively. If Mao identified the USA as a world power vital to counterbalance the Soviet threat, and if his counterpart in Moscow, Leonid Brezhnev, was alarmed by the prospect of a Sino-American combination, today official Chinese and Russian pronouncements are now more aligned in their gloating about the failure of US power and democracy today.
Compared to 1971, it is difficult for America to abandon Taiwan to China – at least from a rhetorical viewpoint – even if it is militarily difficult to defend and a Sino-American stand-off would risk an all-out war.
From an economic and military viewpoint, however, current events should be looked through the longue durée of history, and Henry Kissinger’s actions have perhaps indirectly had a major impact on current affairs. As the American political scientist Chalmers Johnson put it when articulating his concept “blowback”, “world politics in the twenty-first century, will in all likelihood be driven primarily by blowback from … unintended consequences of the Cold War”.
To us, as one of the authors argued here – “blowback” is in the DNA of American grand strategy, from which it is inseparable. Since the end of WWII, American grand strategy has sought to encourage and support other countries’ development and active participation in the global economy. But in the case of China, as an astute observer argued, while the US was ‘busy feasting at the Chinese table’, US strategists overlooked the risk of China’s rise. China’s political hybridity compounded the consequences of the “blowback” by leading the US into a “complex interdependence” with a state that is a crucial economic partner, but is ruled through a competing value system and a group of elites keen to protect domestic authoritarian institutions from external influence. This is a unique state of affairs in the history of American grand strategy.
We do not know what Kissinger would think about this argument. He often represented his views of China with great respect for its civilization and culture. Kissinger’s views are more nuanced if compared to the current anti-China mood in Washington, DC – even if recently the former National Security Adviser acknowledged that we might be on the verge of a “cold war”.
However, in On China Kissinger has provided a fascinating account of China’s strategic thinking that helps us make sense of the peculiarities of China and of its relationship with the US. Going through China’s modern history, Kissinger noted that “the most remarkable expression of China’s fundamental pragmatism was its reaction to conquerors”. He explained that “with each generation, the conquerors would find themselves increasingly assimilated into the order they had sought to dominate”. He added that “rarely did Chinese statesmen risk the outcome of a conflict on a single all-or-nothing clash; elaborate multiyear manoeuvres were closer to their style”.
While China has a long way to go before it conquers the West. It has played a long game and has managed to earn sympathies – but also enemies among Western countries and society. Alongside this, the US has begun to tacitly acknowledge the pros of China state-capitalism.
All in all, today’s US-China relationship is driven by structural factors, rather than individuals – as demonstrated by the fact that Trump’s departure from the White House has not changed US-China relations. Whilst the current relationship would benefit from having a statesperson of Henry Kissinger’s foresight and diplomatic prowess at the table, it still might not be enough to turn the tide on the arrival of a new cold war.