Nixon and China: A Historiography
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This paper will present a historiography of the United States policy towards the Peoples Republic of China during the Nixon administration. The first part of the paper will briefly recount the events surrounding the policy, including the change in foreign policy during the administration and the public spectacle of the Nixon visit to China. The second part of the paper will examine the interpretations concerning the true authorship of the policy introduced by the administration, specifically focusing upon the question of whether Nixon or Kissinger was primarily responsible for the idea of rapprochement with China. The third part of the paper will discuss the motivations behind the change in policy and the interpretations of these motivations. The fourth part of the paper will look at the interpretations concerning the reactions of the American people to the policy change. The last part of the paper will present interpretations of the overall effect of the policy and its success or failure. In March of 1972, President Richard Nixon visited the Peoples Republic of China, reversing more than twenty years of enforced isolation on the world's most populous nation. His visit had been announced a mere six months earlier and there had been little public notice that the traditional U.S. policy towards the communist nation was going to be changed. The China trip was quickly followed by a summit with the leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Bre
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ment to reflect the new reality of power in the world. One of the more eloquent advocates of Nixon as policy author is Lord Langford, who describes Nixon as having a "peace-loving vision" of a new world beyond the Cold War. Such an accolade may seem odd when applied to a president who escalated the air war in Vietnam and who had long been an inveterate enemy of socialism in any form; Charles Henderson says so much in a complicated evaluation of Nixon's religious philosophy and presidential actions. Stephen Ambrose says that Nixon was the person responsible for most of the ideas concerning foreign policy during the first term of his administration
Many have apportioned credit between the two men, accepting Kissinger's claim that they both envisioned the new policy independent of each other prior to Nixon's election. In doing so, they have attributed different motives to each man for wanting to change U.S. foreign policy. Nixon is generally regarded as the opportunist, using his long experience as a politician to recognize opportunities as they materialized and seize them before they slipped away. Franz Schurmann argues that Nixon was the originator of the ideas but he does not say that Nixon had some grand design for in
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Approximate Word count = 5050
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)
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