(edited transcript)
JONATHAN ALTER:
Hi, I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
And I’m Julian Zelizer from The Long View.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
I couldn’t help but think this week about 1972, when another president, Richard Nixon, went to China. It was a major event. He was the first president to go there since the Communist takeover in 1949. Nixon brought with him an entire television production team, and they covered his meetings with leaders, including Mao Zedong, along with all kinds of ceremonies. It culminated in the Shanghai Communiqué, which continues to be an issue to this day because of the status of Taiwan.
Henry Kissinger, who joined him, said the basic aim of the trip was to put off the issue of Taiwan for the future. The fact that Nixon actually went was seen as a major diplomatic breakthrough. What are your thoughts on that relative to today?
JONATHAN ALTER:
This was one of the master strokes of recent American history because we were in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nixon and Kissinger, who helped set the trip up, completely changed the strategic chessboard by breaking the deep freeze with China.
It came just a couple of months after the Watergate break-in, but before Watergate had erupted into a full scandal. Nixon went on to win reelection carrying 49 states, and China was a big part of it.
Compare that to today, where there are basically no diplomatic deliverables of any significance. Nothing major is likely to come out of this trip.
China’s rise as a great power is tied directly to Nixon opening the door to China and then Jimmy Carter normalizing relations later on, which is an important part of the story that people often forget. After Deng Xiaoping returned from his summit with Carter, China legalized private property, and that helped launch the greatest economic growth story in human history.
So much of what followed started with Nixon’s trip. China had to open itself to the United States and the West for any of that transformation to happen.
The Nixon trip also became a political metaphor. Sometimes a president can do something their own base would normally oppose because they have the credibility to pull it off. If a Democratic president had tried to open relations with Communist China, they would have been politically destroyed. Nixon could do it because he was already known as a hardline Cold Warrior.
So if Trump wanted a real “Nixon goes to China” moment, it would probably involve solving the immigration problem. He actually has the political credibility with conservatives to pursue comprehensive immigration reform. Don’t hold your breath. It’s not going to happen. But if he had even a fraction of Nixon’s strategic talent in this area, that’s the kind of move he would make.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
We’ll talk next week.
