Shock treatment

From Nixon to Trump

“If Mr. Nixon had revealed he was going to the moon, he could not have flabbergasted his world audience more,” declared the Washington Post in July 1971.

The reference was to an announcement by Richard Nixon that he would be traveling to China. For more than two decades the United States had tried to isolate the People’s Republic of China by denying it diplomatic recognition and pretending that a rival government — on Taiwan — was the true representative of the Chinese people. It had fought two wars – in Korea and Vietnam – to contain China. It had repeatedly denounced China for threatening the world with revolutionary turmoil.

No American had been more vocal in assailing China than Nixon, who commenced his condemnations as soon as Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists proclaimed the People’s Republic in 1949. Not least on the ardency of his anti-Chinese pronouncements, Nixon advanced from the House of Representatives to the Senate, then to the vice-presidency and finally the presidency. For Nixon to go to China was to turn the world upside down. “President Nixon, the quintessential Cold Warrior, was changing colors,” said CBS anchor Dan Rather.

In no quarter was the news more jarring than in Japan. The Japanese adopted a label for Nixon’s China reversal and the events that followed: Nixon shokku. Since World War II, Japan had relied on America for defense against China, its historic rival and the country most desirous of revenge for what Japan had done in that war. At America’s insistence during its occupation of Japan after the war, and with America’s promise of protection after the occupation ended, Japan had sworn off militarism. As long as America was as worried about China as Japan was, all would be well, the Japanese reasoned.

Nixon’s announcement threw Japan’s assurance out the window. The American president had already changed his country’s policy regarding South Vietnam. He was drawing down American troops there, leaving the fighting to South Vietnamese forces. It didn’t require a prophet to see that Nixon was abandoning South Vietnam to its fate. Japan appeared to be next.

Reactions elsewhere to Nixon’s China reversal varied. Some of America’s European allies interpreted it charitably, as indicating a more realistic appraisal of the state of the world now that China had consolidated its government at home and was distancing itself from the Soviet Union abroad. Others, though, worried that if Nixon could flip on China he might do the same regarding America’s commitment to NATO. Again, no great foresight was required to guess that Nixon’s opening to China would be followed by gestures toward the Soviet Union. Where would that leave Europe?

As things happened, it left Europe to work out its own relations with Moscow. Nixon's China flip was a prelude to detente — easing of tensions — with the Soviet Union. Nixon attempted a triangular diplomacy with Beijing and Moscow, playing each communist power against the other. He had concluded that America's resources were overcommitted. While liquidating the war in Vietnam, he sought to rein in the arms race with Russia. America simply couldn't afford any longer to carry the burden it had assumed at the end of World War II.

This became apparent in another shocking announcement Nixon made, a month after his China bombshell. The United States was abandoning its postwar promise to support the international monetary system by redeeming dollars for gold. America's trading partners had been willing to accept large quantities of dollars in the belief they could exchange them for gold at will. Nixon slammed shut the gold window, instantly devaluing those foreign-held dollars. The system of interlocking currencies established at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, near the end of World War II never recovered.

The story of the Nixon shocks has resonance for today, as Donald Trump appears embarked on an even more fundamental reordering of American priorities. Trump has openly questioned the value to America of NATO, America's oldest alliance, in a way Nixon never did. Trump's rapprochement with Russia is more threatening to Ukraine than Nixon's China turn was to Japan. There is no gold window left for Trump to close, but he has spoken of refusing to redeem Treasury bonds held by governments he doesn't like.

The world survived the Nixon shocks, albeit with a diminished role for America. The world will probably survive the Trump shocks. If Trump keeps to form, he will declare it a restoration of American greatness. In truth it will be a tacit admission of American weakness.

There's nothing wrong with that. America is weaker — comparatively, which is the only standard that matters in world affairs — than it was a generation ago, just as America was weaker in Nixon's day than it had been in 1945. China today is vastly stronger than it was in Nixon's time. Europe is richer and more coherent. India is a rising power.

Handled well, the Trump repositioning might inject a healthy dose of realism into American foreign policy. Handled badly, it will make a mess. Handled really badly, it could produce a world war.

Shock treatment is unpredictable.