CHAPTER 10
The Quasi-Alliance: Conversations with
Mao
THE SECRET TRIP to China reestablished the
Sino-American relationship. The Nixon visit began a period of
strategic cooperation. But while the principles of that cooperation
were emerging, its framework remained to be settled. The language
of the Shanghai Communiqué implied a kind of alliance. The reality
of China’s self-reliance made it difficult to relate form to
substance.
Alliances have
existed as long as history records international affairs. They have
been formed for many reasons: to pool the strength of individual
allies; to provide an obligation of mutual assistance; to supply an
element of deterrence beyond the tactical considerations of the
moment. The special aspect of Sino-American relations was that the
partners sought to coordinate their actions without creating a
formal obligation to do so.
Such a state of
affairs was inherent in the nature of China’s perception of
international relations. Having proclaimed that China had “stood
up,” Mao would reach out to the United States but never admit that
China’s strength might not be adequate for whatever challenge it
might confront. Nor would he accept an abstract obligation to
render assistance beyond the requirements of the national interest
as it appeared at any given moment. China in the early stages of
Mao’s leadership made only one alliance: that with the Soviet Union
at the very beginning of the People’s Republic, when China needed
support as it felt its way toward international status. It entered
into a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance
with North Korea in 1961, containing a clause on mutual defense
against outside attack that is still in force at this writing. But
that was more in the nature of the tributary relationship familiar
from Chinese history: Beijing offered protection; North Korean
reciprocity was irrelevant to the relationship. The Soviet alliance
frayed from the very outset largely because Mao would not accept
even the hint of subordination.
After Nixon’s visit
to China, there emerged a partnership not by way of formal
reciprocal assurances enshrined in documentation. It was not even a
tacit alliance, based on informal agreements. It was a kind of
quasi-alliance, growing out of understandings that emerged from
conversations with Mao—in February and November of 1973—and long
meetings with Zhou—hours of them in 1973. From then on, Beijing no
longer sought to constrain or check the projection of American
power—as it had before President Nixon’s visit. Instead China’s
avowed goal became to enlist the United States as a counterweight
to the “polar bear” by means of an explicit strategic
design.
This parallelism
depended on whether Chinese and American leaders could come to
share common geopolitical aims, especially with regard to the
Soviet Union. American leaders were treated by their Chinese
counterparts to private seminars on Soviet intentions—often in
uncharacteristically blunt language, as if the Chinese feared this
topic was too important to be left to their customary subtlety and
indirection. The United States reciprocated with extensive
briefings about its strategic design.
In the early years of
the new relationship, Chinese leaders would continue occasionally
to fire ideological “cannons” against American imperialism—some of
them involving well-practiced rhetoric—but in private, they would
criticize U.S. officials for being, if anything, too restrained in
foreign policy. In fact, throughout the 1970s, Beijing was more in
favor of the United States acting robustly against Soviet designs
than much of the American public or Congress.