Marco Polo all over again...
<Why hasn't Pakistan taken care of this before? > Bringing together the largest nation on earth Chian and strongest nation US was our finest moment, today China is the
largest trading partner of US and an important member of the World Community..
Both Kennedy and Nixon invited to the White House Andre Malraux, the French novelist, explorer, artist and politician, whose Man's Fate(China in 1927) and Man's Hope (Spain in 1939) made him an international hero. Nixon had a purpose, to ask Malraux how he should speak with Mao, and was he doing the right thing? Malraux told him the meeting was inevitable, and Mao would welcome him as his last act in life.
When Nixon finally arrived in China, after Kissinger's two pathfinding trips of high adventure from Pakistan (code named Polo I and Polo II), he was going for broke.
"I approached this trip as if it were the last chance I would have to do something about the Sino-American relationship." Later: "We must cultivate China; otherwise one day we will be confronted with the most formidible enemy that has ever existed in the history of the world."
Knowing that Chou En-lai deeply resented that John Foster Dulles in Geneva had turned away rather than shake hands with him, Nixon left the airplane gangway with his hand stretched out.
Nixon was not passive and didn't wait to react to actions or statements of others. He had been too polite when he met Khrushchev in Moscow in 1958, and let Khrushchev win their first round, before Nixon came back swinging in the kitchen debate. In China, he initiated the discussions, knowing where he wanted to go, even with personalities as intimidating as Mao Tse-tung. He raised the issue he had been brooding over for years: nations should deal with each other according to their behavior, not their ideology -- in itself a major departure in American foreign policy. He broached subjects like the U.S. defense committments to Taiwan and Japan without having them sprung on him. He was not on the defensive in talks with Mao, or for that matter with Leonid Brezhnev. |
