A Crucial Turning Point in the Cold War

Abstract

With the declassification of the Nixon Presidential Materials Project and the partial release of Chinese sources on U.S.-China rapprochement over the past two decades, scholars have studied and published works on the Nixon/Mao-era U.S.-China rapprochement from different perspectives. For instance, Evelyn Goh studied the evolution of United States thinking toward China before and after Nixon’s China trip in 1972, demonstrating how ideas about reconciliation with China were raised and debated within U.S. official circles during the 1960s. Making use of a large array of Chinese and U.S. documents, the author of this review provided a bilateral perspective, reconstructing how Chinese and American leaders negotiated an end to U.S.-China antagonism.1 Margaret MacMillan’s book offered perhaps the fullest account of the day-to-day unfolding of the high-level diplomacy between Beijing and Washington. And Nancy Tucker and other scholars have studied the issue from other perspectives. The story of the U.S.-China rapprochement, especially on the U.S. side, is so familiar as to beg a simple question: What new could Chris Tudda say about it? A Cold War Turning Point offers a traditional interpretation of U.S.-China relations from early 1969, when Nixon entered the White House, to late February 1972, when Nixon returned from his historic China trip. It tells the story of how the two countries moved from hostility to rapprochement in order to accomplish their respective strategic goals. It adds texture to what we have already known about this important Cold War turning point. While A Cold War Turning Point offers new interpretations on some points, it does not, however, offer anything approaching a sweeping, new interpretation of Nixon’s China policy.