RN and Brezhnev met for three summits while each was in office, totaling over one hundred hours of time: May 1972, June 1973, and June/July 1974. “I felt that the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union would probably be the single most important factor in determining whether the world would live at peace during and after my administration,” RN noted in his Memoirs. “I felt that we had allowed ourselves to get in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis the Soviets.”

The openings to Mao’s China in February 1972 threatened to place the Soviets on the diplomatic backbench. Since the 1950s the Soviets and the Chinese had experienced a rift in relations, and RN tactfully exploited this to further U.S. interests. This only increased Moscow’s sense of urgency in talking to the Americans; pressured by America’s new relationship with China, Brezhnev wrote the President and invited him to the Soviet Union for a week of summits – the first time a sitting U.S. President would visit the USSR. But problems began to mount – only days before the summit, RN stepped up the bombings of North Vietnam, angering the Soviets.

Many Soviet reporters and government officials were unsure what to think of Richard Nixon. He was a Cold War hawk, one-time challenger of Nikita Khrushchev who had ordered bombings of North Vietnam and incursions into Cambodia to take care of Soviet-backed Vietcong sanctuaries, which had been staging devastating attacks on South Vietnam. To his Soviet hosts, this confirmed his willingness to take necessary steps to achieve his goals, and this was no more evident than in regard to China.

The suspiciousness extended to General Secretary Brezhnev, who sent his number two man to greet the President as Air Force One touched down in Moscow for a week of summit negotiations in May 1972 (the Soviets called the reported snub a point of protocol – Brezhnev was not the official chief of state, though they forgot this point later in the week – Brezhnev signed all the official documents).

As the negotiations began, the General Secretary’s tone was terse and cool; he grumbled about the bombings of Vietnam and asserted that it had not been easy for him to continue with the summit. But almost as soon as he had criticized U.S. policy, he warmed substantially and told the President that he wanted to establish a personal relationship. And the President agreed: “If we leave all the decisions to the bureaucrats, we will never achieve any progress.” With a hearty laugh, Brezhnev cracked, “They would simply bury us in paper!” And that was Leonid Brezhnev: a man of contradiction. While a tough hardliner, he had an innate sense of humor which promulgated often and warmed to the President and particularly the First Lady. He was intelligent, forceful, not without emotions. He could get angry about the issues – RN notes in his Memoirs one incident in which “I momentarily thought of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when Brezhnev, who had just been laughing and slapping me on the back, started shouting angrily.” Still, he was different than his predecessors in that he was less self-conscious and less biting than Khrushchev. This was a “warm and friendly” man with “a very great shrewdness.”

The negotiations were hailed as breakthroughs for U.S.-Soviet relations – and personal relations between the two leaders. Brezhnev enjoyed entertaining foreign visitors at his dacha, where he and RN shared toast after toast. The culmination of the week of successes was the signing of both the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the SALT agreements (the Russians had indicated that no wives were allowed at the signing ceremony, so Mrs. Nixon slipped in the back door and hid behind a pillar), as well as the adoption of a new policy method, détente, which would dominate U.S. and Soviet policy for the next decade. They put policy differences aside and instead began to come to know and understand one another. At the end of the week Brezhnev slapped RN on the knee, hopeful that they had developed a good personal relationship. Another “stunning triumph of Nixonian diplomacy” is how historian Conrad Black described it.

The summit the following June saw Brezhnev welcomed to the White House with full military honors. Securing a permanent SALT agreement was RN’s chief goal, and progress was made on the matter, as well as those of European security and Jewish emigration from the USSR. It is customary for visiting heads of state to stay at Blair House, a simple walk across the street from the White House, though Nixon made arrangements for Brezhnev to stay at Camp David instead. What better gift to give a new friend than a new car – a brand new Lincoln Continental, in this case, and Brezhnev’s eyes lit up when he saw it. He took the wheel, motioned Nixon into the passenger seat, and sped off at 60 mph, careening down the narrow, winding roads to the horror of the Secret Service. He blew through a stop sign and lurched into traffic on a nearby highway. “That was something,” said a trembling Nixon, who later wrote that “Diplomacy is not always an easy art.” Within hours of their first meeting, Brezhnev announced that he had already invited the President back to Moscow for another summit.

The camaraderie continued as Brezhnev joined RN on the Spirit of ’76 to San Clemente. Air Force One flew low over the Grand Canyon so that Brezhnev could get a glimpse of the shadowy canyon walls. “I’ve seen many pictures of this in newsreels and in cowboy movies,” he noted as he jumped back from the window, slouched his shoulders down, placed his hands on his hips, and drew imaginary six shooters from his imaginary holsters – his John Wayne imitation got the attention of everyone on board. One cannot imagine this type of humor coming from Stalin or Khrushchev.

All was in place at La Casa Pacifica, RN’s beachside “Western White House,” for Brezhnev’s stay. The American and Soviet flags flew side by side. The rooms were prepared to host dozens. Brezhnev had been offered the chance to stay in more spacious quarters at Camp Pendleton – the large commandant’s house in fact, only a short helicopter ride away – but he adamantly rejected any of those suggestions. He was, therefore, in the words of Julie Nixon Eisenhower, “ensconced in Tricia’s feminine room, with its fragile white wicker furniture and walls papered in bold pink, blue, and lavender flowers.” It was no doubt amusing to see the brash, bear-of-a-man General Secretary resting comfortably in the room.

The Nixons hosted a small dinner that evening in their dining room, with ample space for only ten people. “I want our children to grow up in a world of peace,” RN declared in his toast, “I propose this toast to your health, and that of our other guests, but even more to Mrs. Brezhnev, to your children and our children and all the children of the world who, we trust, will have a happier and more peaceful future because of what we have done.” Tearing up, Brezhnev threw his arms around the President “with a real bear hug.” As the two embraced, one must have believed that the prospects for peace between the two superpowers seemed more real than ever. Here were the two most powerful men in the world, enveloping themselves in a display of genuine affection. Word came to the President that evening while in his pajamas that the Russians wanted to talk. “I could not sleep, Mr. President,” Brezhnev said with a wary smile as the two commenced in a three hour tumultuous discussion on the Middle East.

The talks came to a close, and a joint communiqué containing constructive agreements on agriculture, trade, transportation, oceanic exploration, and the peaceful use of atomic energy was signed on the bluffs above the Pacific Ocean. Brezhnev’s motorcade readied to depart. As the engines began to roar, he requested, “Can’t we step inside for a moment? I would like to bid you a personal farewell.” In privacy with only the President and First Lady, Brezhnev brought forth two boxes. Inside were hand-woven, tattered shirts and scarves that peasants had worn in Brezhnev’s native Kiev, a fully passionate, sentimental, indeed impressionable gift. Mrs. Nixon noted that there were tears in Brezhnev’s eyes as he told her, “every stitch in this piece of fabric represents the affection and friendship which all the people of the Soviet Union have for the people of the United States, and which Mrs. Brezhnev and I have for you and President Nixon.”

A crisis arose in October 1973, pitting superpower against superpower, and testing the resolve of détente, not to mention RN’s and Brezhnev’s personal relationship. Syria and Egypt jointly attacked Israel during its holiest of days, Yom Kippur, seizing miles of land. The Americans backed Israel; the Soviets, Syria and Egypt, via an airlift supplying tons of weapons and materials daily. After some initial harsh correspondence, a letter from Brezhnev arrived in which he suggested that both sides do their utmost to keep the events from taking a more dangerous turn. This echoed RN’s thoughts exactly: “If he was willing to get behind a serious peace effort, I would not consider that the Soviet airlift had affected our personal relationship or deflected the course of détente.” Indeed, a cease-fire was signed, however rocky it may have been, and the personal relationship was relatively unaffected.

During the dark and difficult days of Watergate, as the frenzy consumed the media and much public attention in the U.S., President Nixon was sent messages of support from none other than Leonid Brezhnev. Brezhnev told his one-time foe that he knew he would stay strong and would not “crack under the pressure.” Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. for over twenty years and a major figure in U.S.-Soviet relations, recalled that RN thanked him “for the fact that he, perhaps alone among the leaders of other nations, including the allies, had found simple human words to lift his spirits.”

Despite the hysteria at home and a swelling blood clot in his left leg (the President suffered occasional bouts of phlebitis during his tenure), President Nixon went ahead with his scheduled trip to Moscow in June/July 1974 for Summit III. This time he was welcomed at the airport in the most ceremonious welcome the Kremlin could put on. Brezhnev bounded across the tarmac to shake the President’s hand while crowds lined the motorcade route, cheering and eagerly waving American and Soviet flags. It was quite a change from two years ago. Eager to accept any reasonable agreement with the Soviets, the two leaders settled down to hard talks, raising the subject of a nuclear test ban treaty and how to ensure each side would be comfortable with any agreements made in respect to MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles).

Just as the Nixons had hosted Brezhnev at their “country estate,” Brezhnev insisted upon reciprocating. The U.S. delegation stayed at Brezhnev’s dacha in Oreanda, a small town outside of neighboring Yalta. The lavish dinner parties included a toast from President Nixon, in which he stressed “the personal relations and the personal friendship that has been established by these meetings.” Indeed, no American leader before had established a relationship with a Soviet quite like this one.

Dobrynin reflected later in his life that the Soviets had experienced a “unique, personal relationship with Washington” during the Nixon years. After initially doubting the hawkish President, the two leaders became friends. There is no doubt that without creating and fostering the type of personal relationship that Nixon and Brezhnev shared, there would not have been as much willingness on either side to pursue substantial arms agreements. The Moscow summit of 1972 started it all; it led to the next two Nixon-Brezhnev summits, one with Ford and Brezhnev, SALT II signed in 1979 (the details of which had been largely hammered out under Nixon and Ford), and served as the model for the Reagan-Gorbachev summits. As RN noted, the “era of confrontation” had evaporated, leaving an “era of negotiation.”

Along with Mao, engaging Brezhnev was the pinnacle of Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s strategy of opening the rest of the world in the interest of all nations while placing America’s interests first. At the conclusion of Summit II, amid the friendly banter and the occasional heated exchanges on the issues, Brezhnev expressed his excitement to RN about how he was to soon become a great-grandfather: “we now had still another generation for which to guarantee peace.”

But the Cairo visit and innovation in Middle East policy are hardly unique to Obama’s position in presidential history. Richard Nixon started this diplomatic tradition 35 years ago.

In his post-presidential memoirs, President Nixon said that Egypt is “the key to the Arab world.” The 37th president arrived in Cairo on June 12,1974 after extensive preparations and tactful “shuttle diplomacy” by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Arab and Israeli leaders. Greeted at the capitol’s airport by President Anwar Sadat and his wife, a Time article published less than two weeks later called the arrival a “triumph of sorts” with the “huzzas and hosannas” falling “like sweet rain.”  Nixon was overwhelmed describing that he received the “the most tumultuous welcome any American President has received anywhere in the world.” Over a million packed the streets and city squares, holding signs that read “We Trust Nixon” chanting “Nik-son, Nik-son, Nik-son.” The Time article quotes DePaul law school’s Cherif Bassiouni – an Egyptian and international legal scholar – on Nixon’s visit and the Arab penchant for personal charm: “gestures reflect emotions, and to the Arab psyche such gestures have a greater impact than anything else the U.S. could have done.”

Nixon went on to visit Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel and Jordan unapologetically conferring American prestige and power over the Middle East peace process.

According to historian and newly nominated Israeli Ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to Present, the Nixon-Kissinger diplomatic strategy for Arab-Israeli peace was based on the more pertinent concern for “Cold War exigencies.” The “subordinate” conflict in the Middle East would therefore be “embarked on a proactive and calculating course.” Nixon described his goal in contrast with the Soviets: “We want peace. They want the Middle East.”

Accordingly, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — because of his displeasure with Soviet avarice — was eager to re-enter the American fold.  Reciprocally, Nixon wanted to strengthen Sadat’s position and influence in Middle East negotiations. Sadat would ultimately re-open the Suez Canal and recognize its borders with Israel. To the pleasure of the United States, Sadat also expelled 15,000 Soviet agents.

Nixon’s approach to the Middle East peace process would thus be multi-lateral. His memoirs note in conversations with Israelis he expressed “sympathy for their military needs” but he also recognized the exigent circumstances for a stable and permanent peace with the Arabs. In Nixon’s mind, the surrounding Arab majority was like a hydra that would overcome their failures in the 1967 Six-Day War and “would learn to fight.”

Nixon and Kissinger believed that the alliance with Israel was a positive relationship that gave America a cooperative ally — in exchange for security guarantees — in negotiations with the Arabs. According to Oren, though the Soviets could endlessly supply Israel’s enemies, America had the authority and trust from Israelis to gain peace for what the Arab states wanted: the territories captured in the 1967 war.

In Cold War terms, previous American relations with Israel also had their negative effects. The Time article notes Abba Eban, then Israel’s foreign minister as saying that the relationship was essentially a “see saw” effect that “if you go up with Israel, you go down with the Arabs.” With Nixon, Eban saw the “see saw” rising in a “spectacular paradox” that didn’t see one-side’s gain as another’s loss.

After Egypt, Nixon landed in Saudi Arabia where he met with the ardently anti-Communist King Faisal. Similar to today’s circumstances, the Saudis weren’t directly involved with negotiations, but according to Nixon, Faisal’s prestige and treasure were pivotal “in maintaining the momentum towards peace” because of the country’s impact on oil prices and the aid dispersed to Israel’s enemies in the 1973 Yom Kippur War: Egypt and Syria.

During his visit to Damascus, the Syrians greeted the President with open arms back-dropped by “American flags flying for the first time in seven years.”  According to Nixon, Syrian President Hafez Assad took the hardest line in public, but the diplomatic overtures made by Kissinger and the President in light of Syrian and Egyptian disaffection with the Soviets neutralized the anti-American tone throughout the country. Though the peace was far from perfect, Syrian-Israeli disengagement following the 1973 war lead to a cease-fire based on UN Resolution 338. At the conclusion of the President’s visit, Nixon and Assad announced a “resumption of diplomatic relations.”

Unlike Obama, Nixon’s overtures to the Arab world couldn’t have been made without visiting America’s most reliable ally in the region: Israel. There Nixon re-assured Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin that he “would not waver” in his support for “Israel’s security.” But in a formal toast to Israel’s then retired Prime Minister Golda Meir, the President advocated for a non-military solution. For “Israel’s survival,”  Nixon contended  “the way of statesmanship” not “continuous war” would lead to the desired outcome of “a permanent, just, and durable peace.”

Nixon’s final stop in Jordan was capped and symbolized by his words to King Hussein: “I do not tell you where this journey will end. I cannot tell you when it will end. The important thing is that it has begun.”

Like the challenges Nixon faced in the Middle East in the backdrop of the Cold War, America currently faces challenges to its global power. President Obama is a skilled politician and orator whose recent gestures to the Middle East may prove fruitful. But he is also tasked with somewhat of an unprecedented burden in winding down two insurgencies, dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea, and preventing a nuclear armed Iran. Add to this heap a global economic crisis, and the economic and political costs of not conferring American power and prestige become quite steeper. With that said, the costs of unleashing this burden are even higher.

To Nixon the recent events would be an awesome responsibility and the greatest honor history can bestow: “the title of peacemaker.”

From the first time he traveled in an official capacity —in 1947 as a freshman congressman with the Herter Commission studying war torn Europe— he felt at home abroad.  He began his lifelong practice of making (and keeping) extensive yellow pad notes of conversations and impressions.  From those earliest yellow pad notes in 1947 to the uncorrected galleys of Beyond Peace, his final book that arrived from the publisher on the day he suffered his fatal stroke in 1994, foreign policy was at the core of Richard Nixon’s life and thought.

In 1953, along with PN (who shared his intellectual interests and his personal instincts), he represented President Eisenhower on a 70-day x-country trip through Asia.  He met —and made strong impressions on— many of the leaders with whom he would be dealing for the next three decades and more.

Richard Nixon understood that the conduct of foreign policy is an art as well as a science.   Hiss expertise was comprised, among many other elements, of lifelong study and hard work.  He was a voracious consumer and processor of facts and information.

From his earliest days as President-Elect, RN began reshaping the conduct of American foreign policy.  He appointed Dr. Henry A. Kissinger as his National Security Adviser.  Within several weeks of his inauguration he visited Europe to reassure old allies regarding the continuity and inform old adversaries about the changes he intended to introduce.

The great importance he gave to foreign policy was indicated in his first State of the Union Address in January 1970.  Although he talked extensively about the situation in Vietnam and his hopes for peace around the world, he announced that he would be sending a separate message dealing specifically with foreign policy and covering every area of the world and the United Nations as well as economic policy and trade.

That message “Foreign Policy for the 1970s: A New Strategy of Peace” was a remarkable thirty-three thousand word document submitted the next month.  It was both a primer and a blueprint of Nixonian foreign policy.

Although he was able to end the war he had inherited in the first year of his second term, RN remained a wartime President until 9 August 1974.  Yet —another paradox— he was a man entirely focused on peace.  Peace was frequently the subject (and always the leitmotiv) of his thinking and writing and actions.  But this self-described “pragmatic idealist” understood that peace was not always possible; that it was never desirable at any price; and that —another paradox— its prerequisite was being prepared to fight.

In his First Inaugural address, RN said:

What kind of nation we will be, what kind of world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker. This honor now beckons America–the chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil, and onto that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.

If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind.

This is our summons to greatness. I believe the American people are ready to answer this call.

It was a call that Richard Nixon heard every day of his presidency and post-presidency.  And it is this most fundamental of his beliefs that provides his eloquent epitaph at the gravesite that can be seen from the windows of that small attic bedroom in Yorba Linda:

The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.

That interest continued to be strong in the 1950s, as Nixon, in his capacity as Vice-President, traveled throughout the nations surrounding the Pacific and Indian Oceans. At that time, and as late as 1964 he publicly espoused the policies toward the PRC of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that the People’s Republic should not be admitted to the United Nations or diplomatically recognized by the United States. However, he sometimes qualified these statements by saying they applied “at this time,” and in private he gave considerable thought to the future of America’s role in the Pacific basin, and the need for the United States to one day come to terms with the world’s third-largest superpower.

In 1967, after Nixon had been a private citizen for seven years, there came the first indications of a change in his thinking about China. In July of that year, speaking to political, economic and cultural leaders at the Bohemian Grove in California, he indicated that America’s policy toward the Soviet Union had to move beyond the containment approach of the Dulles era, with the unstated implication that a new relationship with the USSR’s largest neighbor would be part of that approach.

In October 1967, in his Foreign Affairs article “Asia After Viet Nam,” Nixon, after explaining that such nations as Malaysia, Singapore and especially South Korea would soon be on the fast track to economic success, examined China’s relations with these countries and other neighbors in the Pacific, emphasizing that the United States “simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates, and threaten its neighbors.”

At the time, with China in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, there was no visible response by that nation’s government to these words. But in Beijing, Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai did take notice. They also noticed when, in the 1968 campaign, Nixon would occasionally talk about China in interviews with reporters, such as Harrison Salisbury, who noted in an August 1968 article in the New York Times that Nixon had spoken of the “inevitable negotiations” with the PRC, and Theodore White, who in his 1969 book The Making Of The President 1968 stated that the new President had told him there “had to be an understanding with Red China” (as the PRC was widely called in America at the time).

The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change. President Nixon – in his 1967 Foreign Affairs article, “Asia After Vietnam”

The first explicit moves toward a rapprochement with China came in a low-key form in July 1969, just before President Nixon traveled to Romania, the Warsaw Pact nation which had the best relations with the PRC. The State Department announced the easing of travel and trade restrictions involving China. During talks in Romania’s capital Bucharest, Nixon told that nation’s leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, that he hoped he could help establish a diplomatic channel between the United States and the PRC.

But it was in Warsaw, in January 1970, that the first substantial contact arose when a member of the Chinese embassy’s staff approached his American counterpart at a diplomatic gathering and offered to arrange secret meetings to discuss issues of concern to both governments. These meetings in Warsaw proceeded with some degree of difficulty through the year, as disagreements arose over the American military incursion into Cambodia and the question of Taiwan’s representation in the United Nations, but during the fall, the discussions became more friendly, and on December 8, the government of the PRC took the momentous step of informing President Nixon, through the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, that Mao, Zhou, and then-Vice Premier Lin Biao would welcome a Presidential envoy to Beijing.

The President and his National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, immediately accepted the invitation. The next month, in January 1971, the PRC government informed Nixon, through the Romanian ambassador to the United States, that it would also welcome a visit from the President. However, Nixon decided to formalize arrangements for Kissinger to travel to Beijing before making the decision about his own trip.

On April 27, 1971, Zhou, via the Pakistani Ambassador, reaffirmed that the PRC would welcome both an envoy from the President, or the President himself, to Beijing. In the weeks before this statement, the Chinese government had publicly signalled a new era in relations with the United States by inviting the American table-tennis team to play in the PRC. After a week-long visit which generated enormous excitement and publicity around the world, it was clear that most Americans wished for improved relations with China.
This process of improved relations reached a new plateau during the summer of 1971. On June 10, the President announced the end of America’s 21-year trade embargo with China. A little over three weeks later, Kissinger, during a visit to Pakistan, made a secret trip to Beijing, where he talked for several days with Zhou. And on the evening of July 15, President Nixon, in a televised address to the nation, revealed Kissinger’s trip and announced that he himself would visit China.

Apart from some angry reactions by supporters of the Taiwanese government and conservative politicians and columnists, this announcement was well received across America.

During the following months, February 1972 was finalized as the date for the President’s trip, and the planning for it began. In late October 1971, Kissinger visited Beijing for five days, carefully putting together with Zhou the groundwork and agenda for the President’s planned talks. In January 1972, a team led by Kissinger’s deputy, Gen. Alexander Haig, and including Dwight Chapin and Ron Walker from the office of White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, flew to the Chinese capital and, with their Chinese counterparts, finalized all the complex arrangements for the visit, from the choice of sites to visit, to the dinner menu, to the handling of the large group of reporters and photographers accompanying the Presidential party.

On the morning of February 17, the President left the White House and boarded Air Force One at Andrews AFB, for a journey that would bring him, at 11:30 am local time the next day, to the airport at Beijing. There, he emerged from the aircraft, descended the stairway, took a few steps, and shook the hand of Zhou Enlai. At that moment, as Nixon later wrote in his Memoirs, “one era ended and another began.” After enjoying lunch, the President and the Premier, with Kissinger, traveled to the office of Mao Zedong, where the Chairman greeted them and engaged them in friendly discussion.

The ten days that followed started with a memorable banquet in Beijing and closed with an even more memorable one in Shanghai, both of these broadcast live in the United States. President Nixon made visits to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and other historic sites. Pat Nixon, his First Lady, visited schools, farms, and hospitals, where her natural warmth and friendliness generated lasting and cherished memories among her hosts. By the time the President, Mrs. Nixon, and their party left China, there was no doubt that the trip had been an enormous success. In the Shanghai Communique, completed and signed during the visit, Nixon and Zhou affirmed plans for the two countries to normalize relations, and this document served as the basis for the process that culminted in full diplomatic recognition of the PRC by President Carter later in the 1970s, and in the close ties enjoyed by the two nations today.

The diplomatic opening to PRC is regarded as the greatest achievement of Richard Nixon’s presidency, and the combination of vision and perseverance that produced him forms one of the most admired and enduring legacies of his Presidency.

The communiqué stated that both the United States and China strive for “normalization” of relations, and to expand “people-to-people contacts” and trade opportunities. In a slight indication to the Soviet Union, the communiqué affirmed that neither nation “should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.”

Early in the negotiations, recognizing that China and the U.S. held many conflicting positions, Chou En-lai proposed an unconventional format for the communiqué. The two sides basically agreed to disagree, each stating its views in separate paragraphs. On the Vietnam issue, for example, the U.S. supported Nixon’s latest peace plan, while China had firm support for their Communist proposal.

Yet regardless of the plan for independent declarations, Taiwan remained a tentative subject throughout the negotiations. The Chinese regarded the presence of American troops on Taiwan as a breach of China’s sovereignty and pushed for full U.S. military withdrawal from the island. Nixon and Kissinger wanted to condition a withdrawal on enlisting China’s help in ending the Vietnam War. And while China viewed its dealings with Taiwan as a strictly internal issue, to be handled as it saw fit, the Americans insisted that the Chinese resolve the Taiwan question without the use of force.

“In light of the Cultural Revolution’s horrors, Nixon’s meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable — and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies.”

President Obama – Nobel Peace Award Acceptance Speech, December 10, 2009

In the end, this was a concession that got the United States ahead. Henry Kissinger stated this in his memoirs, neither the U.S. nor China was prepared to let the Taiwan issue become an obstruction to their promising new relationship: “The basic theme of the Nixon trip — and the Shanghai Communiqué — was to put off the issue of Taiwan for the future, to enable the two nations to close the gulf of twenty years and to pursue parallel policies where their interests coincided.”

The U.S. declared, “The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.” This statement allowed the United States to give China a stake in the letup of the Vietnam War.

The Peoples Republic of China rejected any “two Chinas” formulation, declaring clearly that “the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China” and “Taiwan is a province of China.” The U.S., nifty phrasing, acknowledged, “that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” but neatly avoided the question of who should govern this “one China.”

RN’s statesmanship is still a model for presidents today. In President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he cited President Nixon’s trip to China as an example of a bold and controversial action by a leader that furthered the cause of peace.

These agreements in the long run meant that neither China nor the United States would cooperate with the Soviet bloc and that both would oppose any attempt by any country to achieve domination of Asia. The Shanghai Communiqué and the diplomacy leading up to it allowed the Nixon Administration to put in place a new structure of peace. The role of American policy was to establish a framework that reflected each nation’s willingness to support the other where national interest coincided. Nixon might have been able to rally the country to this style of diplomacy and show that it was, in fact, the most realistic means of vindicating American idealism.