Nixon-Kissinger Years - Essay Example

(Nixon- Mao talks) "Henry Kissinger had been the primary architect of the "opening" to communist China, while working secretly behind the scenes to oust the Republic of China (Taiwan) from the United Nations, which free China had helped to found. He emerged as spokesman for appeasement of and "rapprochement" with the Soviet Union, and promoted policies which guaranteed the Soviet Union a strategic superiority over the U. S". (Allen) Cold war and domestic political considerations very likely made Nixon and Kissinger less eager to disclose the specifics of the pledges on Taiwan or the candid discussions of Soviet policy.

That Nixon and Kissinger routinely offered the Chinese intelligence briefings has already been disclosed in declassified documents published by the National Security Archive. Kissinger pioneered the policy of dtente with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Leonard Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

"The United States is failing as a leader of the free world. It is being outgunned, outflanked, and outmaneuvered by the world communist movement. A nation which had an unquestioned eight- hundred percent strategic military superiority over the Soviet Union in 1960 was settling, sixteen years later, for second. That Nixon and Kissinger routinely offered the Chinese intelligence briefings has already been disclosed in declassified documents published by the National Security Archive.

Kissinger pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, seeking a relaxation in tensions between the two superpowers. As a part of this strategy he negotiated the Strategic Arms. Limitation Talks (culminating in the SALT I treaty) and the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Leonard Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. “The United States is failing as a leader of the free world. It is being outgunned, outflanked, and outmaneuvered by the world communist movement.

A nation which had an unquestioned eight- hundred percent strategic military superiority over the Soviet Union in 1960 was settling, sixteen years later, for second place status”. (Allen) Kissinger also sought to place diplomatic pressure on the Soviet union; to accomplish this he made two secret trips to the People’s Republic of China in July and October 1971 to confer with Premier Zhou Enlai, then in charge of Chinese foreign policy. This set the stage for the ground breaking 1972 summit between Nixon and Zhou and communist party chairman Mao Zedong as well as the modernization of relations between the two countries, ending 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual hostility and resulting in the formation of a strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alliance.