Indian Ocean and the Far East, in the area "East of Suez." Part of the timing of the
Kissinger China card was dictated by the British desire to acquire China as a
counterweight to Russia and India in this vast area of the world, and also to insure a US
military presence in the Indian Ocean, as seen later in the US development of an
important base on the island of Diego Garcia.
On a world tour during 1969, Nixon had told President Yahya Khan, the dictator of
Pakistan, that his administration wanted to normalize relations with Red China and
wanted the help of the Pakistani government in exchanging messages. Regular meetings
between the US and Peking had gone on for many years in Warsaw, but what Nixon was
talking about was a total reversal of US China policy. Up until 1971, the US had
recognized the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan as the sole sovereign and
legitimate authority over China. The US, unlike Britain, France, and many other western
countries, had no diplomatic relations with the Peking Communist regime. The Chinese
seat among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council was held
by the government in Taipei. Every year in the early autumn there was an attempt by the
non-aligned bloc to oust Taipei from the Security Council and replace them with Peking,
but so far this vote had always failed because of US arm-twisting in Latin America and
the rest of the third world. One of the reasons that this arrangement had endured so long
was the immense prestige of ROC President Chiang Kai-Shek and the sentimental
popularity of the Kuomintang in the United States electorate. There still was a very
powerful China lobby, which was especially strong among right-wing Republicans of
what had been the Taft and Knowland factions of the party, and which Goldwater
continued. Now, in the midst of the Vietnam war, with US strategic and economic power
in decline, the Anglo-American elite decided in favor of a geopolitical alliance with
China against the Soviets for the foreseeable future. This meant that the honor of US
committments to the ROC had to be dumped overboard as so much useless ballast,
whatever the domestic political consequences might be. This was the task given to
Kissinger, Nixon, and George Bush.
The maneuver on the agenda for 1971 was to oust the ROC from the UN Security and
assign their seat there to Peking. Kissinger and Nixon calculated that duplicity would
insulate them from domestic political damage: while they were opening to Peking, they
would call for a "two Chinas" policy, under which both Peking and Taipei would be
represented at the UN, at least in the General Assembly, despite the fact that this was an
alternative that both Chinese governments vehemently rejected. The US would pretend to
be fighting to keep Taipei in the UN, with George Bush leading the fake charge, but this
effort would be defeated. Then the Nixon Administration could claim that the vote in the
UN was beyond its control, comfortably resign itself to Peking in the Security Council,
and pursue the China card. What was called for was a cynical, duplicitious diplomatic
charade in which Bush would have the leading part.
This scenario was complicated by the rivalry between Secretary of State Rogers and NSC
boss Kissinger. Rogers was an old friend of Nixon, but it was of course Kissinger who
made foreign policy for Nixon and the rest of the government, and Kissinger who was
incomparably the greater evil. Between Rogers and Kissinger, Bush was unhesitatingly