Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
New Delhi: On the eve of the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Peking that led to United States (US)-China détente, President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin this month turned the 1972 rapprochement on its head by reaffirming “strong mutual support for the protection of their core interests, state sovereignty and territorial integrity” and resolutely opposed any interference in their internal affairs by external forces without naming the US.
The Sino-Russian February 4 joint statement went a step further with Moscow reaffirming its support to the “One China” principle – confirming that Taiwan was an inalienable part of China and opposing any “form” of independence for Taipei.
The ever-growing and close defence cooperation between two neighbours with a common Marxist-Leninist foundation has virtually rebranded Nixon’s 1972 move from a brilliant gambit to the strategic blunder of the millennium.
“It is Chinese victory all the way. First, China used America to bring down the erstwhile Soviet Union, then it used the US to bring down Russia, then it played American against America using its economic muscle power. Today, Nixon’s legacy has been destroyed with China being the sole beneficiary of the 1972 miscalculation,” said a former Indian Ambassador to the US who asked not to be named.
Although the basic purpose of Nixon engagement with Beijing was to draw Red China from the influence of the erstwhile Communist Soviet Union, the larger American purpose to democratise the middle-kingdom has failed as the Chinese Communist Party is in absolute control of the People’s Republic. “With Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping proposing the four modernisations in 1977 and xiaokang or moderately prosperous society in 1979, the Americans thought that they had succeeded, but this turned out to be a false dawn with the so-called Chinese reformer leader ordering the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989,” said a national security planner who asked not to be named.
It is quite evident from the declassified White House papers of the 1970s that then Chinese Premier Zhou En-Lai ran circles around Nixon’s pointman Henry Kissinger by making it quite clear that the US had to abandon its independent Taiwan policy without which there would be no reconciliation with America. “A read-out of US-China negotiations during and after Nixon’s week-long visit to China on February 21, 1972, makes it quite clear that China was boxing much above its weight category and that Nixon’s America sacrificed the Taiwan card in favour of the Soviet card by yielding to Beijing more than even what they expected by pledging to remove troops from the breakaway island and adhering to One China policy,” said a former Indian ambassador to China who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In his July 23, 2020, speech on US-China relations at Nixon Library, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo succinctly summed up these lapses by saying that the US gave the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the regime itself special economic treatment only to see that CCP insist on silence over its human rights abuses as the price of admission for western companies to enter China. “American Airlines, Delta, United all removed references to Taiwan from their corporate websites to not anger Beijing. And Hollywood, not too far from here, the epic centre of American creative freedom and self-appointed arbiters of social justice, self-censors even the most mildly unfavourable reference to China,” Pompeo said. The situation of western media was no different as handicaps in return for investment were distributed to Beijing by turning a soft focus on events in Tibet and Xinjiang region.
The Nixon-Kissinger legacy today stands firmly discredited after five decades with China well on its way to becoming an economic-military superpower with both the capacity and capability to stare at Washington. Thanks to US help in getting China admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2000, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the biggest Communist power has grown from a mere $113 billion in 1972 to $14 trillion in 2021. Along the way, China has moved away all manufacturing and global supply chains from the US with European powers like Germany and France contributing to the rise of Beijing for a few pieces of silver and gold. China is also at the root cause of fracture in the Anglo-Saxon alliance with France upset at both US and the United Kingdom (UK) for the cancellation of the $50 billion submarine deal with Australia by offering much required nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra under the September 15, 2021, AUKUS pact.
From an Indian perspective, Nixon’s China gambit not only alienated New Delhi from Washington but also created two nuclear-powered nations at its doorsteps. A declassified White House Memorandum of Conversation document on the meeting between Nixon and then Pakistan Martial Law Administrator Yahya Khan on October 20, 1970, makes it clear that Islamabad played the role of a commission agent between Washington and Peking. The document shows that Nixon asked Yahya Khan to communicate to Peking that the US wanted to open negotiations with China and for that White House was willing to send ambassadors secretly to China. The Pakistani dictator affirmed to the then US President that he would indeed convey his message to Peking during his forthcoming visit. The conversation was greased by Nixon offering $100 million in economic aid to Islamabad and support to Pakistan against arch-rival India. Looking back five decades, Pakistan also milked the US, in turn, for playing the broker with China, throughout the Afghan jihad with Washington turning a blind eye to Islamabad acquiring nuclear technology and delivery systems with help from Beijing. While the US kept its counsel on human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang post-1970s and turned a blind eye to nuclear proliferation by Pakistan, it passed up no opportunity to tick off India on Kashmir. One unfortunate result of Nixon’s China card is that Indian politicians such as AK Antony, the longest-serving defence minister of India, still have memories of the USS Enterprise Task Force 74 in the Bay of Bengal during the 1971 Indo-Pak war firmly etched in their minds as an example of US perfidy.
In hindsight, the only gainer in the entire Nixon gambit has been China, who has not budged an inch from its stated position on Taiwan since 1972 détente. This is just the same as Beijing’s insistence on imposing the 1959 line on East Ladakh LAC with India, coveting Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, and calling the 14th Dalai Lama a splittist and a terrorist.
While the US, post-Trump has reversed the appeasement of China and now firmly views it as an archrival, Beijing under Xi is openly challenging American superpower status with Russia now reduced to a supplicant in a role reversal. Caught between rock and a hard place, Pakistan virtually is advocating a non-alignment policy to deal with US and China. The White House declassified document reveals that Yahya Khan recalled a conversation with Chairman Mao to Nixon. The Pakistani dictator said: ” Mao talked to me about permanent revolution during my previous visit to Peking. He said Americans hope we will die out, but no, I will teach every child from the day he is born to be a revolutionary.” Henry Kissinger, now 98, must be a very lonely man today.
