AHC/PC - PRC-US rapprochement before a US war in Vietnam

raharris1973

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In OTL, the US and PRC had a durable detente for the last 20 years of the Cold War and were in a de facto anti-Soviet coalition. This complicated the Moscow's situation quite a bit and eased Washington's and Beijing's security problems somewhat compared to the alternatives.

However, for the United States, this happened after two costly wars in which China fought America (Korea) or underwrote its enemy (Vietnam).

The very cost of those wars may have been crucial in making rapprochement with Beijing acceptable within American politics.

For the US, it might have been handy had rapprochement occurred *before* the Vietnam War, either allowing America to "win" the war (preserve a separate South Vietnam) or allowing America to not engage and allow Communst takeover of the south without caring or feeling like its a loser because of it.

Can you sketch out a scenario where this happens? Is it even plausible?
 
IIRC, the State Department recommended that Truman recognize the Chinese government in the 1940s. There's a big potential POD that isn't ever really addressed.
 
Basically, there's a twofer of Face Palm moments for East Asian American diplomacy in at the end of WWII.
As YNF said, the Dixie section of Army, OSS, and State Department folks assigned to assist/liaise with the Chinese Communists heartily recommended recognizing the PRC vs continuing to throw $$$ and gear down the sinkhole of the KMT.
Also OSS and others recognized Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh as being a lot more nationalist and pro-American than Communist. Work with that and post war American foreign policy looks a lot different in scope and approach.
Butterflying the Korean and Vietnam wars are just the beginning.

I gotta say that OTL, we bet on trying to bolster the European nations as bulwarks against Communism. Which do you want, NATO as we got it or adhering to our anti-imperial ideals?
Unless we borrow HG Wells' time machine and show folks casualty figures of OTL Vietnam war, they'd have bet on the UK and France as allies, not the PRC and DRVN.
Even then, imagine if China was an American ally from the git-go, no need for any of that militarization of Korea etc. Butterflying the Great Leap Backward would've saved millions of Chinese lives.
No debates over "who lost China?" that galvanized our Red Scare courtesy of Sen Joe McCarthy.

YMMDV on this,
 
The Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations were fairly paranoid about Mao's China, and in a damn well inflexible way--they refused to take the Sino-Soviet split seriously. That would tend to demonstrate a lack of nuance in dealing with Mao.

And that's even before we get to the fact Mao goes ahead and allows the Cultural Revolution to break out after the US has committed itself irrevocably to South Vietnam.

Even then, imagine if China was an American ally from the git-go, no need for any of that militarization of Korea etc. Butterflying the Great Leap Backward would've saved millions of Chinese lives.

The US-led West underwriting the economic development of the PRC from an agrarian- to an industrial-society after 1949?

That didn't even happen in the mini-detente the West had with Tito.
 
I think that you're all taking a very Americocentric perspective on this. The PRC-US rapprochement resulted not only from a change in American foreign policy but more importantly, a huge change in the domestic politics of the PRC.

After the failure of the Cultural Revolution, Mao realised that China had to escape from international isolation and that closer ties with the United States were desirable despite prior hostility. Without the Cultural Revolution I doubt that a close relationship could be formed. It's wishful thinking to assert that the US could have forged a close relationship with the CCP in the 1940s; the CCP victory was not inevitable by any means and support for the GMD was not necessarily a flawed strategy. With the formation of the PRC in 1949, the party's main priority was economic reconstruction. Considering the CCP's ideology and links with the Soviet Union it made sense to follow the Soviet model of economic development and seek economic aid from the Soviet Union. Also, I can hardly see the CCP seeking close relations with the United States whilst pursuing the Five-Anti Campaign against Chinese capitalists. Anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism formed a large part of the CCP's legitimacy from the 1940s to 1960s and a friendly relationship with the United States was inconceivable. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split, closer relations with the United States were extremely unlikely. One key reason for the split was that Moscow believed that the CCP's propaganda was too anti-imperialist and aggressive, whilst Beijing believed that the Soviets were compromising revisionists and were disillusioned by the shortcomings of the Soviet model in China. After the split, Mao was not looking for a closer relationship with the United States but hostility to the United States by making China the world leader in communism. It was only after the utter chaos of the Cultural Revolution that such a sea-change in political thinking could emerge in China.
 
Even in the immediate aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split, closer relations with the United States were extremely unlikely. One key reason for the split was that Moscow believed that the CCP's propaganda was too anti-imperialist and aggressive, whilst Beijing believed that the Soviets were compromising revisionists and were disillusioned by the shortcomings of the Soviet model in China.

Also, isn't it true that Mao and the Soviets were using their mutual support of Hanoi in the Vietnam War as their own little 'who'll blink first and lose their international leverage here' game? I.e., the feud meant neither could just walk away from backing the DRV's warmaking aims.

To say there wasn't a capacity for 'nuance' within at least the Kennedy administration is undermined by the evidence.

President Kennedy feared that Mao would go all Stalin '45 once he got the A-Bomb. That's the one time Jack considered relenting in his belief that the PRC must be contained at all costs--he was genuinely afraid China would use nukes as a matter of course to expand its area of influence. I contend that's unimpeachable evidence of the Kennedy administration's stated position against giving communist China any credit for being rational actors. Everything else is micro stuff.

Now, this failed proposal for treating with China via trade, that's an interesting sidenote. But it doesn't change the fact the Democratic POTUSes of the sixties and their senior lieutenants were genuinely horrified by the PRC as international players--that's why Johnson was against bombing close to China's borders ala Nixon. He and his team (which was still heavy with Kennedy men) were terrified of an irrational Maoist response.

Also, Australia's conservative government was selling wheat to China during this very period, from 1960 in fact. And they were absolutists against any real diplomatic links with Beijing.

I don't think that's not what the statement entailed; recognition then doesn't necessarily have to lead to the underwriting of Chinese economic development.

I naturally inferred that a China that doesn't do a Great Leap Forward because of open relations is therefore already industrialising via the 'Ostpolitik' way, somehow (not that I think that's possible).
 
Of course, you still had the powerful and still-influential China Lobby and Henry Luce's very close ties with Chiang and Taiwan to take into account.
 
Just to restate familiar history

My reference to Kennedy's explicit fears of a Maoist A-Bomb leading to all SEAsia falling under Beijing's rule, that isn't necessarily well known; AFAICT it's something that only appeared when USN staff college historian David Kaiser got ahold of a confidential memo NYTimesman Arthur Krock wrote for his editorial board after lunching with JFK both on-and-off-the-record in 1961. Only published in 2000.

A whole lot of folk would have plotzed if they'd known about a POTUS stating that, certainly in the years before Deng finalised China's opening up.

Even in 2013 I'm probably ahead of the conventional literature in citing that streak of pessimism as being integral to Jack Kennedy's attitude RE the Far East, but what the heck, it doesn't seem too irrelevant for the argument at hand here...
 
That's quite a boast, because thirteen years is quite a long time in historiography.

This all depends on how fast the conventional wisdom within the academy decides to move on a particular subject, really. And Kennedy scholarship, Imma not seeing it move too fast to adopt new theses. Example: Without googling for nifty little links you can post, do you already even know that his domestic & legislative record must invariably be marked (further) down, compared to what Obama accomplished in one single year when it came to reviving Keynesianism as a legitimate philosophy of government?

Don't hold your breath waiting for the majority of Kennedy-era historians working today to assimilate that into their work...

So, yeah, I'm hardly acting like an Internet Tough Guy when I suggest that a US naval college historian's PoV from 2000 hasn't changed the literature, overall (and Kaiser's book is explicitly a revisionist work, I have major problems with the overall thesis; but if he's got ahold of good primary evidence--not stuff remembered years later--evidence that can be construed as the most pessimistic thing JFK ever said when doing a background briefing to a DC powerbroker, then I acknowledge that.)

The argument I was answering was whether there the Kennedy administration was capable of nuance

For gawd's sake, I conceed you your dictionary definition point about nuance within the lower rungs of the sixties US government on this one thing, but I stand by my broad point that it ultimately doesn't matter, because Imperial Presidency, Cold War.

And you keep doing it, which is misleading

This is ridiculous; I never said anything about you pursuing some n00b line of thought about Kennedy upping and going to China like it was as easy as his trip to Berlin. And now that you've devoted not one but two posts to refuting something I never wrote or implied, that means I won't even bother continuing on a highjacked, off-topic thread.

However, welcome to my world of taking NSC Cold War hawk memos as gospel when it comes to assessing just what realworld options these admins had in FP.;)
 

raharris1973

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I do recall historians mentioning Dean Rusk and others

...discussing their fears of "a billion Chinese with nuclear weapons" during the Kennedy administration.

It sounded so alarmist that it brought to mind the images of a rampaging Asian horde, each armed with their own nuclear mortar or greanade thrower, a la "Starship Troopers" :D
 
I love the debates on this board.

Thx 03771 for giving us far more detail re: JFK inside info. I hadn't really considered those issues to that level of detail. I agree with you that JFK wouldn't have pulled a Nixon to Beijing reapprochement for the reasons you state.

As I stated before, IMO the opportunity for the US to at least have a neutral to friendly PRC is immediately after WWII before Cold War tunnel vision set in.

To wit: the US (A) explicitly recognizes their government as legitimate, (B) puts together some flavor of Marshall Plan postwar reconstruction aid, and (C) guarantees nobody will ever ^&*% with them again.

However, was the US State Dept willing to honk off the UK re: Hong Kong to make the PRC happy? My guess is no.


@ Magniac- You bring up several intriguing POD's re: engaging the Chinese via trade and food aid much earlier than 1973.
 
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