bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007) — Spring/Summer 2007 // Printemps/Été 2007, pp. 26–28
NIXON IN CHINA: THE WEEK THAT
CHANGED THE WORLD, by Margaret
MacMillan, Viking Canada Penguin
Group, Toronto, 2006, 395 pp., $45.00.
Some 15 years ago historian Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man. His book, an expansion of a 1989 article, argued that the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet empire represented the end of the ideological struggle between principles of liberal western enlightenment and those of totalitarianism as represented by the Soviet system. It was his view the future would see democratic forms of governments dominating the world’s political systems. Unfortunately, his provocative and misunderstood title, especially the “end of history” part, led to popular debunking of his analysis. (The Last Man element in the title is a concept of Nietzsche.) Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is but the latest critical effort and his suggestion that ideological conflicts are being replaced by “civilization” based conflicts offers less intellectual rigour than that associated with Professor Fukuyama’s thesis.
As with many novel intellectual theses, that of Professor Fukuyama was adopted and adapted by others and in his case many neo-conservatives in the United States and elsewhere did so in support of their own action agenda for the world. Assuming that Professor Fukuyama’s interpretation of the future was reasonable, many neoconservatives went one step further and thought that hastening the end of many of the remaining illiberal and nasty regimes was a laudable objective for American foreign policy. Never was the distance between thought and successful action greater, and today neo-conservatives are in ragged and disappearing retreat. Unfortunately, the thesis of Professor Fukuyama which in intellectual terms should have provided some measure of unity between left and right will suffer historical ignominy based on the actions of others.
The “end of history” metaphor now has a life of its own, and the beginning and end of history is a useful starting point when interpreting books dealing with recent events. It raises the question, looking backwards, when does history begin? Is it a few moments ago? A few months? Or a few or many years ago? History today, current history, modern history and recent history have all been used to describe books that promise to provide perspective on recent events even though the perspective may be short-sighted or astigmatic.
Chou En-lai, when asked for his views on the importance of the French Revolution, replied that it was too early to come to any conclusions. Many years ago, a history professor put the time factor right when he offered the view that “history is argument without end.” Along the same lines are the aphorisms of many reporters that today’s news story is the “first version of history” or that history is written by the victors.
These musings are more than applicable to Margaret MacMilan’s latest book, Nixon in China: The Week that Changed the World. The book provides a detailed accounting of President Nixon’s visit and, while it attempts to recount the Chinese, Russian and other roles, thoughts and actions associated with it, it is very much the American version of events that Professor MacMillan provides. The vast majority of the references and the associated bibliography are overwhelmingly American centric. As such, it will not be the final word on the visit, as important as it may be, but rather the starting point for others who may be able to reflect access to a greater range of relevant material or a longer time span.
The subtitle for the book, The Week that Changed the World, is reflective of the subtitle of the professor’s earlier book, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. Even in that case the title was a bit over-the-top, as the jury is still out on some of the issues discussed and decided in Paris. As Richard Holbrooke wrote in the Foreword to Paris 1919:
Some of the most intractable problems of the modern world have roots in decisions made right after the end of the Great War. Among them one could list the four Balkan wars between 1991 and 1999; the crisis over Iraq (whose present borders resulted from Franco-British rivalries and casual mapmaking); the continuing quest of the Kurds for self-determination; disputes between Greece and Turkey; and the endless struggle between Arabs and Jews over land that each thought had been promised them.
If the word “change” is used in its ordinary sense, then there is no doubt that events such as Nixon’s visit to China as with the Paris Peace Conference did change the world. However, if “change” is used in a larger historical sense, then there is a need to adopt the Chou En-lai caution when ascribing historical importance to what are, in essence, recent events. There is perhaps enough perspective to agree that the events in Paris in 1919 did change the world in an historical sense, but I am more sceptical as to that claim for Nixon’s visit to China which was less than 40 years ago; there is even more scepticism when it is acknowledged that the phrase is one that President Nixon used to describe his visit. Protessor MacMillan reports [page 307] the following:
… Under the influence of the maotai, or so Kissinger suspected, Nixon got carried away and suggested that the United States stood ready to defend China if any foreign power tried to attack it. Their joint communiqué, he said proudly, would make international headlines the next morning. After all, “This was the week that changed the world.”
The central strength of Professor MacMillan’s book is her vivid and, at times, psychologically deep, portrait of one of the most complex men of American history, Richard Nixon. This is equally the strength of Paris 1919; her deft portrayals of Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and a supporting cast of hundreds of others gave that book its lasting character. Richard Nixon is more than a match for any of that trio having travelled the American road of Red-baiter, as a shrewd reader of the international omens and as a manipulative and disgraced domestic politician. Professor MacMillan writes:
Even historians who disapprove of psycho-history find themselves tempted irresistibly when it comes to Richard Nixon. It is partly that he inspired such strong feelings. It is partly the contradictions. The statesman of distinction who, as his tapes revealed, could talk with insight and understanding about the role of the United States in the world and then flail the next moment at his enemies, real or imagined, in crude, racist and scatological terms… who wanted to be great, who told himself at the start of 1970, “Be worthy of Ist man in nation and in world,” yet who was capable of such petty meanness and did so much to damage American public life. He was vicious and relentless in attacking others.
The other protagonists in the book are less completely sketched than Nixon. Henry Kissinger, who was initially sceptical of the trip to China, is there in broad terms only, and the overall impression is not reflective of the major impact he had on world affairs for almost a decade. His paranoia on secrecy and demand for control while in the White House makes Prime Minister Harper’s PMO appear as a flowery windblown open field. Clearly several books have yet to emerge from the Kissingerian mine to supplement his own abundant hagiographies. William Rogers, the Secretary of State at the time of the China visit and an honourable man, attracts some attention but overall the impression is one of a dikdik encircled by lions.
The Chinese crew is not well or uniquely demarcated. The portraits of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai, still very much at the centre of everything Chinese, were in their last days (Mao died in 1976 and Chou a year earlier) and rely on two main sources. The first and most significant is Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s monumental study Mao: the Unknown Story; the second being Zhisu Li’s autobiography The Private Life of Chairman Mao: the Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician. Both are unique books and probably the best sources available, but, in her use of this material, Professor MacMillan does not add much of unique value to our understanding of these men. Again it is going to be a matter for future historians with longer perspective and possibly new material to complete the picture of what is probably the most unusual partnership in the 20th century.
The Sino-Soviet Union dimensions are surveyed at a high level but again the lack of original material or use of available material limits the authenticity of the discussion and the conclusions. More than any other country, the Soviet Union had the most to lose by Nixon’s efforts to create a tri-polar world. However, surprisingly, while there were threats and sinister noises from Moscow, the Soviets did very little to disrupt the looming Sino- American engagement. The sense of bewilderment in Moscow is perhaps reflected by the Soviets having Victor Louis (described by Professor MacMillan as “a Moscow-based journalist who acted as a conduit for Soviet views”) publish an article in a London newspaper saying “how easy it would be for the Soviet Union to launch a surprise attack on China, perhaps against China’s own nuclear facilities in Xinjiang province.” Professor MacMillan’s description of Louis is hardly complete. There is evidence that Victor Louis was the KGB agent, Vitaly Yevgenyevich Lui, who operated as an agent of influence in Europe and North America whom some credit with leading Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs.
A harbinger of the Sino-American rapprochement was Canada’s own successful negotiations with China to establish diplomatic relations. Professor MacMillan devotes several paragraphs to this early phase in China’s reopening to western countries. She states that “Most significant of all, it [China] opened talks with the United States’ neighbour, Canada.” This discussion opens with a bit of a clanger in suggesting that “Canada still looked to Britain for leadership” and goes on to oversimplify the various issues in play for Canada, both domestic and foreign, that led to the decision in January 1969 by newly-minted Prime Minister Trudeau to seek negotiations with China through Canada’s ambassador in Stockholm. In less than two years, in October 1970, an agreement was reached, and a month later the first Canadian diplomats arrived in Beijing.
Unfortunately, Professor MacMillan fails to name the various Canadians who were engaged in this effort, unlike her detailed information on the Americans. For the record Arthur Andrew was the Ambassador in Stockholm who began the negotiations and he was succeeded by Margaret Meagher. Bob Edmonds was at the Stockholm embassy and was very much involved in the process. Back in Ottawa, Ralph Collins was the responsible Assistant Under Secretary, Blair Seaborn was head of what was then the “Far Eastern Division” and John Fraser was the China desk officer. John travelled to Stockholm for most of the substantive meetings. Ralph Collins who had been born in China of missionary parents was Canada’s first ambassador. For persons interested in the dynamic of why Canada did not maintain relations with China after the revolution in 1949, Chester Ronning’s A Memoir of China in Revolution is an excellent source. Unfortunately it is out of print but there are copies in used book stores around Ottawa.
Professor MacMillan mentions the role Dr. Norman Bethune indirectly played in the Stockholm negotiations — a new Canadian film occasioned a dinner invitation to a Chinese official who was known to the Canadian third secretary. Dr. Bethune, an iconic, if not a cult, figure in Sino-Canadian relations and the degree to which this is a conscious creation of the Chinese authorities based on limited reality has not been appropriately addressed. Teasingly, Jung Chang does not mention or make any reference to Dr. Bethune in her exhaustingly detailed account of the long march and the thousands, including doctors and stretcher bearers, who were directly involved
Leaving aside my earlier quibbles about “early” history books, books such as this one have an enormous value in demonstrating that leaders can and do change the course of events and create their own destiny. The role Taiwan played in American politics and foreign relations from 1949 on and the American pathological antipathy towards Communist China is difficult to recapture today. “Who lost China” was a rallying cry and one that Richard Nixon was not averse to using. But 20 years later he foresaw the importance of China in world and American politics and acted accordingly. There are lessons in this for all leaders, but most importantly, for American leaders. The cost of enmity and unconditional support for ones purported friends needs to be carefully calculated and open to recalibration. Nowhere is this recalibration more needed than with the countries of the Middle East, including Israel.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2007) — Spring/Summer 2007 // Printemps/Été 2007, pp. 26–28. Read the rest of this issue →
