Lee Kuan Yew said this, reflecting on a conversation he had with Nixon in the late 60s...
“I said that if I were an American, I would consider that China shared a 4,000-mile boundary with the Soviet Union, a boundary which the Russians had changed only in the last century. So they had unresolved problems. There was no boundary between the US and China. The US had drawn a line across the Taiwan Straits with the Seventh Fleet, but this was a line drawn on water, and need not be perpetual. There was much to be gained by engaging China.
Asked about the US-China enmity, I said there was no natural or abiding source of enmity between China and the United States. China’s natural enemy was the Soviet Union with whom it shared a 4,000-mile boundary which had been shifted to China’s disadvantage only in the last 100 years. There were old scores to settle. The boundary between America and China was an artificial one drawn on water across the Straits of Taiwan. It was ephemeral and would pass with time.”
What if the US looked at the situation from the different perspective, and decided that it had no intrinsic conflict with China or the Soviet Union beyond their current governments, and came to believe that in the long run China was the bigger threat?
Could the American leadership decide that due to China’s sheer population, it is a greater threat to the US in the long term than the Soviet Union, Communist regimes or not? That the Soviet Union perhaps has more in common with the US than China?
Mao was rather nonchalant about nuclear war. He also directly fought the US in Korea while having more men fight the US in Vietnam than the Soviets. China went on to back the horrific Khmer Rouge, while America did the same, if the US is changing its thinking it could maybe come to view Chinese Communists and their allies as more unhinged than Soviet Communists and some of their allies.
1: Is it possible for the US to come to support the Soviet Union over China?
2: With hindsight, which would be more beneficial to the US?