to negotiate with the communist states that were, as he put it, “too powerful to ignore.”87 In his 1969 inaugural address he signaled to the world, “After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation. Let all nations know that during this administration our lines of communication will be open.”88 Because Moscow and Beijing needed Western technology, trade, and recognition, détente would be a logical means to several ends. It would strengthen NATO and prevent America’s European allies from becoming too independent. An engagement with the Soviet Union and China would also allow Nixon to play the two countries against one another. He further hoped to increase his political capital through bold international maneuvers. If he could secure arms limitation agreements, an opening to China, and support in ending the Vietnam War, it would all but ensure his reelection. The more agreeable international environment would then allow Americans to cut defense spending and usher in what Nixon called “a generation of peace.” Thus détente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China became Nixon’s top priorities after his first two years in office. Through a combination of ideological flexibility and pragmatism amid changing circumstances, Nixon and his Soviet counterparts overcame the limitations faced by their predecessors and produced numerous results, from trade and arms control agreements to cultural exchanges and joint scientific ventures.
The administration’s emphasis on interstate peace and order would often conflict with the goals of human rights activists. Indeed, although East/West propaganda continued in the détente era, the U.S. and Soviet governments reduced the ideological sniping that had defined the Cold War for over two decades. In the parlance of the day, détente implied noninterference in a nation’s internal affairs. Or as Michael Ignatieff has asserted, it “traded rights for order.”89 Nixon and Kissinger came to accept the Soviet Union as a world power whose leaders were more interested in preserving international stability than in fomenting Marxist revolutions. The Soviets, too, argued that détente had nothing to do with individual rights or Westernization of the Soviet Union. A typical Pravda editorial of the period asserted that détente should be defined by a “comparison of ideas and facts … and must not be turned into a conscious incitement of mistrust and hostility, the falsification of reality or, least of all, subversive activity.”90
Yet although Nixon, Kissinger, and the Soviets preferred not to make human rights issues a part of détente, they could not control all of the forces unleashed by the Cold War thaw. Détente opened the Eastern Bloc to scrutiny from NGOs, Congress, and ordinary American citizens, and in the long run activists in both East and West became significant actors in international relations. Many observers also held out hope that trade liberalization, educational exchanges, and scientific cooperation would improve the flow of ideas and perhaps decrease repression in the East. Such a decrease would ultimately require activism within Eastern Bloc nations, but détente’s proponents argued that liberalization was more likely if East/West relations improved. State Department experts counseled that détente could even imperil the Soviet system in the long run. An adviser reminded Kissinger in 1970 that “any loosening of Moscow’s control brings East European attempts to reassert independence. In this sense … détente is far more dangerous potentially for them than for us.” The United States could influence Eastern Europe because these people wanted Western technology, capital, and goods—things that the Soviet Union could not provide. “Détente and greater freedom of action in Eastern Europe go hand in hand,” the adviser concluded.91 Despite this belief in potential benefits for Eastern Europeans, Nixon and Kissinger were unwilling to dwell on it publicly for fear of inflating expectations. They were somewhat more willing to tout these benefits as détente met more resistance after 1972, but they did not want their goals to be overshadowed by concern for human rights.92 Nevertheless, while they did not seek to change these societies, détente did offer new opportunities for a wide array of actors to promote reforms in the Eastern Bloc.
Nixon’s opening to China did not have the same effect on human rights promotion. Despite years of Beijing’s abuses, Western activists and politicians paid far less attention to China than they did to the Soviet Union between 1949 and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. On those occasions when Beijing relaxed its grip through mild liberalization programs, some citizens pressed for greater reform, and their assertiveness was invariably met by renewed repression.93 Nixon was hardly alone in disregarding human rights in China; indeed, his White House predecessors and successors acted in much the same way. Because China had long been closed off from the West, Westerners did not have an accurate sense of just how oppressive Mao Zedong’s regime was. When Westerners did hear about Chinese abuses, many dismissed them with the fallback logic that China was geographically distant and culturally enigmatic—that is, that “they do things differently there.” Unlike the Soviet Union, China did not pose an existential nuclear threat to the United States. Also, more Americans traced their lineage to ethnic groups in the Soviet orbit and thus were more aware of Soviet violations than Chinese ones. Human rights concerns did not fundamentally alter the long-term trend of closer Sino-American relations, from rapprochement (1971–1972) to diplomatic recognition (1979) to conditional most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status (1980) to permanent MFN status and billions of dollars in annual trade.
The February 1972 Nixon/Mao summit took up trade, exchanges, and regional matters, and was completely unencumbered with talk of Beijing’s internal policies.94 This was consistent, of course, with Nixonian realpolitik. As early as 1969, Kissinger was telling the press, “We have always made it clear that we have no permanent enemies and that we will judge other countries, and specifically countries like communist China, on the basis of their actions and not on the basis of their domestic ideology.”95 In Nixon’s eyes, rekindling relations with a large communist country was a delicate mission that could be derailed by a focus on humanitarian issues. He sought only a basic rapprochement that could foster opportunities in other areas.
Although most contemporary observers applauded the opening, the preponderance of evidence shows that Nixon and Kissinger were willing to give up far more than they received. The administration proposed diplomatic recognition of China and support for Beijing to assume the Security Council seat of America’s old ally, Taiwan. They also volunteered a timeline for a unilateral U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. “After a peace is made [in Vietnam],” said Kissinger in private, “we will be 10,000 miles away, and [Hanoi] will still be there.”96 Kissinger went on to provide the Chinese with a great deal of classified information over the next few years. The historian Robert Dallek confirms that “Nixon was eager to flatter Mao,” even to the point of telling the Chairman that his writings “moved a nation and have changed the world.”97 Meanwhile, Mao’s government was more than willing to have its humanitarian record ignored. China had endured a long history of outside interference, and “human rights” seemed to many Chinese merely another form of foreign meddling. Mao’s government had earlier pieced together the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in its relations with India—equality, territorial respect, nonaggression, peaceful coexistence, and mutual noninterference in internal affairs—and by the time of Nixon’s opening, these had become China’s foreign policy guidelines. In the human rights era, and especially after 1989, Beijing would defend its domestic policies by elevating the “noninterference” principle to the top of the list.
Not everyone was smitten with the summit or the new Sino-American relationship. Some American conservatives were angry, as were some European and Asian allies. The British ambassador to the United States thought the Sino-American joint communiqué had about it a “distinct whiff of ‘peace in our time.’”98 After observing Nixon toast Chinese officials at a state dinner, conservative commentator William F. Buckley concluded that it “was as if Sir Hartley Shawcross had suddenly risen from the prosecutor’s stand at Nuremberg and descended to embrace Goering and Goebbels.”99 But even these criticisms were more “anti-red” than pro–human rights, and most Americans were happy with the summits.
Why did Nixon and Kissinger offer Mao so much? Nixon was far more concerned with electoral politics at home than he was with gaining concessions. If he could forge a Sino-American working relationship, he would score political points
