2005/05/13 by Evelyn Goh, evelyn goh
Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #Communism, Protests, Social Movements #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00500.x
openalex publication_date 2005/05/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The dramatic reconciliation with the People's Republic of China in 1972 stands as one of Richard Nixon's greatest achievements as the thirty-seventh president of the United States. While previous administrations had attempted minor modifications of the policy of containment and isolation of China, Nixon managed to negotiate a top-level reconciliation that would lead to normalization of relations in 1979.1 This rapprochement ended more than twenty years of Sino-American hostility and represented the most significant strategic shift of the Cold War era. It was intimately connected to U.S. relations with its superpower rival and the Nixon administration's general policy of détente. In the writings of Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger—the key primary accounts of the policy change until recently—the central logic of the U.S.-China rapprochement was “triangular relations.” Within the context of the Sino-Soviet split, this entailed the opening of relations between the United States and China, bringing China into the realm of great power relations as a third vital power separate from the Soviet Union.