Cold War History
Vol. 5, No. 4, November 2005, pp. 529–549
REVIEW ESSAY
Realism Redux: Investigating the
Causes and Effects of Sino-US
Rapprochement
Nicholas Khoo
Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961 –1974
EVELYN GOH , Nanyang Technological University,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005
Mao’s China and the Cold War
CHEN JIAN
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001
The Sino-US rapprochement of the 1970s, strikingly symbolized by President Nixon’s
February 1972 trip to Beijing, was one of the key turning points of the Cold War. The
traditional explanation for this demarche, as Doak Barnett argued in the 1970s, is that
it represents the workings of realist balance of power politics.1 In this view, the United
States and the People’s Republic of China, driven by their respective perceptions of
strategic threats and national interests, sought to balance rising Soviet power. More
recently, it has been Andrew Nathan and Robert Ross who have reiterated this
interpretation when making their case for why the Sino-US rapprochement came
about. They wrote:
Sino-American rapprochement reflected changing security circumstances . . . It was
becoming clear to Chairman Mao, Premier Zhou Enlai, and other Chinese leaders that
the United States was losing the war in Vietnam and would have to withdraw its forces
from Indochina, that it [the United States] was on the retreat in Asia and on the
defensive in the superpower balance of power. This created the opportunity for Beijing
to align with the United States against the Soviet Union . . . At the same time [from the
US perspective], the Sino-Soviet border crisis [of 1969] revealed China’s strategic
vulnerability to Soviet power and suggested that Chinese leaders might be interested in
reducing Sino-U.S. friction. By 1969, the Nixon administration had perceived an
opportunity to improve relations with China to contain the spread of Soviet power.2
Correspondence to: Nicholas Khoo, Department of Political Science, Columbia University. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1468-2745 (print)/ISSN 1743-7962 (online)/05/040529-21
q 2005 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/14682740500320517
530
N. Khoo
Since 2001 two separate works, by Chen Jian and Evelyn Goh, have sought to reassess
the understanding of Sino-US rapprochement articulated above. Both Chen Jian and
Evelyn Goh share a critical perspective of the realist view of the rapprochement. That
said important differences exist between them. While Chen has attempted to qualify
the realist view, Goh has been more ambitious, essentially offering an alternative to the
realist interpretation of the Sino-American rapprochement.
What are we to make of these new studies of one of the pivotal events of the Cold
War? This review article will address this question in three stages. First, the authors’
basic arguments will be outlined. Second, their arguments will be evaluated.
Evaluation will be guided by the following broad questions. Does the ideological
approach favoured by Chen, and the discourse-based constructivist approach adopted
by Goh, provide for a superior understanding of the Sino-American rapprochement?
Alternatively, are we better served by sticking to the basic realist understanding of the
rapprochement expiated above? Finally, this article will explore the linkage that
various academics and Vietnamese communist figures have made between the SinoAmerican rapprochement of 1972 and the decline in Sino-Vietnamese relations in the
second half of the 1970s. It will be argued that the Sino-Vietnamese conflict was not as
closely linked to the Sino-American rapprochement as these sources assert. A case will
also be made that the Sino-Vietnamese conflict was not, as Chen posits, primarily a
consequence of China’s attempt to develop a modern version of the ancient Chinese
hierarchical relationship with Vietnam. Instead, this article contends that the course of
Sino-Vietnamese relations in this period was critically determined by developments in
the Sino-Soviet relationship.
The American Discourse of Rapprochement and the Chinese Side
Drawing on archival material that has been declassified by the US government over the
last ten years, Evelyn Goh challenges ‘orthodox’ realist accounts of the Sino-US
rapprochement, and seeks to provide a new interpretation.3 The author utilizes a
‘constructivist, discourse-based approach’, to investigate how ideas of reconciliation
‘affected the ultimate policy outcome of [Sino-American] rapprochement’.4 Goh
traces the evolution of discourse on US policy toward China from that of a ‘red
menace’ in 1961 to that of ‘tacit ally’ by 1974. It is argued that the evolution of
discourse within the American political system resulted in a more sophisticated
American understanding of Communist China. Four discourses (that occur in
chronological sequence) are identified prior to Nixon’s election in late 1968: China as a
‘red menace’; a ‘revolutionary rival’; a ‘troubled modernizer’; and a ‘resurgent rival’.
On the eve of the Nixon administration, official mainstream thinking had settled on
some form of policy of reconciliation with China.5 Once in office, Goh explains, the
Nixon administration’s discourse on China evolved from China as a ‘resurgent
revolutionary power’, to that of a ‘threatened major power’, before settling on the view
of China as a ‘principled realist power’. The discourse then moved from China as a
‘former enemy’ to that of a ‘tacit ally’.
Cold War History
531
The year 1969 is identified as a watershed. Facing a ‘changing balance of power’
situation, the author posits that Washington had four possible policy options.6 All were
justifiable in balance of power terms. Option one was to do nothing and let the
internecine Sino-Soviet dispute weaken Washington’s Cold War rivals. The second
course of action was for the US to support the Soviet Union against China. Third, the US
had the option of pursuing triangular diplomacy. Here, Washington could exploit the
Sino-Soviet conflict by maintaining better relations with Beijing and Moscow than each
did with the other. Finally, the United States could take sides and use the ‘China Card’ to
maximum effect. Goh points to the possibility of the US using ‘the realist stratagem of
forming temporary alliances with weaker powers in order to balance the greater threat of
a rising hegemon’.7 This is what the US actually ended up doing by entering into a
rapprochement with China aimed against the Soviets.
In contrast to Goh, who focuses the bulk of her analysis on the American side, Chen Jian
focuses mainly on the Chinese side of the rapprochement equation. Chen emphasizes the
role of changing ideological beliefs on the part of Chinese decision-makers. In his view, the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was the critical event which caused China to identify the
Soviet Union as a ‘socialist-imperialist’ country. According to Chen, once ‘Beijing
identified the “socialist-imperialist” Soviet Union as the most dangerous among all
imperialist countries in the world, a rapprochement with the imperialist United States, an
enemy less dangerous in comparison, became feasible and justifiable for Beijing’s leaders
even in ideological terms’.8 The US was by no means off the hook in Chinese eyes. Thus,
Chen argues, ‘Within this new theoretical framework, U.S. imperialism remained China’s
enemy but no longer the primary one’.9 For Chen, these basic changes in the Chinese
definition of imperialism were both a ‘justification of Chinese efforts to counter the
escalating threat to Chinese security interests’ and ‘were determined by the essence of the
Cultural Revolution’.10 The Cultural Revolution, according to Chen, was initiated by Mao
to prevent a ‘Soviet-style capitalist restoration’ in China.11
Constructivism and the Sino-American Rapprochement: New Wine in Old Bottles?
In advancing a constructivist understanding of the Sino-American rapprochement,
Goh offers two broad theoretical critiques of the realist perspective. The first relates to
the timing of rapprochement. She argues that the realist balance of power account is
problematic because even though the Sino-Soviet split was clear in 1962, it was only
after the Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969 that a Sino-US rapprochement
emerged.12 The second critique relates to the process of Sino-US rapprochement. Goh
points out that the realist account focuses on why China shifted in the American view
from being its worst enemy to a tacit ally. It does not, in the author’s view, explain how
rapprochement happened.13 She finds realist perspectives ‘silent’ on how President
Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger managed to convince various
bureaucratic, national and international constituencies about the validity of a switch
in US policy toward China.14 Although not conceptualized as such, the author’s
critique of realist theory is potentially significant. Precisely because the Sino-US
532
N. Khoo
rapprochement is usually seen as easy for realist theory to explain and, conversely,
‘least likely’ for constructivism to explain, it poses a ‘strong’ test for constructivist
theory.15 Many constructivist works hitherto in this respect tend to focus on
‘weak’ tests and Goh should be commended for her attempt.16 Goh’s success (or lack
thereof) in explaining rapprochement has important consequences both for the
development of constructivist theory, and for how we view this watershed event in the
history of Cold War international relations.
Having laid out Goh’s argument and its potential importance, this review argues
that her argument over-reaches itself in a number of ways. First, the author attempts to
explain Sino-US rapprochement by largely focusing on the American side. This is an
American-centric explanation and, even if performed flawlessly, only gives us a partial
explanation of the Sino-US rapprochement. To fully appreciate and understand this
rapprochement, at a minimum there is a need to examine the dynamics of strategic
interaction between the US, China and the Soviet Union. Second, Goh’s own
explanation or theory of why Sino-US rapprochement occurred is un-falsifiable
(and thus un-provable) and needs to be reformulated to make it so. Third, contrary to
the author’s assertions about structural realism, that theory can easily explain the
timing of the Sino-US rapprochement. Fourth, it is not the case, as Goh argues, that
orthodox realist approaches do not adequately explain how rapprochement
occurred.17 Fifth, since she is making a broad critique of realism, it is surprising
that a systematic evaluation of a new variant of realism, neoclassical realism, is absent
in the author’s review of realist theory.
Trees and forests: The Importance of Strategic Interaction in Explaining the Sino-US
Rapprochement
One of the central problems with Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China is
that Goh appears somewhat ambiguous in what she is trying to explain: or, in theoretical
terms, it is unclear what exactly the dependent variable is in her argument. When setting
up the puzzle that drives the analysis, the author claims to be seeking an explanation of
Sino-US rapprochement.18 If that is the case, the reader would like to see a fairly
extensive analysis of the American and Chinese sides of the rapprochement chess game,
using the many Chinese language sources that have emerged since the 1990s.19 There is
only one Chinese language work cited.20 An attempt is made to make up for this
deficiency by relying on a number of Chinese authors who contributed to a handful of
important English-language books related to this topic, but this is unsatisfying.21
For the bulk of the book, the dependent variable is US policy toward China. Goh
states this to be her ‘informal’ dependent variable.22 The author focuses on dissecting
and analyzing how the US settled on a rapprochement policy with China. Significantly,
the almost exclusive focus on the US side in explaining the Sino-US rapprochement is
inadequate precisely because it misses the element of strategic interaction that,
ironically, is often touted as a forte of constructivist theory.23 It focuses, so to speak, on
the American trees at the expense of the Chinese trees in the rapprochement forest.
Cold War History
533
By not dealing with the Chinese side, Goh is creating a false puzzle which she then
attempts to answer using constructivist theory.
In fact, there is one straightforward reason as to why Sino-US rapprochement did not
occur before 1972. Goh herself observes that there was no partner for rapprochement
until the Sino-Soviet border conflicts in 1969. She notes that ‘the key impediment to the
process of rapprochement after the turning point in internal American official thinking
in 1965 was the lack of response from Beijing’.24 Prior to 1969, to the extent that one side
was even remotely interested in rapprochement, it was the US.25
There is too little discussion of China’s pre-1969 hostility to rapprochement in the
analysis.26 A more serious and detailed consideration by the author of the Chinese side
would have led to an understanding that, in large part because of Mao’s role in Chinese
domestic politics, in practical terms it was next to impossible for Sino-US
rapprochement to occur, regardless of the image held by the US of China. The fact that
Mao was preoccupied with the Cultural Revolution which he launched in 1966, and
the Soviet threat was yet to escalate into the border clashes of 1969, meant that he had
insufficient incentive to engage in Sino-US rapprochement. It took the threat of Soviet
invasion and possible nuclear strikes – which as recent research suggests were made in
response to Mao’s initiation of the border clashes in March 1969 – before the
chairman was compelled to look into establishing better ties with the US.27
More generally, the lack of attention to strategic interaction may account for the
strong implication in the book that those in the US who held an image of China as a ‘red
menace’ and a ‘revolutionary rival’, were over-reacting to the threat posed by the
Chinese communists prior to the late 1960s. The author’s analysis under-emphasizes the
fact that there was much evidence to warrant such an American view of China. After all,
the US was reacting to a China that, by its own admission, was a revolutionary actor on
the world stage, wholly devoted to overturning the status quo both in the capitalist bloc,
and (by the early 1960s) within the communist bloc itself. Chinese rhetoric and actual
policy was genuinely hostile to the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies.
There was active support for communist insurgencies in the Third World. As Goh
herself concedes, ‘we should not underestimate the degree of Chinese antagonism nor
the deep ideological and political roots of the Chinese communist leadership’s portrayal
of the United States as its enemy, throughout the 1960s’.28
Moreover, this threat was posed by a state that was under the control of an absolute leader,
Mao Zedong, who, to put it mildly, was a risk acceptant actor in both the international and
domestic sphere. As Chen Jian has shown, Mao had a worldview that was at once
ideologically driven and devoted to revision of the Cold War status quo.29 In the international
realm, despite being dependent on Moscow for China’s security and economic well-being,
Mao appeared to pay little regard to how his actions may have hurt Soviet foreign policy
interests. His ‘East Wind Prevails Over the West Wind’ speech at the fortieth anniversary of
the Bolshevik revolution in Moscow in November 1957 was a direct challenge to Moscow’s
emerging peaceful coexistence policy with the US. It also indicated a disturbingly high
tolerance for casualties in the instance of a nuclear exchange between the US and the Sovietled bloc (which would in all probability have involved China). Mao launched the Taiwan
534
N. Khoo
Straits Crisis of 1958 against the Taiwanese and their US ally without informing his
Soviet alliance partner.30 This was done even though the Sino-Soviet treaty required such
notification, and Khrushchev had visited Beijing just prior to Mao’s decision to launch the
crisis against Taiwan. After the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, the Chinese leader worked
to deepen the split with the Soviet Union. For example, in 1966 Mao overrode Liu Shaoqi and
Deng Xiaoping and rejected Chinese participation in an international united communist
front against the US during the Vietnam War because that would entail cooperation with
Moscow.31 Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that had Mao not been in command of
China, the Sino-Soviet split would not have been as visceral and prolonged as it became.32
Mao’s high-risk approach spilled over to the domestic sphere. He purged many of the
moderates within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).33 In an attempt to reinvigorate the
Chinese revolution, and at tremendous cost to the Chinese people on a myriad of levels, Mao
launched the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.34
The Elusive Independent Variable and Falsification
Goh states that: ‘[S]ino-U.S. rapprochement was neither an automatic reaction to
structural change nor the result of the genius of great men; rather, it was a process of
evolution of a crucial set of new ideas in post-war U.S. foreign policy toward China’.35 The
reader is left with the question: what then, is driving the evolution of these American
ideas? This question has particular resonance, and will be explored further here, since it is
far from clear that Goh’s methodological perspective can adequately explain the Sino-US
rapprochement. Specifically, while she has a dependent variable, which are four specific
US policy options36 (of which Sino-US rapprochement is but one), rhetorically at least,
the author has no independent variable, or cause for why a particular policy option was
chosen. She rules out discourses as an independent variable when she argues: ‘[d]iscourses
are not advanced as alternative explanatory variables for the Sino-U.S. rapprochement.
Rather, this is an investigation of groups of ideas of reconciliation with China, and of how
these affected the ultimate policy outcome of rapprochement’.37 In a footnote, it is claimed
that ‘the constructivist approach here eschews the search for an independent causal
variable’.38 As a result, the theory offered is, by conscious design, unfalsifiable. Falsifiability
is the sine qua non of any attempt to develop a coherent theoretical research programme,
be it Realist, Constructivist, Marxist, or Liberal.39 Why the decision is made to not make
the theory causal and falsifiable is curious since mainstream constructivism, which Goh
identifies with, has had no difficulty with such a position.40 A number of constructivist
theorists represented in an influential early constructivist work, The Culture of National
Security, go out of their way to accept causal analysis and the principle of falsifiability
whereby theoretical claims are subject to confirmation by reference to evidence.41 Indeed,
the work of one particular constructivist, Jeffrey Legro, is an excellent example of
constructivist research demonstrating how certain policy ideas win out over others that is
done in a falsifiable manner.42 Given that the author is attempting to use ‘political science
methodology’43 and to advance the use of constructivist theory in the field of diplomatic
history, this represents a fundamental theoretical flaw.44
Cold War History
535
Policies emerge from somewhere. To understand how rapprochement ideas won
out, we need a cause or independent variable to explain why ideas of rapprochement
with China triumphed over other ideas. In fact, a close reading of Goh’s book reveals
that she does indeed have two possible, if implicit, independent variables that would in
principle make her account falsifiable. On page 9, the author states that: ‘In 1969, there
were without doubt, significant material changes in relative power that prompted
strategic reassessments in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow. At the same time, these
assessments were mediated by ideational factors’.45 Thus, the independent variable
could be some change in the balance of power which impacts the discourse among
officials in states and relevant groups in domestic politics. A second possible
independent variable could be a properly conceptualised variable focusing on the
various ideas that were fermenting in the American bureaucracy. Indeed, Goh has a
detailed discussion of the State Department’s ideas on US China policy in Chapter 6.
Alternatively, it could be that one of these variables is the independent variable, and
the other, the intervening variable. The author does make some attempt in the last
chapter to discuss her approach to causality. She argues that in her analysis ‘there is no
one causal variable. What matters are constitutive relationships between ideational
and material factors that shape policy outcomes’.46 This still does not free the author
from the responsibility of operationalizing the relevant variables in her theory, and
subjecting it to a fair test against likely competitor theories, which in this case would be
classical realism, structural realism and neoclassical realist theory.
Policy ideas or particular discourses need backers to succeed. Given the longstanding
antagonisms that divided the United States and China since 1949, it took a certain type
of policymaker to broker the Sino-US rapprochement—on both sides. In analyzing
Sino-US rapprochement, we need to study how power impacted on policy. In
constructing the Sino-US rapprochement, how was power exercised by Richard Nixon,
Henry Kissinger, Mao and Zhou Enlai among others? Nixon, with his conservative
credentials, and Mao, with his admittedly decaying revolutionary prestige, were perhaps
the only persons who could have initiated a successful rapprochement. Goh has an
entire chapter on Nixon (Chapter 5) and covers Kissinger extensively. However, there is
insufficient analysis of Mao in particular. Goh notes in passing that before Nixon came
to office, American ‘bureaucratic politics and Chinese intransigence impeded a
rapprochement in the 1960s’.47 In essence, it took individuals such as Nixon and Mao,
acting under a particular international environment of high external threat, to broker
the rapprochement. Agency, in the form of individuals, arguably matters quite a bit.
However, the role of particular individuals exercising power in determining the
rapprochement policy is blurred by the author’s focus on discourse.48
Not Much of a Straw Man: Structural Realism
A third point of critique concerns the adequacy of the author’s evaluation of structural
realist theory, the core argument of which is that power balancing continually occurs
among the key states in world politics.49 Goh does not rigorously test Kenneth Waltz’s
536
N. Khoo
theory of structural realism before declaring it unsuitable for the task of explaining
Sino-US rapprochement. It is unconvincing to point to delays in timing that the
author identifies, and thus conclude that structural realism cannot adequately explain
the Sino-US rapprochement.50 For one thing, a very strong case can be made that there
was little, if any, delay in the emergence of serious Sino-Soviet conflict and the SinoUS rapprochement.51 In Goh’s account, there is a roughly ten-year gap between open
rhetorical conflict that occurred in Sino-Soviet relations in 1962 and Sino-US
rapprochement of 1972, symbolized by Nixon’s visit to Beijing. The author claims that
‘the strategic implications of the Sino-Soviet split became publicly apparent in 1962,
when their ideological quarrel moved into the realm of interstate relations’.52 In fact, it
was not at all clear at the time. Writing in 1962, Donald Zagoria, one of the foremost
scholars on Sino-Soviet relations, did not share Goh’s assessment of bilateral relations.
Zagoria predicted that the Sino-Soviet dispute ‘need not lead to a permanent
rupture’.53 Indeed, efforts were being made by fellow communist regimes to patch up
the split.54 From 1965 to 1968, Beijing and Moscow were cooperating (admittedly with
friction) in assisting the Vietnamese communists against the Americans.55
The real break in Sino-Soviet relations occurred in March 1969 when the SinoSoviet border conflict occurred.56 As structural realism would expect, the US moved
fairly quickly to exploit this opportunity and begin the rapprochement process. As
Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser at the time has written:
The new [Nixon] administration had a notion, not yet a strategy, to move toward
China. Policy emerges when concept encounters opportunity. Such an occasion
arose when Soviet and Chinese troops clashed in the frozen Siberian tundra along a
river of which none of us had ever heard. From then on ambiguity vanished, and we
moved without further hesitation toward a momentous change in global policy.57
Given the foregoing, it is far from clear that structural realism is unable to explain the
timing of Sino-American rapprochement as Goh asserts, and indeed bases a considerable
part of her analysis upon this central, yet contestable, assumption. Thus, one of the two
key questions driving the author’s research, specifically the timing question, has been
satisfactorily answered by a competing theory, and arguably in a more parsimonious way.
Orthodox Realism and the Sino-American Rapprochement
Is it true, as the author claims, that orthodox realist accounts, seen in the work of John
Garver and Harry Harding, do not focus on how Sino-US rapprochement occurred?58
The short answer is no. Harry Harding explains the Sino-American rapprochement as
a response to a shared Soviet threat.59 Garver agrees with this view but qualifies it by
arguing that we also need to pay attention to factional politics within China.60 These
works have in any case been superseded by Robert Ross’ standard 1995 work on SinoUS relations, Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969 – 89.61 Ross’
work is essentially an orthodox realist account of Sino-US rapprochement.62 Indeed,
in a footnote, Goh recognizes Ross as a member of the orthodox realist school who
focuses on explaining how Sino-US rapprochement occurred.63 Given that to be
Cold War History
537
the case, and the significance of Ross’ analysis, the reader would like an explanation of
why Goh believes her account is superior to Ross’. Unfortunately, this is not done.
While Ross does not explicitly advertise himself as such, his work is characterized by
fundamental elements that most historians and international relations theorists would
associate with the classical realist tradition.64 First, in classical realist tradition, Ross
does not view the power balancing process as mechanistic, but rather as contingent on
decision-makers’ subjective evaluation of the Cold War security environment. Thus,
Ross argues that ‘security assessments are ultimately subjective calculations defying
absolute measurement’.65 Second, and again in classically realist terms which many
historians share, the historical narrative approach adopted by Ross explicitly seeks to
take into account the contingent perspectives of both the Americans and the Chinese.
Third, for Ross, states are not billiard balls a la structural realism. State interests
matter.66 Thus, he focuses on the US as a status quo state and China as the dissatisfied,
or revisionist state.67
The problem for Goh is that while Ross argues that the Soviet threat was critical for
Sino-US rapprochement and later cooperation, he also devotes significant space to
explaining how Sino-US rapprochement occurred. Specifically, in Ross’ analysis, the
rapprochement occurred as a reaction to the threat presented by the Soviets to Chinese
and American interests. In fact, his book was written as a critique of accounts of SinoUS relations that do not focus on the process of how rapprochement occurred. As Ross
notes in page 1 of his book: ‘Although the common [Soviet] threat encouraged
Washington and Beijing to cooperate, it does not explain how they were able to
cooperate . . . Maintaining cooperative relations requires considerable effort by both
parties’.68 Ross devotes an entire chapter to showing how China and the US worked
out the rapprochement and shows in the remainder of the book how both sides
sustained the momentum of cooperation through various ebbs and flows until 1989.69
Neoclassical Realism and the Sino-American Rapprochement
Since Goh is explicitly trying to offer an alternative to realist explanations of the SinoAmerican rapprochement, the reader expects a thorough critique of this school of
thought before a judgement is made concerning its utility. Yet, surprisingly, a
systematic evaluation of a new variant of realism that emerged in the 1990s, namely
neoclassical realism, is absent in her review of realist theory. By the early 1990s, many
realist theorists had already evinced serious dissatisfaction with structural realism. An
alternative variant of realist theory called neoclassical realist theory, exemplified in the
work of Thomas Christensen, Randall Schweller, Stephen Walt, William Wohlforth,
and Fareed Zakaria, among others, has enriched this venerable school of thought.70
These collective attempts at developing realist theory have incorporated the insights of
classical realist theorists that domestic politics and statesmen’s perceptions matter, and
often critically, in explaining state behaviour.71 Of particular relevance to this review is
the fact that neoclassical realism’s emphasis on the interaction between structural
factors and the perceptions of key decision-makers such as Mao, Zhou, Kissinger
538
N. Khoo
and Nixon, provides a plausible explanation for both the timing of Sino-US
rapprochement as well as how it occurred.72
Mao, Soviet Imperialism, and the Sino-American Rapprochement
Where Evelyn Goh sees an empty glass for a realist understanding of the Sino-US
rapprochement, Chen Jian finds it to be half-full. For Chen Jian, the realist view
‘makes good sense in explaining why in 1968– 69 it was necessary for Beijing to make
major changes in Chinese foreign policy and security strategy, it does not explain how
and why it became possible for Beijing’s leaders to achieve such changes in the late
1960’s and early 1970s.73 Chen Jian argues that the realists are half-right:
The conventional interpretation of Beijing’s rapprochement with the United States
emphasizes the role strategic/geopolitical considerations played . . . Indeed, Beijing’s
rapprochement with Washington yielded considerable improvements in China’s
strategic position, as well as its international status . . . [However,] the geopolitics
centered interpretation does not fully reveal the complicated reasons behind Mao’s
decision to improve relations with the United States.74
With respect to the theoretical implications of Chen’s work, three points should be
made. The first point relates to the immediate cause of the Sino-American
rapprochement. Chen argues that a basic change in Beijing’s ideological evaluation of
American and Soviet imperialism allowed the Sino-American rapprochement to
occur. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Beijing viewed the
Soviet Union as the leading imperialist in world politics and the United States as the
number two imperialist. For Chen:
[B]oth in the Chinese Communist definition of the ‘main contradiction’ in the
world and in Chinese propaganda, ‘Soviet social –imperialism’ gradually replaced
‘U.S. imperialism’ to become the primary and most dangerous of the world
proletarian revolution. Such basic changes in the Chinese definition of imperialism
were both a ‘justification of Chinese efforts to counter the escalating threat to
Chinese security interests’ represented by the Soviet Union and ‘were determined by
the essence of the Cultural Revolution’.75
Is Chen right? Was the rapprochement caused by the ‘basic change in China’s definition of
imperialism’? To get to the real cause of the Sino-US rapprochement, it is essential to
understand what really caused the Chinese to see the Soviets as greater imperialists. Was it
the nature of Soviet social imperialism, or was it something more basic, such as the CCP
regime’s fear of being overthrown by the Soviets (as will be argued below)? It is somewhat
damaging for Chen’s argument that, by his own admission,76 the Chinese had viewed the
Soviets as imperialists since the early 1960s when the Sino-Soviet split occurred. Yet, it was
only in August 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and Moscow’s
announcement of the Brezhnev doctrine justifying military intervention in other socialist
states, that the Chinese argued that the Soviets had replaced the US as China’s main
ideological enemy. In other words, only when the Soviet Union became a strategic as
opposed to merely an ideological threat did the Chinese communists consider the Soviets
to be their number one adversary.
Cold War History
539
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia particularly alarmed the Chinese because it was
cited by the Soviets as an example of a newly minted Brezhnev doctrine whereby Moscow
unilaterally declared its authority to militarily intervene and overturn ruling regimes in
socialist states that had departed from the Soviet understanding of the correct socialist
path. The Chinese clearly understood that the Soviets viewed the Chinese version of
communism under Mao as a perversion of socialism and feared an invasion. Moreover,
Moscow’s declaration of the Brezhnev doctrine was followed by the Sino-Soviet border
conflicts of 1969 which raised the real possibility of such a Soviet intervention to attempt
to overthrow Mao’s regime. Thus, Yang Kuisong has vividly recounted how, in late 1969,
Chinese leaders made extensive preparations for a Soviet attack.77 Given the chaos and
destruction that Mao’s ongoing Cultural Revolution had thrown China into, Soviet
intervention might very well have worked. Ideology, while giving a sharp ‘edge’ to the
Sino-Soviet conflict, arguably was a multiplier of conflict rather than a fundamental cause
of conflict which basically resided in legitimate Chinese security concerns. In any case, the
realist cum geopolitical model can easily explain the Sino-Soviet conflict and SinoAmerican rapprochement.
A second point concerns Chen’s argument that there was a ‘deeper’78 cause for the
Sino-American rapprochement. Chen seems to argue for a causal role for ideology in
explaining the Sino-American rapprochement when he contends that: ‘in terms of the
relations between ideology and security concerns the Sino-American rapprochement
was less a case in which ideological beliefs yielded to the security interests than one in
which ideology, as an essential element in shaping foreign policy decisions, experienced
subtle structural changes as a result of the fading status of Mao’s continuous
revolution’.79 Yet, just a page later, it becomes clear that, for Chen, ideology’s role is
important in the rapprochement precisely because its role in Chinese domestic and
foreign policy has been substantially reduced. Thus, Chen Jian argues that: ‘In a deeper
sense, Beijing was able to pursue a rapprochement with Washington because, for the
first time in the PRC’s history, Mao’s continuous revolution was losing momentum’.80 If
it was the decline of ideology and resultant conduct of bilateral relations on the basis of
national interest that led to the Sino-American rapprochement, how is Chen’s argument
different from a basic realist understanding of this development that he sets out to
critique?
Relatedly, one may pursue a third point of critique. On what basis was Mao acting in
pursuit of the Sino-US rapprochement? Let us accept, for the sake of argument, Chen’s
point that Chinese domestic politics and, in particular, ideology’s role in Chinese
domestic politics matters in influencing Chinese foreign policy during the Cultural
Revolution era. This should be an easy case to make since we are talking about an era of
heightened ideological influence in Chinese domestic politics and foreign policy. Mao
was concerned with ensuring that Soviet style socialism would not triumph in China
and this was a reason for the initiation of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Even if that is
true, how much of a role did domestic ideology play in Chinese foreign policy? Was it
domestic ideological concerns or international factors that were most influential in
determining China’s role in the Sino-American rapprochement? The fact of the matter
540
N. Khoo
is that when the goals of the Cultural Revolution clashed with China’s international
security imperatives, the latter set of concerns prevailed. While the Cultural Revolution
continued until his death, Mao basically wound it down when Sino-Soviet tensions
peaked in 1969 and the fear of a Soviet attack and/or invasion escalated.81 The
subjugation of domestic political goals to international imperatives is perfectly
consistent with the realist view, and arguably provides a stronger explanation for the
Sino-US rapprochement than an explanation that focuses on ideology in domestic
Chinese politics, as Chen’s argument does.
‘We felt that we had been stabbed in the back’:82 Did the Sino-US rapprochement
lead to Sino-Vietnamese Conflict in 1979?
The Sino-American rapprochement critically affected the balance of power between
the Soviet Union and the United States. As Chen Jian correctly notes:
[T]he Sino-American rapprochement, along with the deterioration of relations
between Beijing and Moscow, caused the most profound shift in the international
balance of power between the two contending superpowers. Whereas the great SinoSoviet rivalry (first in the ideological field and then in military and strategic spheres)
further diminished Moscow’s capacity to wage a global battle with the United States,
the Sino-American rapprochement enormously enhanced Washington’s strategic
position in its global competition with the Soviet Union.83
The Sino-American rapprochement also influenced the regional Asian balance of
power, although to what effect is an interesting question – which brings us to the third
main question animating this essay. Namely, did the Sino-American rapprochement
cause de facto termination of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance in the late 1970s? Jonathan
Pollack has written: ‘Vietnam’s relations with China were the first and perhaps
the most important casualty of the Sino-American rapprochement, underscoring
Hanoi’s subsequent conviction that enhanced relations with Moscow would be
crucial to deflecting growing political pressure from Peking’.84 Evelyn Goh’s study of
Sino-American relations has argued that: ‘the [Sino-US] rapprochement played a key
role in the breakdown of Sino-Vietnamese relations over the 1970’s, culminating in the
war of 1979’.85
Vietnamese General Vo Ngyuen Giap has gone even further in linking post-1979
Sino-Vietnamese hostilities to the Sino-American rapprochement and even so far back
as into the Vietnam War.86 Giap said:
The Chinese government told the United States [during the Vietnam War] that if the
latter did not threaten or touch China, then China would do nothing to prevent the
attacks [on Vietnam]. It was really like telling the United States that it could bomb
Vietnam at will, as long as there was no threat to the border . . . We felt that we had
been stabbed in the back . . . Later when the United States began systematically to
bomb North Vietnam, the Soviet Union proposed to send air units and missile
forces to defend Vietnam. It was the Chinese leaders that had prevented it from
doing so. We had to resolve the situation in a way which would not affect our war of
resistance against the Americans. For this reason we could not publicly denounce
Cold War History
541
the Chinese, nor could we reveal the Soviet proposal . . . After Nixon signed the
Shanghai Communiqué, this showed that the Chinese leaders were clamoring for an
American presence in Southeast Asia, even in South Vietnam. When we recount all
these events and link them to the war in the Southwest [i.e. Kampuchea] we can see
the treachery of the Chinese.87
Did the Chinese betrayal of their Vietnamese comrades through the Sino-American
rapprochement cause the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese conflict? The short answer is no.
Hanoi had legitimate reasons to be outraged at Chinese rapprochement with the US.
However, we should be cautious in over-emphasizing the effect of Beijing’s ‘betrayal’ of
Hanoi as a direct causal factor in the termination of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance.
The first reason for doubting that the Sino-US rapprochement of 1972 was
responsible for subsequent Sino-Vietnamese conflict is the significant fact that the
Soviets engaged in a similar policy toward the US as the Chinese did. Soon after
Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972, the Soviets had few compunctions in signing
the Nixon– Brezhnev SALT I Agreement in Moscow in May 1972. Yet there was no
appreciable long-term effect of Soviet détente with the US on the Soviet– Vietnamese
alliance. The question is why, in the late 1970s, the Chinese were accused by the
Vietnamese of betrayal for their actions in 1972, but the Soviets were not. Objectively
speaking, if the Chinese communists are deemed to have betrayed their Vietnamese
comrades by entering into a Sino-US rapprochement, then the Soviets also betrayed
Hanoi by engaging in a policy of détente toward the US.88
Moreover, the evidence suggests that in 1972 Hanoi felt equally betrayed and angry at
both the Soviets and the Chinese for compromising with the United States. Soon after
Nixon’s visits to Beijing and Moscow which occurred in February and May respectively,
the Vietnamese communists expressed equivalent dissatisfaction against the policies
that their Chinese and Soviet allies had adopted toward the United States. A 17 August
1972 Nhan Dan editorial criticized the policies of socialist countries which had pursued
conciliatory policies toward ‘imperialist’ countries. The article stated:
With regards to socialist countries, the defense of peace and peaceful co-existence
cannot be disassociated from the movement for independence, democracy and
socialism in the world. For a country to care for its immediate and narrow interests
while shirking its lofty internationalist duties not only is detrimental to the
revolutionary movement in the world but will also bring unfathomable harm to
itself in the end. The vitality of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism
manifests itself in revolutionary deeds, not in empty words.89
Relatedly, a second critique of the argument that Sino-US rapprochement caused SinoVietnamese conflict relates to the issue of temporality. There is a considerable time lag
between Sino-US rapprochement which occurred in 1972 and Sino-Vietnamese
conflict, which became clear in 1978. The serious Sino-Vietnamese conflict that erupted
after autumn 1978 was not inevitable. There is a six-year gap between the Sino-US
rapprochement in 1972 and the breakdown of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance in
the autumn of 1978 when a second Soviet – Vietnamese alliance treaty was signed
and which buttressed a first treaty that had been signed in February 1965. Indeed, during
542
N. Khoo
the period between 1975 and 1978 there were numerous attempts at the resolution of
differences between Hanoi and Beijing. If these had been successful, the SinoVietnamese alliance would have endured in spite of the betrayal of 1972. In the end, it
was a conscious decision on the part of the Vietnamese to align with the Soviets and,
with Soviet aid, to establish a sphere of influence over Cambodia and Laos. This caused
Sino-Vietnamese relations to precipitously decline.
The Political Utility of the Betrayal Argument
While the betrayal of the Vietnamese communists by the Soviets and the Chinese did
not lead to the collapse of Vietnam’s alliances with either state, it did yield two positive
things for Hanoi.
First, Hanoi showed itself adept in utilizing Beijing’s and Moscow’s sensitivity to
Vietnamese charges of betrayal as leverage to elicit greater aid from its Chinese and
Soviet allies. Simply put, Hanoi had an interest in playing up its sense of abandonment
as a means of extracting more aid from Beijing and Moscow. Indeed, in March 1972, as
both Beijing and Moscow adopted conciliatory policies toward Washington, Hanoi
complained about both Chinese and Soviet policy toward the US. Thus, Hanoi’s
Minister of Foreign Trade Phan Anh argued that the Soviets and Chinese ‘have
succumbed to the machiavellian policy reconciliation with U.S. imperialists . . . who
are attempting to lure us into the path of compromise’.90 Hanoi’s efforts at using the
‘betrayal card’ worked. In a bid to appease Vietnam, Beijing and Moscow both
increased their aid to Hanoi in 1973.91
Second, the betrayal argument proved to be a very useful tool for the Vietnamese to
mobilize their population against the Chinese in the post-1975 period. The events of
1972 were reinterpreted to suit the requirements of post-1975 political discourse in
Vietnamese communist politics. Thus, after the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war the
Vietnamese communists argued in their 1979 White Paper that Sino-US
rapprochement was ‘a milestone on Peking’s path of overt betrayal of the Vietnamese
revolution, not to mention the Indochinese revolution and world revolution’.92 The
White Paper argues that this Chinese ‘betrayal’ was repeated in an increasingly hostile
Chinese policy toward Vietnam during the 1975 –79 period.93 In 1982 Vietnamese
Foreign Minister Ngyuen Co Thach repeated the betrayal charge:
After Nixon’s visit to China, Mao Tse-tung told Prime Minister Pham Van Dong that
his broom was not long enough to sweep Taiwan clean and that ours was not long
enough to get the Americans out of South Vietnam. He [Mao] wanted to halt
unification and force us to recognize the puppet regime in the South. He [Mao] had
sacrificed Vietnam for the sake of the United States.94
Interpreting the Link between the Sino-American Rapprochement and
Sino-Vietnamese Relations
In contrast to the academics and Vietnamese Communist Party officials cited above, Chen
Jian has been more cautions about the link between Sino-American rapprochement and
Cold War History
543
the collapse of the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. For Chen, the Chinese insistence on an
updated version of the central kingdom–vassal relationship imperilled relations. In
explaining the cause of the collapse of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance, he argues:
What Beijing intended to create was a modern version of the relationship between
the Central Kingdom and its subordinate neighbours. This practice effectively
reminded the Vietnamese of their problematic past with Chinese. When Beijing
reduced its support to Hanoi in the wake of China’s changing domestic and
international situations, Vietnam’s suspicion of China developed into aversion. And
When Vietnam’s unification [in 1975] made it possible for the regime in Hanoi to
confront China’s influences, the aversion turned into hostility. The Chinese, on the
other hand, found it necessary to ‘punish’ their former comrades in order to defend
their heavily wounded sense of superiority. The result was the final collapse of the
‘alliance between brotherly comrades’.95
Chen Jian is right to eschew the more direct link between the Sino-American
rapprochement and the collapse of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance that those cited above
have appeared to assert. He is doubly right to be cautious in focusing on the complicated
interaction between events in 1972 and 1978 in causing the collapse of the SinoVietnamese alliance. Yet, by focusing so heavily on Hanoi and Beijing’s bilateral relations,
Chen appears to minimize what is arguably the most important explanation for the
collapse of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance in 1978 and the subsequent war in 1979. More
specifically, it was developments in the Sino-Soviet relationship that were critical to the
evolution of the Sino-Vietnamese relationship. Here, it was the increase in conflict in
Sino-Soviet relations that was a necessary and sufficient condition for the collapse of the
Sino-Vietnamese alliance. The deterioration in Sino-Vietnamese relations would have
been kept in check had it not been for the Soviet factor.
From 1965 to the end of the Cold War, a strategic quadrangle essentially
characterized relations between Moscow, Hanoi, Beijing and Washington. China
reacted to Soviet pressure, seen in the declaration of the Brezhnev doctrine in 1968 and
the 1969 Sino-Soviet border clashes, by aligning with the United States beginning with
Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. China’s actions in turn led to tensions with the
Vietnamese communists who were still engaged in a war with the United States.
As a general US retrenchment from Southeast Asia occurred following the end of the
Vietnam War in 1975 and the Soviet Union established closer military and economic
links to Hanoi, the Chinese feared encirclement. Beijing reacted to Soviet pressure by
seeking to secure Vietnam’s neutrality, if not support. In that context, Vietnam’s
decision to sign an alliance treaty with Moscow in November 1978 marked a
precipitous decline in Sino-Vietnamese relations and led to the Chinese decision to
retaliate against Vietnam’s December 1978 invasion of Cambodia. Sino-Vietnamese
conflict ensued. This conflict was only terminated after the withdrawal of Vietnamese
forces from Cambodia following the Soviet Union’s decision to drastically reduce aid
to Vietnam during the Gorbachev era. These developments are perfectly consistent
with, and are a logical extension to, the realist interpretation as explicated in the
quotes by Barnett as well as Nathan and Ross at the outset of this article.
544
N. Khoo
Conclusion
Invoking an American football metaphor, the Sino-US rapprochement was, in President
Richard Nixon’s words, a ‘big play’ that could potentially transform the Cold War strategic
landscape. Nixon was surely correct in that assessment. The issue at hand is how best we
can understand the Sino-US rapprochement. The realist view of the rapprochement
basically argues that in the face of a clear and present strategic threat from the Soviet
Union, the United States and China entered into a rapprochement. The essence of this
logic is captured in Nixon’s comments to his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman on 13 July
1971, a day after Kissinger’s return from a secret trip to China to set up Nixon’s 1972
Beijing visit. Nixon told Haldeman: ‘The Chinese “made a deal with us” because of “their
concerns regarding the Soviets”’.96 Both Chen Jian and Evelyn Goh have attempted, to
varying degrees, to take on this strategic-based realist understanding of the SinoAmerican rapprochement.
Chen Jian has sought to qualify the realist view by explaining the Sino-American
rapprochement as a consequence of the Chinese perceiving the Soviets as a greater
ideological threat than the Americans. Yet it is doubtful that the ideological threat posed to
China by the Soviets was the main cause of the Sino-American rapprochement. As noted
above, the Soviets were seen by the Chinese communists as a grave ideological threat since
at least the early 1960s, if not before. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s ideologically
based personality cult at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in
February 1956 was a catalyst for the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s. It was only when
the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 that the Chinese perceived an
existential threat and seriously began to put out feelers to the Americans. The fact of the
matter is that Chinese leaders, and Mao in particular, acted from an eminently realistbased strategic rationale in winding down the Cultural Revolution to deal with an
escalating Soviet threat via a rapprochement with the US.
The most recent reinterpretation of the rapprochement, by Evelyn Goh, has placed
new declassified American archival material within a constructivist theoretical
framework. Goh has made an important contribution through the extensive review of
how Nixon’s ‘big play’ came about on the American side. That is no mean feat.
Ultimately, however, her account does not provide us with a convincing re-evaluation
of the Sino-US rapprochement. Goh argues that ‘the most significant puzzle of the
time is how the rapprochement could have happened’.97 However, historians and
political scientists attuned to strategic interaction will find that there is little puzzle as
to why the Sino-US rapprochement occurred. Further, as we have shown, realist
theories of various hues, be they classical, structural or neoclassical, can easily explain
both how and why the Sino-US rapprochement occurred.
Finally, this review has explored the effects of the Sino-American rapprochement on the
international relations of Southeast Asia in the post-1975 era. At issue is the effect of the
Sino-American rapprochement on China’s relations with the Vietnamese communists.
Here, it has been argued, the link is less direct than scholars have previously argued. It is
not enough to claim that the Sino-American rapprochement caused the subsequent
Cold War History
545
conflict in post-1975 Sino-Vietnamese relations. Since the Vietnamese communists felt
betrayed by their counterparts in both Moscow and Beijing, it is essential to specify how
Sino-Vietnamese relations deteriorated. In this respect, the course of Sino-Soviet relations
in the 1970s was critical to the deterioration of Sino-Vietnamese relations. Realist theory’s
emphasis on threats as a basis for cooperation among otherwise feuding states goes a long
way toward explaining the Sino-American rapprochement. Similarly, its emphasis on
rivalry between major powers – in this case between China and the Soviet Union – allows
us to identify what is arguably a more convincing cause of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict of
1979 and beyond.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Andrew Nathan (Columbia University), Michael Smith (King’s
College, University of London) and John Tai (George Washington University) for providing
insightful comments on previous drafts of this article.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
Barnett, China and the Major Powers, 227– 228.
Nathan and Ross, The Great Wall, 65.
Goh, Constructing, 11.
Ibid, 9.
Ibid., 92.
Ibid., 10– 11.
Ibid., 11.
Chen, Mao’s China, 243.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Goh, Constructing, 4.
Ibid., 5– 6.
Ibid., 6.
Van Evera, Guide, 30– 34; Eckstein, ‘Case Study’, 118 –119.
See references to such constructivist works in Desch, ‘Culture Clash’, 159.
Goh, Constructing, 4.
Ibid., 2.
See references in Chen, Mao’s China, 360 –370.
Gong, Mao Zedong.
Chen, Mao’s China; Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950 – 1975; Ross and Jiang
Changbin, Re-examining the Cold War.
Goh, Constructing, 11.
Wendt, ‘Anarchy’, 391– 425; Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘Taking Stock’, 391– 416.
Goh, Constructing, 95.
Harding, A Fragile Relationship, 35.
Goh, Constructing, 95 –98.
Goldstein, ‘Return’, 985– 997.
546
N. Khoo
[28] Ibid., 96 (emphasis added). On this point, see Harding’s characterization of the Chinese
government’s reaction to American proposals for better relations. Harding, A Fragile
Relationship, 35.
[29] Chen, ‘How to Pursue’, p. 138.
[30] Chen, Mao’s China, 71, 77, 189– 190.
[31] Kojima (ed.), The Record.
[32] Zagoria, ‘Mao’s Role’, 139– 153.
[33] Such radicalism impressed Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot who spent five months in China from
late 1965 to early 1966. See Chanda, Brother Enemy, 62.
[34] It is estimated that between 16.4 to 29.5 million Chinese died as a result of the Great Leap
Forward. See MacFarquhar, The Origins, 330.
[35] Goh, Constructing, 268.
[36] Ibid., 9– 11.
[37] Ibid., 9.
[38] Ibid., 11.
[39] King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 100– 105.
[40] Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘Taking Stock’, 391 –416.
[41] Katzenstein, The Culture.
[42] Legro, ‘The Transformation’, 419– 432.
[43] Goh, Constructing, 257.
[44] Ibid., 258.
[45] Ibid., 9.
[46] Ibid., 261.
[47] Ibid., 12.
[48] Ibid., 259– 260; Byman and Pollack, ‘Let Us Now Praise Great Men’, 107– 146.
[49] Waltz, Theory; For a review of the contributions and limitations of structural realism see
Haggard, ‘Structuralism’, 403– 437.
[50] Goh, Constructing, 4.
[51] I would like to thank Andrew Nathan and Michael Smith for fine-tuning this point.
[52] Goh, Constructing, 4.
[53] Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict.
[54] Guan, The Vietnam War, 78 – 79, 139– 140; Kojima, The Record.
[55] Qiang, China.
[56] Burr, ‘Sino-American Relations, 1969’, 73– 112.
[57] Kissinger, White House, 171.
[58] Harry Harding, John Garver and Robert Ross are cited as examples providing the best orthodox
accounts of the Sino-American rapprochement. Harding, A Fragile Relationship; Garver,
China’s Decision; Ross, Negotiating Co-operation.
[59] Harding, A Fragile Relationship.
[60] Garver, China’s Decision.
[61] Ross, Negotiating Cooperation.
[62] Ibid.
[63] Goh, Constructing, 5.
[64] Wolfers, Discord; Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations; Kissinger, A World Restored.
[65] Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 5.
[66] See Schweller, ‘Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias’, 90 – 121; Schweller, ‘Bandwagoning For Profit’,
72– 107.
[67] Ross, Negotiating Cooperation, 2.
[68] Ibid., 1.
[69] Ibid., 17– 54.
Cold War History
547
[70] Christensen, Useful Adversaries; Rose, ‘Neoclassical Realism’, 144 –172. Schweller, Deadly
Imbalances; Walt, The Origins; Wohlforth, The Elusive Balance; Zakaria, From Wealth to
Power.
[71] Haslam, No Virtue Like Necessity.
[72] Goh, Constructing, 4; Schweller, ‘Unanswered Threats’, 159– 201.
[73] Chen, Mao’s China, 241 (emphasis original).
[74] Ibid., 239.
[75] Ibid., 243.
[76] Ibid., 243.
[77] Yang, ‘The Sino-Soviet Border Clash’, 21– 52.
[78] Chen, Mao’s China, 243.
[79] Ibid., 242.
[80] Ibid., 243.
[81] Yang, ‘The Sino-Soviet Border Clash’.
[82] Comments by Vietnamese Communist General Vo Ngyuen Giap. Giap’s comments were made
in an interview with Miguel Rivero, Verde Olivo (Havana), 10 February 1980 and are cited in
Pike, Vietnam, 87– 88.
[83] Chen, Mao’s China, 276.
[84] Pollack, ‘The Opening to America’, 422, 426.
[85] Goh, Constructing, 182.
[86] Cited in Pike, Vietnam, 87 – 88.
[87] Ibid. (italics original).
[88] Herring, America’s Longest War, 242.
[89] Cited in Porter, Vietnam, 569– 570.
[90] DRV Minister of Foreign Trade Phan Anh in an interview with Aziya Afrika Segodnya (Moscow,
March 1972) cited in Pike, Vietnam, 96.
[91] See table detailing PRC Military aid to Hanoi from 1964 to 1975 in Li and Hao, Wenhua
Dageming Zhong, 416. See table detailing Soviet overall aid in Pike, Vietnam, 139. See also
table detailing Soviet military aid in Thakur and Thayer, Soviet Relations, 118.
[92] Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Truth about Vietnam – Chinese
Relations, 21– 25, 45, 79. Sino-US rapprochement is cited as the second betrayal of Vietnam.
In Hanoi’s view, the first betrayal is the Geneva Agreement of 1954. The third betrayal is
China’s post-1975 policy toward Vietnam.
[93] Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, The Truth about Vietnam – Chinese
Relations, 79.
[94] See Ngyuen Co Thach’s interview in FBIS Daily Report (Asia-Pacific), 17 March 1982, K2.
[95] Chen, Mao’s China, 237.
[96] Cited in Ross and Changbin, Re-examining, 361.
[97] Goh, Constructing, 5.
References
Barnett, Doak A. China and the Major Powers in East Asia. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution,
1977.
Burr, William. “Sino-American Relations, 1969: The Sino-Soviet Border War and Steps Toward
Rapprochement.” Cold War History 1, no. 3 (2001): 73– 112.
Byman, Daniel, and Kenneth Pollack. “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back
In.” International Security 25, no. 4 (2001).
Chanda, Nayan. Brother Enemy: The War After the War. New York: Collier Books, 1988.
Chen, Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
548
N. Khoo
———. “How to Pursue a Critical History of Mao’s Foreign Policy.” The China Journal 49 (2003).
Christensen, Thomas J. Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American
Conflict, 1947 – 1958. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Desch, Michael C. “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies.”
International Security 23, no. 1 (1998): 141– 170.
Eckstein, Harry. “Case Study and the Theory of Political Science.” In Handbook of Political Science
Vol. 7, edited by Fred I. Greenstein, and Nelson W. Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company, 1975.
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in
International Relations and Comparative Politics.” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001).
Garver, John. China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968 – 1971. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1982.
Goh, Evelyn. Constructing the U.S. Rapprochement with China, 1961 – 1974. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Goldstein, Lyle. “Return to Zhenbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why it Matters.” China
Quarterly, no. 168 (2001): 985– 997.
Guan, Ang Cheng. The Vietnam War From the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective.
London: Routledge Curzon, 2002.
Gong, Li. Mao Zedong yu Meiguo. Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1998.
Haggard, Stephen. “Structuralism and its Critics: Recent Progress in International Relations Theory.”
In Progress in International Relations, edited by Emanuel Adler, and Beverly Crawford.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
Harding, Harry. Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972. Washington, DC:
Brookings, 1992.
Haslam, Jonathan. No Virtue Like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations Since
Machiavelli. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
Herring, George. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950 – 1975. New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1979.
Katzenstein, Peter, ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
King, Gary et al. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994.
Kissinger, Henry. The White House Years. Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1979.
———. A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich, and the Problem of Peace, 1812 – 22. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1963.
Li Ke, and Hao Shengzhang. Wenhua dageming zhong de renmin jiefangjun. Beijing: Zhongyang
dangshi ziliao, 1989.
Kojima, Masaru, ed. The Record of Talks between the Japanese Communist Party and the Communist
Party of China: How Mao Scrapped the Joint Communiqué. Tokyo: Central Committee of the
Japanese Communist Party, 1980.
Legro, Jeffrey. “The Transformation of Policy Ideas.” American Journal of Political Science 44, no. 3
(2000): 419 –432.
MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 2: The Great Leap Forward 1958 – 60.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Truth about Vietnam – Chinese
Relations. Hanoi: 1979.
Morgenthau, Hans J. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred
Knopf, 1948.
Nathan, Andrew, and Robert Ross. The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search For Security.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.
Cold War History
549
Pike, Douglas. Vietnam and the Soviet Union: Anatomy of an Alliance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.
Pollack, Jonathan. “The Opening to America.” In The Cambridge History of China Volume 15,
edited by Roderick MacFarquhar, and John K. Fairbank. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991.
Porter, Gareth. Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions, Vol. 2. Stanfordville:
Earl M. Coleman Enterprises, Inc., Publishers, 1979.
Qiang, Zhai. China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950 –1975. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 2000.
Rose, Gideon. “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy.” World Politics 51, no. 1 (1998):
144– 172.
Robert, Ross, and Jiang Changbin, eds. Re-examining the Cold War: U.S.– China Diplomacy, 1954 –
1973. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Ross, Robert. Negotiating Cooperation: The United States and China, 1969 – 89. Stanford, CT: Stanford
University Press, 1995.
Schweller, Randall. “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing.”
International Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 159– 201.
———. Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1998.
———. “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?” Security Studies 5, no. 3 (1996).
———. “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back in.” International Security 19,
no. 1 (1994).
Thakur, Ramesh, and Thayer Carlyle. Soviet Relations With India and Vietnam. London:
Macmilllan, 1992.
Van Evera, Steven. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1997.
Walt, Stephen M. The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Waltz, Kenneth. Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979.
Wendt, Alexander. “Anarchy is What States Make of It.” International Organization 46, no. 2 (1992):
391– 425.
Wohlforth, William Curti. The Elusive Balance: Power and Perceptions during the Cold War. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Wolfers, Arnold. Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1962.
Yang, Kuisong. “The Sino-Soviet Border Clash of 1969: From Zhenbao Island to Sino-American
Rapprochement.” Cold War History 1, no. 1 (2000): 21– 52.
Zagoria, Donald. “Mao’s Role in the Sino-Soviet Conflict.” Pacific Affairs 47, no. 2 (1974): 139– 153.
———. The Sino-Soviet Conflict, 1956 – 61. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.
Zakaria, Fareed. From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America’s World Role. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998.