For a country of that size to keep a standing force of more than one million, where will you find enough work force? A standing force of one million needs a lot of logistical support. Now they depend on the Soviet Union. Some estimates say they are getting $2 million a day from the Soviet Union, some estimates say $2½ million. . . . [I]t will increase difficulties, and this burden on the Soviet Union will grow heavier and heavier. Things will become more difficult. In time the Vietnamese will come to realize that not all their requests to the Soviet Union can be met. In those circumstances perhaps a new situation will emerge.61

  That situation did, in fact, occur over a decade later when the collapse of the Soviet Union and of Soviet financial support brought about a retrenchment in Vietnamese deployment in Cambodia. Ultimately over a time period more difficult to sustain for democratic societies, China achieved a considerable part of its strategic objectives in Southeast Asia. Deng achieved sufficient maneuvering room to meet his objective of thwarting Soviet domination of Southeast Asia and the Malacca Strait.

  The Carter administration performed a tightrope act that maintained an option toward the Soviet Union via negotiations over the limitations of strategic arms while basing its Asian policy on the recognition that Moscow remained the principal strategic adversary.

  The ultimate loser in the conflict was the Soviet Union, whose global ambitions had caused alarm around the world. A Soviet ally had been attacked by the Soviet Union’s most vocal and strategically most explicit adversary, which was openly agitating for a containment alliance against Moscow—all this within a month of the conclusion of the Soviet-Vietnamese alliance. In retrospect, Moscow’s relative passivity in the Third Vietnam War can be seen as the first symptom of the decline of the Soviet Union. One wonders whether the Soviets’ decision a year later to intervene in Afghanistan was prompted in part by an attempt to compensate for their ineffectuality in supporting Vietnam against the Chinese attack. In either case, the Soviets’ miscalculation in both situations was in not realizing the extent to which the correlation of global forces had shifted against them. The Third Vietnam War may thus be counted as another example in which Chinese statesmen succeeded in achieving long-term, big-picture strategic objectives without the benefit of a military establishment comparable to that of their adversaries. Though providing breathing space for the remnants of the Khmer Rouge can hardly be counted as a moral victory, China achieved its larger geopolitical aims vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and Vietnam—both of whose militaries were better trained and equipped than China’s.

  Equanimity in the face of materially superior forces has been deeply ingrained in Chinese strategic thinking—as is apparent from the parallels with China’s decision to intervene in the Korean War. Both Chinese decisions were directed against what Beijing perceived to be a gathering danger—a hostile power’s consolidation of bases at multiple points along the Chinese periphery. In both cases, Beijing believed that if the hostile power were allowed to complete its design, China would be encircled and thus remain in a permanent state of vulnerability. The adversary would be in a position to launch a war at a time of its choosing, and knowledge of this advantage would allow it to act, as Hua Guofeng told President Carter when they met in Tokyo, “without scruples.” 62 Therefore, a seemingly regional issue—in the first case the American rebuff of North Korea, in the second case Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia—was treated as “the focus of the struggles in the world” (as Zhou described Korea).63

  Both interventions set China against a stronger power that threatened its perception of its security; each, however, did so on terrain and at a time of Beijing’s choosing. As Vice Premier Geng Biao later told Brzezinski: “The Soviet Union’s support for Vietnam is a component of its global strategy. It is directed not just at Thailand, but at Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Straits of Malacca. If they succeeded, it would be a fatal blow to ASEAN and would also interdict the lines of communications for Japan and the United States. We are committed to do something about this. We may have no capability to cope with the Soviet Union, but we have the capability to cope with Vietnam.”64

  These were not elegant affairs: China threw troops into immensely costly battles and sustained casualties on a scale that would have been unacceptable in the Western world. In the Sino-Vietnam War, the PLA seems to have pursued its task with many shortcomings, significantly increasing the scale of Chinese losses. But both interventions achieved noteworthy strategic goals. At two key moments in the Cold War, Beijing applied its doctrine of offensive deterrence successfully. In Vietnam, China succeeded in exposing the limits of the Soviet defense commitment to Hanoi and, more important, of its overall strategic reach. China was willing to risk war with the Soviet Union to prove that it refused to be intimidated by the Soviet presence on its southern flank.

  Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has summed up the ultimate result of the war: “The Western press wrote off the Chinese punitive action as a failure. I believe it changed the history of East Asia.”65

  CHAPTER 14

  Reagan and the Advent of Normalcy

  ONE OF THE obstacles to continuity in America’s foreign policy is the sweeping nature of its periodic changes of government. As a result of term limits, every presidential appointment down to the level of Deputy Assistant Secretary is replaced at least every eight years—a change of personnel involving as many as five thousand key positions. The successors have to undergo a prolonged vetting process. In practice, a vacuum exists for the first nine months or so of the incoming administration, in which it is obliged to act by improvisation or on the recommendations of holdover personnel, as it gradually adjusts to exercising its own authority. The inevitable learning period is complicated by the desire of the new administration to legitimize its rise to office by alleging that all inherited problems are the policy faults of its predecessor and not inherent problems; they are deemed soluble and in a finite time. Continuity of policy becomes a secondary consideration if not an invidious claim. Since new Presidents have just won an election campaign, they may also overestimate the range of flexibility that objective circumstances permit or rely excessively on their persuasive power. For countries relying on American policy, the perpetual psychodrama of democratic transitions is a constant invitation to hedge their bets.

  These tendencies were a special challenge to the relationship with China. As these pages show, the early years of rapprochement between the United States and the People’s Republic of China involved a period of mutual discovery. But later decades depended importantly on the two countries’ ability to develop parallel assessments of the international situation.

  Harmonizing intangibles becomes especially difficult when leadership is in constant flux. And both China and the United States witnessed dramatic leadership changes in the decade of the 1970s. The Chinese transitions have been described in earlier chapters. In the United States, the President who opened relations with China resigned eighteen months later, but the key foreign policy remained in place.

  The Carter administration represented the first change in political parties for the Chinese leadership. They had observed statements by Carter as a candidate promising a transformation of American foreign policy to embrace a new openness and emphasis on human rights. He had said little about China. There was some concern in Beijing whether Carter would maintain the “anti-hegemony” dimension of the established relationship.

  As it turned out, Carter and his top advisors reaffirmed the basic principles of the relationship—including those with respect to Taiwan personally affirmed by Nixon during his visit to Beijing. At the same time, the advent of Deng and the collapse of the Gang of Four gave the dialogue between China and the United States a new pragmatic dimension.

  The most intense strategic dialogue between the United States and China had barely been established when another change of administrations brought in a new Republican President with a landslide win. For China, the new President was an unsettling prospect. Ronald Reagan was difficult to analyze even for China’s meticulous researchers. He did not fit any established category. A former movie star and president of the Screen Actors Guild who had willed himself to political prominence, Reagan represented a dramatically different kind of American conservatism than the withdrawn and cerebral Nixon or the serene Midwestern Ford. Defiantly optimistic about American possibilities in a period of crisis, Ronald Reagan, more than any high American official since John Foster Dulles, attacked Communism as an evil to be eradicated within a finite period of time, not a threat to be contained over generations. Yet he focused his critique of Communism almost entirely on the Soviet Union and its satellite states. In 1976, Reagan had campaigned against Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination by attacking the détente policy with the Soviet Union, but had, on the whole, avoided criticizing the rapprochement with China. Reagan’s critique of Soviet intentions—which he continued with renewed vigor in the 1980 campaign—had much in common with the lectures Deng had been delivering to top American officials since his first return from exile. Yet in Reagan’s case, it was paired with a strong personal attachment to the prevailing political order in Taiwan.

  In October 1971, Nixon had encouraged Reagan, then Governor of California, to visit Taiwan as a special emissary to affirm that the improvement of relations between Washington and Beijing had not altered the basic American interest in Taiwan’s security. Reagan left the island with warm personal feelings toward its leaders and a profound commitment to the relationship of the peoples of America and Taiwan. Subsequently, while Reagan stopped short of challenging the existing understanding with Beijing, he was highly critical of the Carter administration’s move to sever formal diplomatic ties with Taipei and downgrade the American Embassy in Taiwan to an unofficial “American Institute.” In his 1980 presidential campaign against Carter, he pledged that under a Reagan administration there would be “no more Vietnams,” “no more Taiwans,” and “no more betrayals.”

  Technically, the embassy in Taipei had been the American Embassy to China; the American decision, culminated under the Carter administration, to relocate this embassy to Beijing was a belated recognition that the Nationalists were no longer poised to “recover the mainland.” Reagan’s implicit critique was that the United States should have retained a full embassy in Taipei as part of a two China solution recognizing both sides of the Taiwan Strait as separate independent states. Yet in its negotiations with the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations (and with all other governments negotiating the terms of diplomatic recognition), this was the one outcome that Beijing consistently and adamantly refused to consider.

  Ronald Reagan thus embodied the existing American ambivalence. A powerful commitment to the new relationship with Beijing coexisted with a strong residue of emotional support for Taiwan.

  One of Reagan’s themes was to advocate “official relations” with Taiwan, though he never explained publicly exactly what this meant. During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan decided to try to square the circle. He sent his vice presidential candidate, George H. W. Bush, to Beijing, where he had served with distinction as head of the U.S. Liaison Office, which functioned in lieu of an embassy. Bush told Deng that Reagan did not mean to imply that he endorsed formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan; nor did Reagan intend to move toward a two China solution.1 Deng’s frosty reply—surely not unaffected by the fact that Reagan repeated his advocacy of formal relations with Taiwan while Bush was in Beijing—induced Reagan to ask me, in September 1980, to serve as an intermediary in delivering a similar, somewhat more detailed, message on his behalf to the Chinese ambassador, Chai Zemin. It was a tall order.

  Meeting with Chai in Washington, I affirmed that, despite his campaign rhetoric, candidate Reagan intended to uphold the general principles of U.S.-Chinese strategic cooperation established during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and outlined in the Shanghai Communiqué and the 1979 communiqué announcing normalization of diplomatic relations. Specifically, Reagan had asked me to convey that he would not pursue a two China policy, or a “one China, one Taiwan” policy. I added that I was sure that the ambassador and his government had studied Governor Reagan’s career, and that in doing so they would have noted that he had many close friends on Taiwan. Attempting to put this in a human context, I argued that Reagan could not abandon personal friendships and that Chinese leaders would lose respect for him if he did so. As President, however, Reagan would be committed to the existing framework of U.S.–People’s Republic relations, which provided a basis for shared Chinese and American efforts to prevent “hegemony” (that is, Soviet dominance). In other words, Reagan, as President, would stand by his friends but also by America’s commitments.

  It cannot be said that the Chinese ambassador received this information with unrelieved enthusiasm. Conscious of the favorable public opinion polls projecting Reagan’s victory in November, he took no chances in expressing an opinion.

  Taiwan Arms Sales and the Third Communiqué

  The early phase of the Reagan administration was marked by its chief’s faith that his persuasiveness could bridge the gap between two, on the face, incompatible positions. In practice, it meant that both positions were carried out simultaneously. The issue had some urgency because normalization had taken precedence over resolving a final legal status for Taiwan. Carter had stated that America intended to continue to supply arms to Taiwan. Deng, eager to complete the normalization process so that he could confront Vietnam with at least the appearance of American support, proceeded with normalization, in effect ignoring Carter’s unilateral statement on arms supply. In the meantime, in 1979 the U.S. Congress had responded to the winding down of the official American diplomatic presence in Taipei by passing the Taiwan Relations Act. This legislation outlined a framework for continued robust economic, cultural, and security ties between the United States and Taiwan, and declared that the United States “will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense capacity.”2 As soon as the Reagan administration took office, Chinese leaders raised the Taiwan arms issue again, treating it as an unfinished aspect of normalization and bringing to a head the American internal contradictions. Reagan made no secret of his wish that some arms sales to Taiwan go forward. His Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, had a contrary view. Haig had been my deputy on the Nixon White House staff that planned the secret visit in 1971. He had led the technical team that advanced Nixon’s visit, during which he had a substantive conversation with Zhou. As a member of the generation that had experienced the start of the Cold War, Haig was keenly aware of how the addition of China to the anti-Soviet camp altered the strategic equilibrium. Haig treated the potential role of China as a de facto American ally as a breakthrough to be preserved as a top priority. As a result, Haig sought for ways to come to an understanding with Beijing whereby the United States would supply arms to both China and Taiwan.

  That scheme foundered on both sides. Reagan would not agree to formal arms sales to China, and Beijing would not consider a deal that implied a trade of principle for military hardware. Matters threatened to get out of hand. Haig, conducting arduous negotiations both within the U.S. government and with his counterparts in Beijing, achieved an agreement that permitted both sides to postpone a final resolution, while establishing a roadmap for the future. That Deng acquiesced in so indefinite and partial an outcome demonstrates the importance he attached to maintaining close relations with the United States (as well as his confidence in Haig).

  The so-called Third Communiqué of August 17, 1982, has become part of the basic architecture of the U.S.-China relationship, regularly reaffirmed as part of the sacramental language of subsequent high-level dialogues and joint communiqués. It is odd that the Third Communiqué should have achieved such a status together with the Shanghai Communiqué of Nixon’s visit and the normalization agreement of the Carter period. For the communiqué is quite ambiguous, hence a difficult roadmap for the future.

  Each side, as before, restated its basic principles: China affirmed its position that Taiwan was a domestic Chinese affair in which foreigners had no legitimate role; America restated its concern for a peaceful resolution, going so far as to claim that it “appreciates the Chinese policy of striving for a peaceful resolution.” This formulation evaded the consistent and frequently repeated Chinese assertion that it reserved its freedom of action to use force if a peaceful resolution proved unfeasible. The key operative paragraph concerned arms sales to Taiwan. It read:

  [T]he United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution. In so stating, the United States acknowledges China’s consistent position regarding the thorough settlement of this issue.3

  None of these terms was precisely defined—or, for that matter, defined at all. What was meant by “gradually” was left open; nor was the “level” reached in the Carter period, which was to be the benchmark, ever specified. While the United States abjured a policy of long-term arms sales, it gave no indication of what it understood by “long-term.” While China reaffirmed its insistence on a final settlement, it established no deadline and submitted no threat. Domestic imperatives on both sides dictated the limits: China would not accept the principle of a foreign arms supplier on what it considered its own territory. American politics, underscored by the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act by wide margins in the U.S. Congress, did not permit any cutoff of arms for Taiwan. It is a tribute to the statesmanship on both sides that this state of affairs has been continued for nearly thirty years since the events discussed in these pages.